How often should I backup my OS and APPS?

[joshmcculloch]

Just looking for advice on how often I should be backing up my OS and Apps...  I have a Seagate 200GB External FW drive that I have partitioned to use as bootable backups for my G4 and MacBook.  Should I backup daily, weekly, monthly?  I will be backing up working files and archive files separately (not with the boot drives).

Cheers, Josh

[peterkrogh]

Josh,
Backup before and after any significant change.

If your apps change little, there's no reason to update the backup frequently.  If you make a bunch of tweaks to preferences and settings, run the backup.

I suggest that you run the backup before any significant system upgrade, so you can get back to a know functioning conversion if there is a problem during upgrade.  Update the backup once the new system proves itself to be reliable.
Peter

[billseymour]

Hi-
As I am getting going with iView, and cataloging images, I am now working on a sound backup plan of action (I do have photos and catalog backed up on DVD for the moment, so I am protected in a basic sense right now). I have a 500 gig internal HD (only barely filled, of course). Planning to get a matching size external HD for protection purposes (I am still years away from multidrive or TB size drives). I have about 3K images from photos, about 1K images of my internet image 'clip file'. I figure to add about 2-3K images annually to catalogs.

My Qs relates to backing up photos/catalog vs. backing up the entire hard disk. I am reading/re-reading the DAM book, but would appreciate a brief recap of the following:

1. When Peter mentioned backup before/after in this thread (re OS and apps), is this a complete backup of entire internal (main) HD? Is this what is referred to as 'ghosting' a drive? (How do I do this- specific software for this task?)

2. Is there a separate backup schedule to be followed for photos/catalogs specifically? I would assume 'yes', since a full backup would only be done occasionally (as I understand this thread), while I'd figure photos/catalog should be backed up whenever new photos are added to the database. Is this correct?

3. (Again, maybe a newbie Q) Can/should I use the same external HD for both the system backup (Q 1) and also for the photo/catalog backup (Q 2)? At this point for me, one external HD would be preferable, but what is good DAM practice on this?

Thanks for any info.
Bill

[peterkrogh]

Bill,
What OS, system, etc?
How many drives do you have, and what is on each?
Peter

[billseymour]

Sorry Peter, not enough info given:

- Dell XPS 410 desktop, Vista OS, using iView for catalogin

- internal HD: only the 1 internal HD 500 GB:
-- personal and solo business data/docuents
-- images (3K photographs, 1K of image 'clippings', in 2 iView catalogs)
-- mp3 music
-- this HD is about 100 GB full (out of 500 GB)

- 2nd, backup HD: just got an external Western Digital SATA 500 GB  HD. Not yet even connected.

- I figure to eventually set up home network, and probably will eventually hang a larger HD onto the network. But that is in the future. Right now I am thinking of using the internal HD as primary, with the external HD as my backup.

Which, by the by, is a Q I should ask now, before taking the external HD out of the plastic:

Should I consider, as of right now, going with a larger 2nd HD? I thought that if I needed to expand later, I would eventually make both of these HD's primary, and make a 3rd bigger HD as the backup, and so on.

I think a problem for me (and others, perhaps) is that I have a hard time imagining that I will ever push the 500 GB internal drive limit... but if I start shooting in RAW, I assume Raw and DNG files are much larger than I  am accustomed to- so perhaps I should start thinking 'bigger' even now.

Hopefully this states my situation more completely. Thanks.
Bill

So:

[billseymour]

Er...... 'So:' nothing. Didn't see that at the bottom of last post. QA/QC problems....

[danaltick]

Bill,

This might be of help to you http://thedambook.com/smf/index.php?topic=1404.msg7941#msg7941.  I wrote this several months ago, but just recently updated it.  It's for WinXP, but will work for Vista as well.  Keep in mind this only covers the O/S backups.  For your photos, I would recommend following Peter's book using buckets and offsite storage on separate harddrives.

Dan

[billseymour]

I'll definitely give that a look when I get back from a short trip- thanks, Dan.
Bill

[peterkrogh]

Bill,
In theory, I'd suggest that the OS and Apps would get backed up periodicaly - before and sometime after each major change.

If you have your media/working files segregated so taht these can be synchronized periodically, it can make sense to just make sure these are synced regularly, without worrying about the rest of the drive.

I'll need to get this worked out for my own new Vista machine soon, but have not gotten it implemented yet.
Peter

[billseymour]

Peter-
Just back online after being away for 2 wks- thanks for your advice. Makes sense to do system wide update before a major change/update, and to do selective frequent updating as necessary for media/ iview database, etc.

You mentioned your needing to work your system out on new Vista machine- is there anything particularly different/unique about doing this on a Vista platform, or were you just making a general comment about working on any new system? (I assume the latter- I figure the backup niceties are basically part of the backup software and the external HD, and I wouldn't think that the OS would make much of a difference).

Bill

[peterkrogh]

Bill,
I've been a Mac guy for 20 years, so the whole world of Windows is kind of new to me. I'm finding that getting Vista up and running is pretty intuitive for a Mac OSX user, especially for OS navigation and using the Apps.  Utilities are entirely different, however, so there is a little steeper learnung curve here.
Peter