Backing up images using LR

[Raptor Mike]

Up to now I've been backing all my photos (and other files eg music) on an external hard drive by creating a new folder on the external and copying everything to it then deleting the old back up, all using Windows Explorer. It can take the PC quite a while to do this. I wondered if there is a way to do it using Lightroom so I only back up new images since the last back up.

There are a couple of points though if you can do it:
Would you be able to re-write images that have been previously backed up but re-edited since then?
If I have a sort out a delete a load of images can they be deleted from the back up?

Many thanks, Mike

 

[Byker28i]

One of the things missing from Lightroom.
I use robocopy or syncback pro to keep files up to date on my remote disks with file copies.

 

[zendog]

If you have windows 8. Format your external drive and switch on File History.

It backs up all files and then ongoing changes without you needing to do anything more and it's free.

 

[Byker28i]

If you have windows 8. Format your external drive and switch on File History.

It backs up all files and then ongoing changes without you needing to do anything more and it's free.

Bottom left of file history is the full backup - worth doing one of those as well at the start

 

[Raptor Mike]

Thanks guys but I'm on windows 7. Also the drive is unhooked and only connected for backing up. I don't delete memory cards until the images on them are backed up.

 

[jerry12953]

Whatever you decide to do don't forget you also need to keep a copy of your LR catalogue.

I've just set this up myself using Robocopy (or someone has done it for me........)

 

[cocjh1]

I'm on windows 7 and run hourly backups to my NAS using rsync. I installed cygwin tools to get rsync and then call it (via a batch script) with Task Scheduler which is available in Windows.

It's quite involved to get this setup working but once established you've a very powerful backup solution in place..

 

[Jayst84]

Why not just copy the new files over? Copying every photo over for no reason seems like a waste of time. That would take days if I tried it.

New shoot - copy from card to computer - duplicate to external drive - edit and process - copy Lightroom Catalogue to external HD to back up edits. If you do any new processing in LR you just need to backup the catalogue to keep that all up to date.

 

[Pookeyhead]

Get a decent sized NAS with redundancy, and back up your entire machine. Having a mirror of your whole machine means everything is backed up, not just your images. Something like Acronis would be my software recommendation. If anything happens, you can restore everything as it was, right up to desktop icon placement and trash can contents... it's as if nothing ever went wrong.

 

[jerry12953]

As has recently been explained to me Robocopy monitors changes to your main hard drive and then mirrors it.

So if you import 100 new images to your hard drive, and over the course of the next few days editing delete half of them, they will also go from your back-up drive. Saves space.