Synctoy taking DAYS to backup!!!

The goblin

The goblin

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Marsha
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Hi

I run LR on my PC and use Synctoy to backup to my external HDD. I also use it to back up my photo catalogue. Both backups usually only take 20-30 minutes if I've added a lot of photos.

Now I am running a LR backup, the first one since I changed to LR 6 and it's been running for nearly three day! Currently it's sat at 27,520 operations! It's deleting this that and whatever as well as creating new folders. So I am guessing everything is being moved renamed LR5 to LR 6.

Obviously while this drags on I am going nowhere near LR.

Is this normal? Is there anyway I can get around this in the future? It would take minutes to just copy and paste the LR catalogue.

I am more concerned by the fact that we have storms forecast in the early hours of the morning. And when our houses get hit regularly I would really prefer to get the PC switched off and unplugged!

Any tips on running backups in the future?
 
Why not go to wherever you keep the LR6 folder itself (it will be named something like 2015-04-19 1352) and just select and copy it to your backup drive.

Then alter your pairing in SyncToy to the new folders.
 
Lightroom is famous for creating vast numbers of folders, it's the biggest flaw as far as I'm concerned.
 
Mikesphotaes said:
Why not go to wherever you keep the LR6 folder itself (it will be named something like 2015-04-19 1352) and just select and copy it to your backup drive.

Then alter your pairing in SyncToy to the new folders.
Click to expand...

I have thought about this, but I had a monstrous fail with Synctoy when I tried something like that before, it duplicated every photo in every folder that I was backing up. All 273GB of it! I am still deleting it now, so I am reluctant to 'cheat' on it again!

swanseamale47 said:
Lightroom is famous for creating vast numbers of folders, it's the biggest flaw as far as I'm concerned.
Click to expand...
Well apparently it's created 14, 146 folders so far! Tonight makes it the fifth night, I fear it may kill my backup HDD! Only 35, 285 operations done so far, just under a quarter left to go, there's no way I'm stopping it now!
 
Marsha

I used to use Synctoy and never had a major problem with it although like any back up it did take some time to set up. After that the incremental back ups were much much quicker.

Are you backing up to a USB2 drive as they are not the quickest (you might be able to see your transfer speed on your PC) It's not necessarily the number of folders but also the amount of data (GB) you are transferring.
 
Buck my LR file is only about 8GB so not massive!

I think it's been a massive fail, came down to this message
\\exceptioon during run: ERROR HRESULT E_FAIL has been returned from a coll to a COM component!

The folder structure is odd, there's an extra LR folder with not a lot in it! On the plus side LR is still working, so now I have to tidy up the mess! I have duplicated to folder so going to start deleting stuff and see what what happens!

Oh and I use a USB 3 port to my external 2TB HDD.

One day I shall figure out how to get everything on my NAS! I have a nerd mate that I am calling to help this week.
 
LR on my pc seems ok, There are a whole load of random corrupt files in random places. I have deleted some from my PC but I can't delete anything from my external HDD. I couldn't even eject it as it said it was in use somewhere. So I shut the pc down, removed the HDD and plugged it into my Macbook. The LR file was an old one and all the weird files were not there!!! But at least it works!

Plugged it back in to the PC now and manually copying LR across before shutting it down for the morning. Storms are a brewing and we leave nothing plugged in that we don't want frying!
 
I've never run a catalogue back up. I back up the entire PC. One back up system for everything just makes more sense.
 
Pookeyhead said:
I've never run a catalogue back up. I back up the entire PC. One back up system for everything just makes more sense.
Click to expand...

How do you do it? Do you just copy the whole thing or have a program like synctoy do it?

I now have all my photos on my NAS. It backs up automatically every time I do anything!
 
The goblin said:
How do you do it? Do you just copy the whole thing or have a program like synctoy do it?

I now have all my photos on my NAS. It backs up automatically every time I do anything!
Click to expand...


It depends how your machine is set up. I store nothing on drive C: at all. That's where all software is installed. So that is backed up to my server with Acronis True Image. Synctoy is a file synchronisation programme, and will not make a complete mirror of your system drive that you can restore from.

I back up my system drive using Acronis to my server, and then drive D: where all my stuff lives is backed up to the server using All Way Sync. All Way Sync is very much like Synctoy, so for my images etc, I'm doing something very similar to you. However, without a back up of your system drive, you're still in a mess if anything goes wrong, as you'll spend so much time putting everything back as it was on drive C: With a decent back up of your system drive you can be back up and running in next to no time if your system drive fails. Also, unless you told it to do otherwise, Lightroom (if you use it) will have it;'s catalogue on C: so while your images may be backed up, all your settings, catalogue etc will not be.

If you already have 2 drives this is a good idea. Also.. if you do, do you actually have 2 physical drives, or one that's partitioned into two drives? If you have one physical drive that's partitioned, then a bad disk failure will take out both.
 
I take an image of my C: drive periodically that is backed up to my NAS.
All my photos, music, films, tv and documents live in onedrive, that is running on both my pc and NAS, this ensures I have 2 onsite copies.

I then use robocopy to copy the onedrive folder to an external HDD
 
David my C drive is my SSD and I use it purely for programs.

My F drive is the main one where I store all my photos and everything else, that is partitioned but it does need a good clean up! I I have my Lightroom catalogue on my F drive, purely to save space on my C drive, but I am considering (eventually) investing in another SSD just for my photography as it seems to be taking over everything else!

Synctoy seems to be all ok again now, but I am left not trusting it so I will be researching other means of backup! My new portable 1TB HDD has arrived today so I can get things copied onto that and kept off site. Although my husband doesn't see the necessity, he thinks that's what the NAS is for!
 
AllWay sync is worth a look at for your F drive. It's not free, but it's cheap, and works reliably.
 
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