Back up workflow now that I've added a Mac to the mix

[dchew]

I used to have a simple backup workflow, but it was limited by, well, me.  My main issue is that these drives can be read by the mac but not written to, so I need to reformat them to ...? I'm brand new to a mac; sounds like NTFS is read only, but FAT won't work with a 4gb limit.  So what to do here?

Second issue is what storage to buy to make this seamless, if possible. There are holes all through my current backup workflow.  The new mac is forcing me to address the issue, so I might as well do it in a way that fixes most of my holes.  Since most of my work is done on the notebooks, I'm ok with not having immediate, constant mirrors of drives.  I'm willing to risk the 1/wk approach.  I've never used a RAID, I guess because of the, "What happens if the whole box fails?" issue. Instead I have multiple drives.  Don't know if that approach is sound...

My current thinking is to get two Lacie ethernet NAS drives, but I know almost nothing about that. Is that a good solution?

Current equipment:
Dell desktop pc: Old, winXP, 1g; so old that it is basically used for documents and email only
Vaio notebook: Relatively new, wnVista32, 4g; until now used as my primary photo computer w/ LR, CS3.
MacBook Pro: Brand new, 8g; this is will be my primary photo computer.  

"The Plan" is for my wife to use the Vaio notebook as her primary work computer (starting a new business). The old Dell will function basically as a server, or conduit for storage and internet.

Current storage:
(2) Lacie 250g portable drives for select photos and recent RAW files (second is backup)
WD mybook 1T network drive for complete digital photo archive
WD 500g USB for backup of above photo archive. This gets disconnected and taken to work for remote storage.

Current backup workflow:
Software is DoubleImage
Backup LR catalog(s) to two Lacie drives 1/wk
Backup Lacie new and/or modified images to WD mybook along with LR catalog(s) 1/wk

Thanks for reading my rambling confusion; any suggestions would be appreciated.

Dave Chew

[Jack Flesher]

You can use FAT32 for cross-platform, but it isn't as efficient for either platform as PC's NTFS or Mac OS Extended-Journaled, both of which allow for some automated repair routines by the respective OS.

The good news is you can read either by each other across a network, so that is probably your best place to start.  If you are switching to all Mac, I would suggest using Mac OS Extended-Journaled, knowing a PC can read it all via a network connection.

Back-up routines are somewhat personal choice, and there is already a bunch of threads on the net describing various options.  The first post in this thread explains my strategy and set-up in pretty good detail: http://forum.getdpi.com/forum/showthread.php?t=2560

Cheers,

[dchew]

Thanks Jack,

...I would suggest using Mac OS Extended-Journaled, knowing a PC can read it all via a network connection.

Back-up routines are somewhat personal choice, and there is already a bunch of threads on the net describing various options.  The first post in this thread explains my strategy and set-up in pretty good detail: http://forum.getdpi.com/forum/showthread.php?t=2560

Cheers,

I was heading toward a RAID1 network storage, formatted in HFS+ or extended journaled (not sure what that means yet...); keep the backups from the VAIO and mbpro separate (Vaio on the existing mybook1T, mbpro and images on the new storage).  If I want to transfer files, I was thinking of getting MacDrive7 to read the drives.  I'll reformat the Lacie portables to mac.

I'll surf more to find out what ej is...

Dave

[Jack Flesher]

Thanks Jack,


I was heading toward a RAID1 network storage, formatted in HFS+ or extended journaled (not sure what that means yet...); keep the backups from the VAIO and mbpro separate (Vaio on the existing mybook1T, mbpro and images on the new storage).  If I want to transfer files, I was thinking of getting MacDrive7 to read the drives.  I'll reformat the Lacie portables to mac.

I'll surf more to find out what ej is...

Dave

HFS+ = Hierarchal File System Plus, which is basically Mac OS Extended.  Journaling is what allows for the automated repairs I mentioned, so the current format option is usually referred to as Mac OS Extended-Journaled.

[dchew]

Ok, so I thought I had this solved.  I got a network drive (RAID1) that works fine, but I'm missing software to back up to the network drive.  I've looked at time machine, carbon copy cloner and super duper. Neither seems to be able to  back up actual files to the network.  Time Machine needs a direct connection (firewire, etc), while CCC and SD use a sparse image, not actual individual files. On a pc I used double image, which worked wonderfully.  Copied only the files that were modified, tons of options, etc.  

Is there an equivalent for mac? One that will backup selected files to a network as files, not just one large backup file?

Dave

[jjj]

ChronoSync Review
ChronoSync Software
 Does what you need. And easily too.

[francois]

Another vote for ChronoSync!

[dchew]

Awesome.  Looks very promising. Thank you!

[francois]

Awesome.  Looks very promising. Thank you!

You're welcome,
And don't forget to share your experiments.

[Jack Flesher]

Actualy, CCC *will* do what you want too, but due to the rather spartan UI it is not readily apparent how to implement it.  Regardless, Chrono Synch is also a very good product and since they updated their UI a year or so ago, certainly a more intuitive program to use.

Best,