Backing up image files - what is the best method?

gmoochie

Newbie Joined: Jan 14, 2021 22:18 Messages: 11 Offline

Solved by

Jan 24, 2021 13:24

I have my main Photos folder on Drive D containing about 7000 images.

What is the best way to occasionally back up all those images to a separate drive - in my case, the F drive?

Can this easily be done in bulk with the Photo Director app? Or only by selecting some number of pictures and "save to?"

I have a backup app (Backupper) that saves entire folders (my entire folder of 7,000 images) at one go. But the backed up folder on my F drive appears to be proprietary. It does not contain files accessible via any other program, including Photo Director.

So what is the best way of backing up either our current work or an entire folder of our photos?

Is there a way to save to two places at once, into our regular folder, e.g. on my D drive, AND at the same time to my chosen backup drive F?

PIX

Senior Contributor Joined: Sep 21, 2011 00:02 Messages: 2910 Offline

Jan 24, 2021 15:50

Hello Jerry (it is Jerry, isn't it?)

I wouldn't say my method is "the best", but it works well enough for my purposes. I'd suggest there'd be any number of different approaches to backing up media.

Depending on my level of activity with photo & video editing, I back up all my photos, videos & "works in progress" (projects & asset folders) to both an internal drive (F) and an external 6TB drive. Timing varies between weekly & monthly, but at least monthly.

I don't use any apps, beyond Windows (simple transfer of folder structure on my PC), so my method is likely to be somewhat flawed.

Other members may be able to offer more fool-proof methods.

PhD has the ability to Export projects to a location of your choosing (if that suits your purposes) or to Back up the current projects monthly, weekly daily or each time you use PhD. Personally, I wouldn't bother with bulk exports of photos via PhD (or any other software) when I can simply transfer (copy/paste) files to a separate drive via Windows.

PIX PIX YouTube channel

optodata

Senior Contributor Location: California, USA Joined: Sep 16, 2011 16:04 Messages: 8630 Offline

Jan 24, 2021 19:10

I agree that there's no "one-size-fits-all" approach.

I use OneDrive because I get 1TB of storage with my Microsoft 365 (formerly known as Office) subscription. All photos are automaitcally backed up and PhD's project files are set to the Documents folder by default, which means they're also backed up continuously.

Since OneDrive saves version information for every synced file, I've been able to recover .phd files that became corrupted when a new version came out by restoring the last version prior to the upgrade, then starting PhD again.