If you're using wired external drives, then one of the simplest and fastest backup programs is Microsoft's SyncToy. This allows you to setup copies of any folder or collection of folders from , say an internal hard drive to an external hard drive, and once it is setup it is a simple one-click operation. You can organise it so that the two drives are completely synchronised, or that new or modified files on the originating drive are copied to the external drive, allowing archived files to be stored externally but not also on the internal drive. I use this with two external drives, giving me essentially mirrored backups, and it's quick and convenient to use: daily backups are a doddle.
HTH John Coyle -----Original Message----- From: PDML [mailto:pdml-boun...@pdml.net] On Behalf Of Bob W-PDML Sent: Sunday, 9 November 2014 7:39 PM To: Pentax-Discuss Mail List Subject: Re: Keeping photos on an external drive On 9 Nov 2014, at 09:21, Eric Weir <eew...@bellsouth.net> wrote: > > >> On Nov 8, 2014, at 11:59 PM, David Mann <dmann...@gmail.com> wrote: >> >> I almost lost all of my photos a few years ago when my external drive >> started to misbehave, so my advice is to make sure you have two drives and >> keep them synchronised. I keep my "B" drive in a separate building to >> minimise the risk from fire or burglary. The earthquakes weren't big enough >> to find the flaw in my plan > > Thanks, David. It’s become clear in the course of preparing for this move > that I need a completely new backup system. Currently I have two 1 Tb > FireWire drives. Nowhere near enough, especially now that photos, and RAW > files at that, are accumulating faster than they used to. > > I’m thinking of a setup that would provide hot-swappable drives and wifi > accessibility. Not sure what benefit that would give you. Wifi slows things down enormously compared to a wired external drive. If you're not keeping anything on your machine's local drive then you're probably better off with 2 wired external drives and a regular backup job running automatically. This will be both cheaper and faster than wifi. You also need an offsite strategy in case the Big Bad Wolf blows your house down. You could shuffle a couple of backup drives between home and work once a week, but this relies on you having the discipline to do it, and has the weakness that at some point both backups are in the same place for a day, and therefore a temptation for the BBW. Or you could get some cloud storage and let your data trickle-feed up to there. If you have cloud storage then you don't need your backup external drive. B -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List PDML@pdml.net http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions. -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List PDML@pdml.net http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
