Everyone knows you should backup... but

[Bill Huber]

I know everyone knows you should backup your data. But do we do it and how often to we do it....... Well I try and do backups to DVDs every 6 months or so but that really is not enough.

I have found this very nice cheap ($30) program that works very well to keep an extra copy of all my images and other data and I don't have to do a thing.

The program is called Second Copy and that is just what it is does. It makes a copy of what ever you want it to and will copy it to a second hard drive, external drive of even and FTP server.

What is really nice is you can do it every hour, every day just once a week. You can copy everything or just some folders you can keep up to 25 older versions of a file you copied.

So now ALL of my images and other data is backup-ed to a folder on my third drive and when I do a backup I just backup the one folder.

We know we should do it and this sure helps, it is not the best backup in the world but is sure beats doing nothing.

http://www.centered.com/

[KeepsakeGirl]

I backup every job as soon as I"m done editing them.

[sbp]

I backup even before I edit. i.e original.

[Detonate]

You can use SyncToy from Microsoft for free.

You can setup a scheduled task, only do certain files, folders, or file extensions.

Also, since it's a "sync" utility, you can actually use it to keep copies of your most up to date change, reguardless of what computer you were using to make the change.

It's has a ton of possibilites. I use it for keeping my Music files sync'ed between my home computer, my laptop, my wife's laptop, and my media center PC. So if I change the ID3 tags on any of those boxes, the changes get cascaded.

Works well for photo's and video's as well, assuming you have additional PC's in your house you can back up to.

For offsite / more permanent backups, I used to backup to DVD, but with Hard Drives being sooooooooooo cheap, I just go buy the sale of the week harddrive at Fry's. Stick it in a USB 2 enclosure, copy everything over, and then file the hard drive away at work.

SyncToy Download Page

[KeepsakeGirl]

Originally Posted by sbp

I backup even before I edit. i.e original.

My backups include orig + edit ...its the only way to be sure you don't hate something later

[AjP]

I have automatic incremental backup for all important forlders running every other day

[Ray]

I back up my originals and edits before I even take the photo, so there!

[snidow]

I have a daily incremental and a weekly full backup of the PC photo files to an external hard drive, all originals are kept in about 3 places, first burn to DVD, second a master file on my PC, and third they are part of the backup as well.

[haraki74]

I put all originals (RAW) on the hard drive, then back them up to a DVD. Once edited and converted to jpgs, I back those up to a DVD. Also, once a week, I backup ALL important documents (including images) to a backup computer on my home network. Seems to work for me.

Harry

[evil4blue]

Originally Posted by Detonate

You can use SyncToy from Microsoft for free.

You can setup a scheduled task, only do certain files, folders, or file extensions.

Also, since it's a "sync" utility, you can actually use it to keep copies of your most up to date change, reguardless of what computer you were using to make the change.

It's has a ton of possibilites. I use it for keeping my Music files sync'ed between my home computer, my laptop, my wife's laptop, and my media center PC. So if I change the ID3 tags on any of those boxes, the changes get cascaded.

Works well for photo's and video's as well, assuming you have additional PC's in your house you can back up to.

For offsite / more permanent backups, I used to backup to DVD, but with Hard Drives being sooooooooooo cheap, I just go buy the sale of the week harddrive at Fry's. Stick it in a USB 2 enclosure, copy everything over, and then file the hard drive away at work.

SyncToy Download Page

Ditto!