Automated back up, moving files and buckets

[BoglePhoto]

Peter:

You talked at the ASMP seminar of automating your backups. I thought as to the buckets, they were manually stuffed and moved when they were ready to be moved, ie, DNGs once made (I am converting on ingestion) to RAW, and working files to DRV buckets when ready, and then not disturbing those buckets once moved to the archive. I have set up my bucket brigade, and have moved buckets to the archive and burned DVDs. Where I am getting a bit lost is in the back up on the hard drives, and following the files. I am moving all photos to a separate internal drive (other than the C drive) as a working area, and then backing up the working daily to an external and a separate internal with Syncback. I am on a PC.

Do you automate the back up of the RAW and DRV harddrives, or just move them bucket by bucket? I know the fear of an automated backup is to overwrite the good file, which should be left alone. What is a safe automation plan for bucket back ups, or should it just be manually done? Do you also delete the 2 dowloaded DNG or RAW files made on ingestion by IIP, and if so, when? I am trying to get rid of duplicate copies.

I assume before you move the buckets, you follow the buckets along the way with both Lightroom and EM2. Do you do a separate catalog in EM2 for the RAW and the DRV?

I also mirror my C drive for programs with Acronis TI, which keeps building a huge file, even though I have it set at incremental back up. Do you purge the older back ups, as TI seems to copy a huge file each time it runs. My C drive had 300 gb on it, as I am winnowing my photos off it, but the back ups are now almost 600 gb after three backups. I cannot figure out why it keeps making such a huge back up file.

Sorry for the multiple questions in advance.

Bill Bogle, Jr.

[danaltick]

Bill,

I'll try to chime in for Peter here.  I actually do manual copies of my buckets (and jobs within them) to the secondary archive for offsite storage.  I really don't see a need to automate that.  I do use a sync program built into my file browser though for the current bucket in progress.  For the working files, you can mirror those with an automated program if you like, but manual copying works fine for me... so far.  I would say it's safe to delete your IIP backups once you have your final 3 copies made (i.e. primary archive, secondary offsite archive, and DVD/Blu-ray).

I keep my DNG's and Derivatives in the same catalog.  I believe Peter does the same.

Acronis doesn't do a good job with incrementals.  They are definitely too large.  I only do full images about once a month to an offsite drive and supplement that with something like Retrospect, Genie Soft, or better yet, CrashPlan.  Do a search on CrashPlan on the forum for more info.... it's free.

Dan

[peterkrogh]

Bil,
As Dan points out, I suggest that you don't generally update the bucket backups of the Archive. The automated backups are for works in progress.
Peter