LR backup software

[Manoli]

There are mixed views as to whether Apple 'stripped ' RAID support from DU ... or if it hasn't been added yet. Disk Utility was completely rewritten for El Cap and the RAID portion may come back at a later date as that project moves along.

Possible, but I doubt it.

More likely that Apple have seen the way ahead, much as they did when they stopped installing internal dvd drives.  With the advent of distributed computing, fast SSD's, efficient backup programs - the need for a RAID-0 or RAID-1 is no longer mainstream. Users who want/need RAID with TB2 speeds will more likely go for RAID-4 or 5 setups , most with hardware controllers and sophisticated , not to say potentially troublesome, software which is beyond the scope of the OS. Apple approved Pegasus RAIDs being a recent example.

[Hans Kruse]

Eric, I'm well aware of LR stupid none baqckup solution. If they can create an option to backup the catalog why can't they come up with an integrated back up for the important things.
There are many things in LR I prefer the dam side of it isn't one. Clunky to say the least.

The backup of the catalog in Lightroom is (as I mentioned in my post earlier on explaining my total backup method) is NOT a backup in the sense of a backup. You need to backup your entire system including the catalog and image files. The word backup is bad term for what it really is: A consistent copy of the Lightroom catalog (=database) at a given point in time.

[Hans Kruse]

Thanks all. At present I'm running Aperture and LR while I make the transition.
I already back up my computers HD with TM, I didn't fancy using TM for the library. I don't store much on the laptop, not even the LR catalog as its a flash drive and space is not great, I wouldn't buy with such little space again (250gb).
My LR dedicated thunderbolt drive also holds the catalog, I will use one of the mentioned programs to make two clones of the LR drive. One backup is never enough and if I do get a major problem, I NEVER plug in a backup until I know what the problem is.  I'm thinking if the catalog is on the same drive as the images whichever computer I use the catalog is staying consistent .
Also a large selection of my work gets uploaded to my site as high res jpg, so its 2 1/2 backups in reality I have.
Thanks again.

If your Lightroom environment (catalog and image files) gets used on several computers it's a good idea to have the catalog on the same drive as the image files. I overcame this problem by having only one machine powerful and a large enough SSD of 1TB. For me this was the best solution since I travel a lot and want to take my machine with me with all essential information and the latest photos which I can work on the road when time allows. I do also bring a copy of my image files on two 2.5" USB 3.0 drives if I need access to older files. I have always a top level folder on each drive that holds lots of shoot folders underneath so I can switch the top level folder within Lightroom to point to a different drive. I will usually not modify any content of the image folders on the drives with the copy, but I could synchronize back to the main folder back in office if I needed to make modifications.

[ButchM]

It doesn't. It can't. Why do you think that it does?

Jeremy

Told you before. My TM backup goes back 2 months ... If I restored files from the past that have been moved/deleted in that span ... the total data restored would far exceed the total capacity of my startup drive.

[rdonson]

Another thing to consider when backing up Lr is your presets, configuration files and plugins.  If something goes south recreating our Lr environment can be a significant pain in the backside. 

A tool to consider in your backup arsenal is one that's dead simple to run (automatic) and easy to set up.  It's a Lr plugin.
http://www.photographers-toolbox.com/products/mdawson/tpglrbackup/

[Jeremy Roussak]

Told you before. My TM backup goes back 2 months ... If I restored files from the past that have been moved/deleted in that span ... the total data restored would far exceed the total capacity of my startup drive.

There's no "quart into pin pot" magic, Butch. Time Machine doesn't use any form of compression and the disk simply can't hold more data than there is space on the disk.

Time Machine looks to me to be very similar if not identical to the standard rsnapshot/rsync mechanism available on many Linux and UNIX systems.  As is so often the case, Apple seems to have taken an open-source tool, modified it to work within Apple's version of the UNIX operating system, and made it easier to use.

No, Chris, it's completely different from rsync. I've found the rather more technical article on the workings of Time Machine that I mentioned earlier: it's here. The technical bit starts about half way down. It's old but I don't think the fundamentals of Time Machine have changed. If you want a user-friendly GUI on top of rsync (and God knows most of us need something to make that program's options intelligible), try Carbon Copy Cloner.

Jeremy

[Chris Kern]

No, Chris, it's completely different from rsync. I've found the rather more technical article on the workings of Time Machine that I mentioned earlier: it's here. The technical bit starts about half way down. It's old but I don't think the fundamentals of Time Machine have changed.

The Ars Technica description sure reads like a description of rsnapshot to me, with the exception of the directory-link hack.  (As you probably are aware, rsnapshot uses rsync as a transport to update remote files, but provides quite different functionality.)  And when I browse the filing hierarchies created by Time Machine and rsnapshot, respectively, the directory links maintained by the former are the only distinction I can detect.  Moreover, they would probably be easy to add to rsnapshot—it's just a Perl script, after all, albeit a fairly elaborate one—if Linux and mainstream UNIX filesystems supported hard links to directories the way OS X does. It's also suggestive that rsnapshot was first publicly documented in 2004 and Apple introduced Time Machine in 2007; post hoc of course doesn't imply propter hoc, but I doubt Apple independently invented that particular wheel.  I don't know for certain that OS X uses the rsnapshot Perl script, per se.  The Apple developers may have come up with their own implementation.  But as far as I can tell both the techniques employed and the resultant back-up hierarchies are identical, modulo the directory-link feature of the Apple filesystem.

[Jeremy Roussak]

The Ars Technica description sure reads like a description of rsnapshot to me, with the exception of the directory-link hack.  (As you probably are aware, rsnapshot uses rsync as a transport to update remote files, but provides quite different functionality.)  And when I browse the filing hierarchies created by Time Machine and rsnapshot, respectively, the directory links maintained by the former are the only distinction I can detect.  Moreover, they would probably be easy to add to rsnapshot—it's just a Perl script, after all, albeit a fairly elaborate one—if Linux and mainstream UNIX filesystems supported hard links to directories the way OS X does. It's also suggestive that rsnapshot was first publicly documented in 2004 and Apple introduced Time Machine in 2007; post hoc of course doesn't imply propter hoc, but I doubt Apple independently invented that particular wheel.  I don't know for certain that OS X uses the rsnapshot Perl script, per se.  The Apple developers may have come up with their own implementation.  But as far as I can tell both the techniques employed and the resultant back-up hierarchies are identical, modulo the directory-link feature of the Apple filesystem.

I didn't comment on rsnapshot. It doesn't really matter which utility is used under the skin to move bytes from one disk to another, or even which utility lies on top. The directory-link feature is hugely important to TM and is the reason why it would be impossible to re-create it on any current non-Apple Unix system. It couldn't be added to rsnapshot because it's not a feature of the application doing the copying: it needs to be supported by the filesystem and for very good reasons (they're dangerous) you simply can't create hard links to directories in non-Apple Unix.



Jeremy

[CatOne]

Told you before. My TM backup goes back 2 months ... If I restored files from the past that have been moved/deleted in that span ... the total data restored would far exceed the total capacity of my startup drive.

No, it wouldn't. This is nonsensical.

What is the size of the most recent backup on Time Machine? That's all you need to look at, and it's all that would be restored.

[digitaldog]

Either you don't have the TM connected all the time or you have a large enough TM backup drive and have two of them is my recommendation.

FYI about not having TM drive connected at all times:
http://www.macworld.com/article/3007573/operating-systems/what-to-do-when-mobile-time-machine-backups-linger-and-fill-storage-space.html

After reading the case of the missing El Capitan hard disk space and following all the advice in that column, Jim Williams still had an inexplicable 300GB that had no reason to exist. He ran a disk analysis program that showed that a hidden Unix directory named .MobileBackups.trash What is it and can he get rid of it?
This is a side effect of Time Machine, of all things. When one of your Time Machine targets is a drive that isn’t currently connected to your Mac, the backup system will continue to generate system snapshots up until all but 20 percent of drive storage is filled. After that point, Time Machine starts to delete snapshots and is more aggressive if you have very little storage available (less than 10 percent of drive capacity or less than 5GB).

[KevinA]

In case anyone is interested I went the CCC route.
Thanks everyone for the help.

[David Eichler]

A couple of pages on and me thinks the OP has done a runner ... 

As we've touched upon RAID's I'd point out that for those on OS X, Apple has stripped RAID support from their disk utility on El Capitan. OWC have SoftRAID , which they've now produced in a LITE version ($34). Well worth the investment for two reasons: (1) they're is constant real-time monitoring of all drives on the system in the menu bar (via an LED style bulb) which will alert you to any persistent errors in writing to disk - usually ample warning before a disk fails, and (2) real time logging of hours each individual disk's hours of use, i/o errors and reallocated sectors.

Do you use the Lite or the full version of SoftRaid? Any major benefits to the full version for the majority of photographers?

[David Eichler]

Like some others above, Carbon Copy Cloner for backing up everything, plus Time Machine for a supplementary copy of the start-up disk. Wish Time Machine were an inclusive rather than exclusive process for selecting the drives to back up, but I guess Apple is trying to accommodate the least sophisticated users, which is understandable.

[Manoli]

In case anyone is interested I went the CCC route.
Thanks everyone for the help.

Pleased to see that at least one thread proved helpful to the OP!
Did you also have a look at TPG LrBackup for all you config files and settings ?

[Manoli]

Do you use the Lite or the full version of SoftRaid? Any major benefits to the full version for the majority of photographers?

David -

SoftRAID Lite.
The 'lite' version covers any number of RAIDs 1 and 0.
There's no need for the full version unless you're intending to move to a RAID 4, 5 or 10 setup.

The SMART reporting, "hours-of-use" monitor, block level health analysis and predictive failure are, I believe, the same in both full and lite versions.

OWC tout their superior and faster (to Apple) RAID driver. That may well be so, I haven't checked it, 'cos I'm still running Apple RAID, with Soft RAID doing the monitoring. There's also a cost difference $34 v $175.

You can convert Apple RAID volumes to SoftRAID but, obviously, not SoftRAID to Apple if you change your mind in the future. Also, you can convert Apple mirrored sets into single volumes , not at all sure if you can do that with SoftRAID.  Moot points, but not, if like me, you're thinking of replacing my RAID-0 setup with an SSD (or two) and then backed up to RAID-1 mirror.

SSD's and TRIM are all supported under SoftRAID Lite, so unless you're operating in an 'enterprise' environment, RAID-0 and 1's are all a photographer is likely to need, particularly with storage capacities and speeds expanding all the time.

One small, but thoroughly irritating point – I bought my copy just over a month ago, only to then discover that OWC are unable (read: unwilling) to issue licence codes via email. They insist on sending a CD package out by post. Not too much of a problem if you're in the USA, but for delivery to the EU it took just under a month. And then all I had to do was type in the code for my trial copy to be validated, no need to reinstall. OWC, if you're reading this: it's almost 2016 …

All best wishes for 2016 – to all on LuLa.

[howardm]

Yea, in my dealings w/ OWC, I've found them similarly 'rigid' about a number of support and service issues.  Makes me think 2-3x before I press 'Add to Cart'.