backing-up photos

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Sparrow

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Is anybody synchronising or backing-up photos from a mac to a wireless network drive? What are you using? the gods of software seem to have it in for me again

regards Stewart
 
What are you useing for your back up and to where are you backing up? A little more info would be nice. I use pc mostly but I back up with a mac too.
 
Sorry imac running leopard, via airport-extreme to a 1tb USB western digital hard drive. I couldn’t find anything in the Mac’s utilities that would do a sync or scheduled backup so I bought a application called GetBackup that sort of works but falls over so often I can't have confidence in it, I was looking for a recommendation
 
One question: why a wireless network drive?

Actually two questions: why a wireless network drive, and if so, is this a stand-alone drive or is it a drive that is shared via your network, which you access via Wi-Fi?

If it's a stand-alone, why not simply plug it to your Firewire port?

When you try to copy a folder over another folder, the OS gives you the option of selecting whether to replace everything or copy only those files which are missing in the target folder from the source folder. I can't think of a simpler way of doing it.
 
Sparrow said:
Sorry imac running leopard, via airport-extreme to a 1tb USB western digital hard drive. I couldn’t find anything in the Mac’s utilities that would do a sync or scheduled backup so I bought a application called GetBackup that sort of works but falls over so often I can't have confidence in it, I was looking for a recommendation
Click to expand...

Large backups over Airport are dicey in general. Some people have success with it most of the time, but a true backup solution needs to be reliable 200% of the time.

My quick advice:
1) If your WD can mirror, format it as RAID 1
2) Tether your WD to your iMac and forget about Airport.
3) Purchase a second drive and clone your WD to it and store that drive offsite.

I use SuperDuper! Its "smart update" feature will clone drives incrementally. The application has a scheduler.
 
Gabriel M.A. said:
When you try to copy a folder over another folder, the OS gives you the option of selecting whether to replace everything or copy only those files which are missing in the target folder from the source folder.
Click to expand...

I wish!! That functionality has been missing in the OS for quite some time.

When you copy a folder to a location that has a folder of the same name, there is only the option to replace the folder entirely.
 
johnwnyc said:
My quick advice:
1) If your WD can mirror, format it as RAID 1
2) Tether your WD to your iMac and forget about Airport.
3) Purchase a second drive and clone your WD to it and store that drive offsite.
Click to expand...

That's exactly what I did (except having the second drive stored offsite); I have a RAID 1 SATA card and have a 1TB hard drive as the main repository, and an external hard drive connected via eSATA as the clone.

Don't forget to take out the jumper (if it's bundled that way) so that it doesn't limit the transfer speed to 1.5 Gb/s and rather use 3 GB/s; that is, if your card supports true SATA full-speed, and your motherboard supports it. It makes transferring oodles of files a whole lot faster.
 
Time Machine? It's built in and I believe it works over the network or at least it's supposed to.

If not I would recommend Super Duper which I used before I got Leopard with Time Machine. Still use it for some things. Again not sure about network capabilities.

I've got two Lacie Externals plugged in via Firewire to my Macbook Pro. All my photos are on one drive which I back up to the other one (don't store the photos on the Macbook, only on the external) with Super Duper. I also have Time Machine back up my whole drive periodically and find it invaluable for finding something I was working on and accidently deleted.
 
johnwnyc said:
I wish!! That functionality has been missing in the OS for quite some time.

When you copy a folder to a location that has a folder of the same name, there is only the option to replace the folder entirely.
Click to expand...

Really?! I unfortunately don't own a Mac, but I used a few at a job recently, for a while (I had a MacPro tower for a long time), with 10.4 and then 10.5; this is how I used to do a lot of syncing with my portable drive. Hmm. Perhaps I'm misremembering?
 
Gabriel M.A. said:
Really?! I unfortunately don't own a Mac, but I used a few at a job recently, for a while (I had a MacPro tower for a long time), with 10.4 and then 10.5; this is how I used to do a lot of syncing with my portable drive. Hmm. Perhaps I'm misremembering?
Click to expand...

It's possible that you had a system extension that had this functionality. OS 9 had it, in fact. But alas, OS X only gives you the option to "Stop" or "Replace."
 
Gabriel M.A. said:
One question: why a wireless network drive?

Actually two questions: why a wireless network drive, and if so, is this a stand-alone drive or is it a drive that is shared via your network, which you access via Wi-Fi?

If it's a stand-alone, why not simply plug it to your Firewire port?

When you try to copy a folder over another folder, the OS gives you the option of selecting whether to replace everything or copy only those files which are missing in the target folder from the source folder. I can't think of a simpler way of doing it.
Click to expand...

My kids have college and school work that needs a copy, and they spend a fortune on itunes, so I would like them to have use of it again.
And I want it to be automatic in case errr I'm sure there was a reason I want it on auto, it’ll come to me ;)
 
Last edited:
johnwnyc said:
Large backups over Airport are dicey in general. Some people have success with it most of the time, but a true backup solution needs to be reliable 200% of the time.

My quick advice:
1) If your WD can mirror, format it as RAID 1
2) Tether your WD to your iMac and forget about Airport.
3) Purchase a second drive and clone your WD to it and store that drive offsite.

I use SuperDuper! Its "smart update" feature will clone drives incrementally. The application has a scheduler.
Click to expand...

That’s why I posted here, I was hoping to understand the answers, the mac forum all speak Martian
 
johnwnyc said:
It's possible that you had a system extension that had this functionality. OS 9 had it, in fact. But alas, OS X only gives you the option to "Stop" or "Replace."
Click to expand...

Hmm. I guess the "non Pro" Mac versions have what in the Windoze world would be the "Home" edition, and the Pro versions have the, emm, "Pro" edition.

Having options can be daunting and frustrating to the "Home" user, I guess (I see that a lot: a lot of people wonder "why pay more money for something I don't use??") As a saying in Spanish goes, "cheap is expensive" (lo barato cuesta caro).

So, Time Machine, eh?
 
nightfly said:
Time Machine? It's built in and I believe it works over the network or at least it's supposed to.

If not I would recommend Super Duper which I used before I got Leopard with Time Machine. Still use it for some things. Again not sure about network capabilities.

I've got two Lacie Externals plugged in via Firewire to my Macbook Pro. All my photos are on one drive which I back up to the other one (don't store the photos on the Macbook, only on the external) with Super Duper. I also have Time Machine back up my whole drive periodically and find it invaluable for finding something I was working on and accidently deleted.
Click to expand...

Time Machine will not display the it in the drive list, as I understand it only supports local drives
 
I have 2 Windows machines, and save all my photos to both systems before I wipe the card in the camera.

Kind of low tech, but it works. And since the laptop and the desktop are usually not in the same room at the same time it also serves as off site storage.
 
As others have suggested you're best served by a wired connection to the drive. I'd also echo the idea of using Superduper.

As for RAID 1, I'd look into your options before going that route. RAID 1 has benefits but it has one big downside: If the primary drive has corrupt files they'll be copied in that state to the backup -- junk in, junk out. My system is setup with a RAID 5 to which I do regular manual backups. The process isn't elegant but I have yet to lose data this way. In fact, it saved me when some RAM went bad and toasted several work files. Fortunately I had them on my RAID and all was saved.

The off site backup is a must.
 
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