Luminous Landscape Forum
Equipment & Techniques => Computers & Peripherals => Topic started by: smthopr on October 04, 2018, 12:17:02 pm
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I am not so well organized.
I've got most of my photos backed up, but there are some new ones floating around...
I want to create a master back up that includes all the new photographs without deleting any of the old ones, and without re-copying everything that's already backed up to the drive.
So, is there some software that can compare the drives and only copy the new files after comparing all the files?
Make sense?
I have both Mac and PC computers here as well.
Thanks for the suggestions!
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I am not so well organized.
I've got most of my photos backed up, but there are some new ones floating around...
I want to create a master back up that includes all the new photographs without deleting any of the old ones, and without re-copying everything that's already backed up to the drive.
So, is there some software that can compare the drives and only copy the new files after comparing all the files?
Make sense?
I have both Mac and PC computers here as well.
Thanks for the suggestions!
Try “GoodSync”. Have been using for years and works great.
Tim Grey has a tutorial on backup and uses GoodSync
https://www.greylearning.com/courses/goodsync
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SyncBackPro
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Another multi-platform tool that happens to be free is FreeFileSync.
There are many syncing tools available and differences in functionality might not be immediately apparent. A functionality that I deem important for photographers is the ability to occasionally verify that the content of files match in both source and target, usually by computing hashes of files and matching those. This is time consuming since the content of files has to be read, but the process can detect file corruption which would be ignored by simply matching file metadata.
Cheers,
Fabien
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I use the Chase Jarvis Complete Workflow approach and put all of my data on a Mac Mini Server which backs up every night using TimeMachine.
All computers access data off the server.
That has worked well for many years
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Thanks for the suggestions, I will look into them! :)
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Most backup software will do as you describe. I use Chronosync on the Mac to back my main drive up to the secondary drive. Flickr Pro backs up all my JPEGs to the web and I can share from there. Backblaze backs up all my data, including my main photo drive. All three do incremental backups, only adding what's new to the backup.
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What's the current amount of space you're talking about? What product are you currently using to do backups? Are you using any cloud backup services currently? Are you a Lightroom user, or other products?
I know from experience how important having some sort of structure to your photos is - and it never gets easier to 'clean up' than now.
If you can swing it, what would consolidating your photos on to a single drive require? 5tb? 10tb? more?? Snag 2 USB3 drives (8tb?), copy all your current drives to 1, and get to work cleaning (and sync the updates to the second one). Programs that find dupes are fun, but deciding on a consistent method of naming and organizing will help you going forward.
Concerned how to split out different works? This is where keywording comes into play, or naming of directories.
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Try “GoodSync”. Have been using for years and works great.
Tim Grey has a tutorial on backup and uses GoodSync
https://www.greylearning.com/courses/goodsync
I can also recommend GoodSync.
I have it set up to back up any new, deleted, moved photos, (and other critical files), to a different drive in my machine whenever I open it.
And once a week it backs up that drive to the cloud.
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What's the current amount of space you're talking about? What product are you currently using to do backups? Are you using any cloud backup services currently? Are you a Lightroom user, or other products?
I know from experience how important having some sort of structure to your photos is - and it never gets easier to 'clean up' than now.
If you can swing it, what would consolidating your photos on to a single drive require? 5tb? 10tb? more?? Snag 2 USB3 drives (8tb?), copy all your current drives to 1, and get to work cleaning (and sync the updates to the second one). Programs that find dupes are fun, but deciding on a consistent method of naming and organizing will help you going forward.
Concerned how to split out different works? This is where keywording comes into play, or naming of directories.
All good points. If this question was directed at me, the original poster, then... I'm guilty of not being organized. Still photography is not my main business, or really, a business at all. So, I've got a lifetime of photographs without much guide to sort them, save maybe, when they were made.
I started to place them all on one 3tb drive and to make copies of this drive. But, I was recently traveling, and there are a whole bunch of new photographs on my laptop, and one back-up drive. And so, I no longer have a master drive with all the photographs. Right now, I really just want to get all the photographs again on a single drive and then, back that drive up. After this, all new photographs will go to the master drive and I want to be able to have software to compare the master drive and the other back-ups, for new photographs, and just back up those, without copying the entire drive.
I think that cloud back up for 4 tb of photographs might be too difficult and expensive. But if you have a suggestion for a cloud back up solution, I will look into that also.
After I get 3 drives with copies of all the photographs, I can then contemplate organizing them. There are only about 500 "finished works", and maybe 2000 RAW files here. Not, 10's of thousands as many have :)
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All good points. If this question was directed at me, the original poster, then... I'm guilty of not being organized. Still photography is not my main business, or really, a business at all. So, I've got a lifetime of photographs without much guide to sort them, save maybe, when they were made.
I started to place them all on one 3tb drive and to make copies of this drive. But, I was recently traveling, and there are a whole bunch of new photographs on my laptop, and one back-up drive. And so, I no longer have a master drive with all the photographs. Right now, I really just want to get all the photographs again on a single drive and then, back that drive up. After this, all new photographs will go to the master drive and I want to be able to have software to compare the master drive and the other back-ups, for new photographs, and just back up those, without copying the entire drive.
I think that cloud back up for 4 tb of photographs might be too difficult and expensive. But if you have a suggestion for a cloud back up solution, I will look into that also.
After I get 3 drives with copies of all the photographs, I can then contemplate organizing them. There are only about 500 "finished works", and maybe 2000 RAW files here. Not, 10's of thousands as many have :)
Write a post, forget to hit 'post' and circle back to it. Yes, there is a lot to keeping photos organized - I just did a clean up pass of a mix of primary and secondary photos that was stored across 12 external and internal drives. That doesn't include my backup drives or my main NAS system. Let's just say I need to write up a posting using it as an example of bad data practices. I know I've uncovered at least 4 directories that I hadn't stored on my main NAS. Now to go back and cull some sporting events down to 'keep' and 'delete' to free up a few more terabytes.
I think what you're looking for is a 2 way or a bidirectional sync - basically everything on every drive. GoodSync, Chronosync, and others can do this.
Cloud backup has gotten real easy, it's just a matter of leaving your computer on and letting it run. If you have a large drive to start with, exclude most of the root directories and focus it on recent and important foiders. Once those get uploaded (it may take a few weeks), remove an 'excluded' directory and let it sync up. Repeat until everything is online.
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Write a post, forget to hit 'post' and circle back to it. Yes, there is a lot to keeping photos organized - I just did a clean up pass of a mix of primary and secondary photos that was stored across 12 external and internal drives. That doesn't include my backup drives or my main NAS system. Let's just say I need to write up a posting using it as an example of bad data practices. I know I've uncovered at least 4 directories that I hadn't stored on my main NAS. Now to go back and cull some sporting events down to 'keep' and 'delete' to free up a few more terabytes.
I think what you're looking for is a 2 way or a bidirectional sync - basically everything on every drive. GoodSync, Chronosync, and others can do this.
Cloud backup has gotten real easy, it's just a matter of leaving your computer on and letting it run. If you have a large drive to start with, exclude most of the root directories and focus it on recent and important foiders. Once those get uploaded (it may take a few weeks), remove an 'excluded' directory and let it sync up. Repeat until everything is online.
Thanks. Any suggestions for a cloud back up service?
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Thanks. Any suggestions for a cloud back up service?
Sorry, yes, Backblaze - $5 a month, unlimited and will backup your external usb drive as well.
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Thanks. Any suggestions for a cloud back up service?
Been very happy with CrashPlan a couple years but it might now be much more expensive than BackBlaze now that the company only provide a “business plan”.
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Sorry, yes, Backblaze - $5 a month, unlimited and will backup your external usb drive as well.
Another Backblaze user here, quite happy with it. Right now I have around 6 TB stored in their servers...
A note, it only works with disks directly attached to your compute (internal ones, usb, firewire, thunderbolt... ), it does not work with NAS drives.
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Another happy Backblaze customer. About 8 Tb up there. Very good value really.
The external drives must stay attached, just to note that, they can be unhooked for a week or two, then you start to get emails from them about whether they should delete those files.
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One question about Goodsync... was on the website and it seems that the personal version will not sync with a NAS, is that right? or i'm I missing something.
Thanks!
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If you can run it all from the Windows side, Microsoft SyncToy (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=15155) is great and free.
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iDrive - full online backup.