Backup software

[kevlar-jacket]

In my studio we like to keep a working hard drive and and two redundant drives in another machine. One of the redundant drives holds only changes made each day. The changes are kept for one week. The other redundant drives holds a complete mirror of the working drive.

My question is: What is the best software to use for backing up our photos? The program doesn't have to be free, just reliable.

Thanks.

 

[Big Mike]

Have you considered the DROBO?

It's basically a total backup solution. You put a couple drives into it (you can add more as well). It makes redundant backups of your data, it's pretty neat but I don't remember all the details about how it works.

As for what to use, in terms of software to control the process...I'm not sure.

 

[FinerWorks]

There are a lot of backup solutions out there but honestly you want to look at something where you can do offsite backups. God forbid that something happens to the physical location where your photos are stored but if something does happen then it could be a disaster.

Do a search on cloud backup solutions. My thought on this is to use the "cloud" to backup. Companies like Carbonite do this and offer software but carefully examine the protocols and limitations they have. Usually you can select specific folders to backup but you might have limitations as to how much data you can download per day when you need to restore files or if it is computer specific.

We use Amazon's web services. Companies like ours and SmugMug find it a great solution for backing up as well as regular storage since it is not computer specific and you only pay for the space you use. Overall it is quite cheap (something like $0.15 per GB). It is not the most user friendly solution for all but if you have the technical knowledge you can actually write your own backup system to use with their servers. For regular manual file transfer you can use a software package like Bucket Explorer or a FireFox plugin.

HTH

 

[SpeedTrap]

I use the Drobo and we love it, When we return from a shoot we copy all our files to a working Drive and the Drobo and we just update the files we are working on to the Drobo at the end of each day. As well my system does a complete backup every sunday night to the Drobo.

 

[kevlar-jacket]

What i am really looking for is a software solution to actually perform the backup, regardless of the hardware situation. For now assume that the storage is local. We currently use the free version of Syncback. It seems slow to back up, but this may be caused by the volume of data. Is Syncback a good solution or is there something better?

 

[SpeedTrap]

We are just using the HP Backup Software
once it is setup it just does everything automaticaly as long as you have the drive space. I have never tried Sync Back, but one of the features of the HP software is the ability to restore a backup from the Bios if something tragic should ever happen.

 

[pattard]

Hello,

I recently started to used Oops! Backup (Linky) and i have to say, i'm very happy and impressed with it. It's a clean and easy layout to use, with file versioning and time travel (or whatever you call it), which allows me to go back to older versions of files.

Hope this helped. x