Backup help

[R_Haman]

  I am gradually settling in on a backup program for the photo files, GBM Pro is the one I'm thinking I'll stick with.  The biggest concern I have is that a full backup is taking 16-18 hours to complete!  Total size of the backup is about 325gb that spans 3 hard drives, it may be my system but this seems extremely slow.
  It is set up to do a full backup once a week with six incremental backups in between, after completion of a new full backup the previous full and increments are deleted.  Admittedly, there are a lot of files to backup.  To reduce the size of the backup I've thought about some variations; my master image file and all sized and sharpened prints don't change that often and could be set up on a separate backup to run only monthly or when I've added content.  The other, and could have swore I saw a post on this, it to only backup the lrcat file rather than the whole LR file.  Would this also be a similar situation with the EM file in only backing up the .ivc file?
   The photo backup consists of:
      Works In Progress files
      Lightroom
      Expressions Media pro
      Master Images file, where all processed images and sized copies for print are stored (until I get them worked into the DAM workflow, still getting all the originals into the system first.)

System, backup program or too much data?  I know there are folks out there with far more images in their LR/EM catalogs than I have.

I'm running XP home, drives to be backed up are on USB 2.0 hub and the drive to store the backup is a 1tb external on firewire. 

i just realized this is really in the wrong forum, my apologies


Rob

[danaltick]

Rob,

You really should separate your media from your O/S, applications, and databases.  Perform incrementals on your O/S, applications, and database partitions; make buckets of your media (including images) and back those up to offsite storage manually (see The DAM Book).  Here's my O/S backup strategy http://thedambook.com/smf/index.php?topic=1404.0.

Dan

[R_Haman]

Hi Dan,
  The OS is a separate backup of its own.  All media files are being placed in buckets and burned to DVD and, (this may be where I'm in error) a backup of those buckets, works in progress and EMP catalog are all contained within a second backup that is run nightly.  I do need to reread the book about backing up, but if I understand you the buckets of images should really be removed from this backup and done manually to the HD or possibly even a drive of their own?  That would indeed reduce the task for backing up nightly.

Rob

[danaltick]

Rob,

Your primary archive buckets should be backed up once to offsite storage as they fill.  The secondary archive drives should be spun down and placed on a shelf.  You don't won't to be backing up your entire archive at all.  That in itself can incur risk of degradation and corruption.  Ideally once a bucket has been backed up it should not be touch again, except to occasionally run verification checks on it.  The DAM Book goes into detail on this.

For WIP, just copy your job folders to a backup drive as they move through the stages of the working files folders.  I do this manually to an external drive that I detach nightly.  I copy my adjusted raws to it as well as the converted DNG's.  This disk also contains an extra copy of the original ingested raws.  This disk gets purged as buckets get backed up to offsite storage and burned to DVD's.  Search the forum for "working files folders".  You will find allot of info.

Dan