Online backup strategy or software for computer and external drive

backupexternal-disk

I'm looking for an online backup strategy for my photos but there's something that none of the systems I've looked at addresses…

I keep my most recent photos on my mac and move them off to an external drive from time to time. I can't keep them all on my computer because I don't have enough space.

Most systems I've looked at can backup both the computer and the external drive. But when I move photos to the drive they will be removed from the computer backup and re-uploaded to the drive backup. This is not only a waste of bandwidth in re-uploading but I'll have to leave the drive plugged in until they are done uploading again. There could even be a time when they are not backed up – after they are 'deleted' from the original location and before they are uploaded again from the drive.

Can anyone suggest a system that handles this or a better way for me to manage my photos?

My photos are all in Lightroom, there are about 500gb so far, I guess I'm adding a few gb per week.

Best Answer

I suggest that Crashplan could suit your needs for online backup.

Crashplan does block level deduplication.

My suggestion for backup procedure is:

  1. Configure Crashplan to backup both the internal drive and the external drive (maybe restricting it to just the folders with photos).
  2. Make sure that Crashplan has completed its backup of your internal drive.
  3. Copy photos to external drive - but don't delete them yet.
  4. Force Crashplan to backup the external drive (or just wait for it to happen). This should be relatively quick as Crashplan knows that it already has the data.
  5. Delete photos from your internal drive.

Also Crashplan will retain the backup of deleted files (assuming you configure it to keep them).

And, of course, have an on-site backup to another external drive. TimeMachine for the internal drive and a copy procedure for the photo external drive.