Need a system for back up drives

Any two external drives will do it. Copy the photos onto your desktop, plug the two drives in, copy to both drives, simples. :)

That's all I do, I run two drives here in parallel and I back those up to another drive where I work in Leeds in case the house blows up or something weird like that. :)
 
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PMN said:
Any two external drives will do it. Copy the photos onto your desktop, plug the two drives in, copy to both drives, simples. :)

That's all I do, I run two drives here in parallel and I back those up to another drive where I work in Leeds in case the house blows up or something weird like that. :)
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is there a way to get it to both automatically?
 
As you want a mac, within that you will have Time Machine included. This is an automatic back up system that works on your terms, either via cable or wifi.

After that, you have to choose what sort of system you want to back up to. Two RAID drives in one box, two boxes, one local box, one cloud 'box'. Then there's connectivity, wifi, USB, thunderbolt, or via a network.

You also need to decide if you want your working photo drive to be internal or external. With modern external drive speeds, budget dependant, the choice can go either way.
 
bcjames said:
As you want a mac, within that you will have Time Machine included. This is an automatic back up system that works on your terms, either via cable or wifi.

After that, you have to choose what sort of system you want to back up to. Two RAID drives in one box, two boxes, one local box, one cloud 'box'. Then there's connectivity, wifi, USB, thunderbolt, or via a network.

You also need to decide if you want your working photo drive to be internal or external. With modern external drive speeds, budget dependant, the choice can go either way.
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Thanks, that sounds incredibly expensive!
 
Well you're looking at maybe £50 for a basic mac-to-external back-up solution, up to a few hundred for a modest multi-drive external system. £120ish gets you a few tb of space that will back up automatically via wifi, no cables, but is a lot slower than USB3, so keep that in mind.

Off-site cloud back up varies depending on the space you need, but can be a very good back up to have.

Do you have a budget in mind for this set up? That's probably the biggest contributing factor!
 
Time machine will allow sequential back up to two drives. You select Drive One under Time Machine prefs as the TM backup drive. You then select Drive Two. TM asks if you want to use both drives. Answer yes and it will back up to Drive One first, then at the next automatic backup it will choose Drive Two.

OK it's not simultaneous, but as TM backs up once an hour by default, so you are not going to be far apart on the backups. Plus you can force TM to back up any time. So at the end of the working day you just tell TM to 'Back Up Now"twice and have both drives backed up identically

Simple enough with no complicated switching
 
Chappers said:
Time machine will allow sequential back up to two drives. You select Drive One under Time Machine prefs as the TM backup drive. You then select Drive Two. TM asks if you want to use both drives. Answer yes and it will back up to Drive One first, then at the next automatic backup it will choose Drive Two.

OK it's not simultaneous, but as TM backs up once an hour by default, so you are not going to be far apart on the backups. Plus you can force TM to back up any time. So at the end of the working day you just tell TM to 'Back Up Now"twice and have both drives backed up identically

Simple enough with no complicated switching
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Thank you! And that can be done with any drive?
 
Yes as far as I know. Only problem is that the MBP has only two USB ports (USB3) so if you need to use an port for other things you'll need a hub. Alternatively you could go Thunderbolt, as these can be daisy chained. But that's more money
 
Chappers said:
Yes as far as I know. Only problem is that the MBP has only two USB ports (USB3) so if you need to use an port for other things you'll need a hub. Alternatively you could go Thunderbolt, as these can be daisy chained. But that's more money
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Would probably go for a hub
 
Both Weston Digital and Seagate make nice compact systems within budget. We have used both in work with good results. You can get either one big one at the top end of the budget, or two smaller ones. They even do some nice mac looking ones to match the laptop too.
 
bcjames said:
Both Weston Digital and Seagate make nice compact systems within budget. We have used both in work with good results. You can get either one big one at the top end of the budget, or two smaller ones. They even do some nice mac looking ones to match the laptop too.
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Thanks
 
I have a mac and auto back up my photos and music to a synology DS212J which has 2 mirrored 1tb drives in it. All my digital files in 3 places at once. Really easy and lots of other benefits also.
 
jondc said:
I have a mac and auto back up my photos and music to a synology DS212J which has 2 mirrored 1tb drives in it. All my digital files in 3 places at once. Really easy and lots of other benefits also.
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Good idea
 
Being paranoid I also auto backup to time capsule and manual copy the photos onto a external hard drive. I learned the hard way!
 
jondc said:
Being paranoid I also auto backup to time capsule and manual copy the photos onto a external hard drive. I learned the hard way!
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If you learnt the hard way you are not paranoid :)
 
jondc said:
I have a mac and auto back up my photos and music to a synology DS212J which has 2 mirrored 1tb drives in it. All my digital files in 3 places at once. Really easy and lots of other benefits also.
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How does it recognize any new addition ( photo or music)?
 
I have the folders that store my music and photos syncronised using the cloud station app, if any folders/ files change the app syncs it with the nas. You chose the location of the folders to sync (max of 2 definable), all sub-folders are included. A third cloud station folder is created that auto syncs, I use this instead of my documents for other general stuff I want backed up.

I auto import onto my mac hard drive from the camera SD card, this auto updates to my nas, no manual input required. I do use static ip addressing on my router so the nas drive retains the same IP address.

You can also add other folders to the nas but these need manual input. This is where I keep all the videos that just fill up space, rather than keeping them on my hard drive.

Overall I am very pleased with how it all works. It can also be used as a iTunes server, containing playlists and audio for my iPad or iPhone to stream from, as these devices will not hold all my tunes.

Other functions include email or web servers, remote access and a load more but I generally keep it safe behind a firewall with just local access.
 
+1 for Synology DiskStation, 2 Hard drives with mirrored data and you can browse your pictures via app on phones or tablets. It will cost more than £100, in fact £150 plus hard drives...
 
7photo said:
+1 for Synology DiskStation, 2 Hard drives with mirrored data and you can browse your pictures via app on phones or tablets. It will cost more than £100, in fact £150 plus hard drives...
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Missed the £100 budget bit but not loosing many years of photos is worth investing in. If I could turn back time!
 
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