How do you backup your files?

[ziocan]

Me Too!
And this Hard Drive accessory makes it easy!
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Newer%20Tec...ogy/FWU2ES2HDK/

that is a great one, because it has firewire 800 which is very fast. the others brands are generally only usb2 or eventually sata. sata is a bit of a pain for mac users.

I was wondering, how do you guys store/protect the bare hard drives?

[GiorgioNiro]

that is a great one, because it has firewire 800 which is very fast. the others brands are generally only usb2 or eventually sata. sata is a bit of a pain for mac users.

I was wondering, how do you guys store/protect the bare hard drives?

DriveBox
http://www.wiebetech.com/mm5/merchant.mvc?
$7.00 usd

[Kirk Gittings]

Based on the recommendations here I tried Syncback Pro. It work superb, finding exterior drives based on the name that have been disconnected and reconnected. This is important to me as whenever I leave town, I remove all the drives, securely hide the originals and leave the backups at a relatives. Before plugging them back in reassigned them new drive letters and every program I used required a new backup profile then. Not with Synback Pro however-great. Also extremely fast writing from and to eSATA drives (much faster than other programs I had tried). Thanks all.

[ErikKaffehr]

Hi!

I'm on Mac...

The way I do it is:

1) I have two 2TB hard disks in the Mac called Master and Backup. All originals go to "Master/DigitalPictures". "Backup"is used by TimeMachine for automatic backup.

2) I have a separate RAID 5 consisting of four older 1TB harddrives. This contains derivative works + a copy of "Master/DigitalPictures" and also of /Users/ekr (ekr that's me). This backup is done using "rsync" each day 23:00.

3) I have an offsite copy of the "Backup" disk updated now and than. on a 2TB extern hard drive I keep at work.

All the tools are part of the OS, except CarbonCopy Cloner which I use for cloning the backup disk.


Best regards
Erik

I have grown so annoyed and tired with the vagaries of these tools, that I have gone back to manually copying my data to a second, external hard drive.

1) Backup an entire year(s) on a hard drive.  Store offsite. (two hard drives in rotation)
2) Every month backup all of current year on a hard drive. Store offsite. (two hard drives in rotation)
3) At beginning of new year, make backup of all previous years on a new hard drive and store offsite.

I am risking the last month of data, but it makes more sense that way.  All the backup programs had problems with my huge panoramic source files (1GB is my largest, but 800MB is very common).  I also had problems with write protect failures in these huge file transfers to my WD Mybook 500GB.  Now I just move it manually, it is slightly annoying every year, and a very minor task monthly.

I sometimes worry about the fact that my data isn't verified, but I am not sure that is as big a problem as it was 10 years ago.  I manually check that the number of files transferred is equal, that the folder size is equal, and that randomly picked, very large files were transferred correctly.

Yeah, I know it is reckless, but I've been going without anything but free antivirus protection for three years.  I guess that is living dangerously.

[kbolin]

I have 4 x 1TB drives in my Mac Pro.  

I have 2 different sets of 4 x 1TB drives (Set A & Set B ).  

I use ChronoSync to backup my data to a Drobo drive with either Set A or Set B installed.  The other set is stored in a Pelican Case off site.  On a weekly basis or after a big shoot I will do a complete backup and then swap the drives and store these drives offsite again.

I'm thinking of adding a third set (Set C) to the equation as I don't like having all my data in one location at a time.  By having two sets off-site and bringing one back for exchange I know that I still have at least one other set off-site.


I also found a site called BackBlaze.com that provides unlimited space for $5 per month.  I'm doing some research on it first as they comment about encrypting the files before doing a backup to their server.  I'm just hesitant of the encryption on my files.

Kelly

[Gupfold]

If you like the simple approach for software and are using a PC you can make a simple batch file in notepad or similar. Just type commands in and save as a .bat file. Simple but effective.

xcopy "path to files to be copied" "destination to be copied to" /s /d /h /y /i (/s is for all sub directories, /d is to check for date and time, /h is for hidden files, /y is yes to all when it asks to overwrite, /i create the directory if it doesn't exist)

This way you can just copy new or updated files to your external hard drive by executing the file. You can add a delete line if you use a directory like desktop as a temp place too so deleted files don't build up and more.

eg:

del "e:\backup\mypc\temp" /s /q
xcopy "C:\mypc\temp" "e:\backup\mypc\temp" /s /d /h /y /i
xcopy "C:\mypc\mypics" "e:\backup\mypc\mypics" /s /d /h /y /i

You can add as many lines as you like, works over networks too.

[MichaelEzra]

One (just one) of the major problems people have with backing up to DVD's is finding something when you need it.  For that, you need to catalog the DVD's, i.e. each DVD and what's on it.  We assume nothing can go wrong with an archive DVD, or do we make two?  Back to the catalog.  How do you describe what's on the DVD's?  A general description like "Bob's wedding - 12/15/2008?"  Or how about "Landscape shoot - redwood forest - 1/13/2009?"  Sometimes you need to find something by a specific thing in an image that isn't in the catalog.  I've found it necessary to file a collection/archive set in its own folder, and within each folder each image has a filename that describes the main point or object of the image, or possibly that plus a secondary subject/object in the image.  Then, archiving all of those on a hard drive instead of diskettes, I can find precisely what I need quickly with a foldername/filename search, without having to maintain a hand-written catalog.

I make database software for process manufacturers, and what do you suppose their most requested (and least realized) issue is?  To be able to easily get to all of the data they entered into their database, quickly and painlessly.  Not happening yet.

I wrote a utility program just for this purpose and giving it for free to the world;)
www.michaelezra.com  check downloads, "Smart Disk Catalogue".
If you will use it, i would appreciate some feedback.