Backing up quandary - also imaging a drive

[Jim A]

Up to the present, I have backed up on two separate external drives, however, my worry is that I could well conceivably spent a couple of hours editing an image in the interim, then lose all that work because my hard drive has crashed. I use Windows and have an SSD drive for my operating system and programs. Have a separate hard drive for my 34,000+ images. Have recently additionally bought an Seagate 4T external drive. Want to have differential backups, each day to save changes and additions. The problem I have, is that frequently I go into my archive and delete images, which can be a painstaking process, but the obvious backup programs, such as Microsoft MyHistory, plus Macrium Reflect, do not delete images that I have deleted on my hard drive. I am very particular in deleting, so do NOT, in any way, want a restore of images that I had already deleted.

Are you aware of a program that will do what I want to achieve please? This should preferably be free, but alternatively, if I have to pay a reasonable amount to get there, then I would certainly pay.

[Tronhard]

Hi Jim:

I would suggest that you save your work frequently as you work on any application, so if that application fails you will have at least the last saved copy.

When I was doing support back in the early days of Windows, I got a call from someone who had been writing a thesis and had worked through the night, apparently for over 12 hours. Their system crashed and lost everything, as they had not saved the file at any time and we could not get the file back.

So I always make a point of doing a File Save As (filename)+A, B, C etc. as I progress. Not only does that avoid the misery of a program or system crash, but I allows me to go back and retrieve a previous level of edits. I KNOW some programs will allow that within, but not all. The main thing is it protects you from an application or OS failure.

Thus if you complete a file edit project, you can go back and delete earlier versions, and if necessary, rename the file back to whatever you want at that point. Then you can use whatever back-up program you want.

As for an imaging/backup system that will not give you back deleted files, all the ones I know of will look for an existing file, compare the date and time if necessary and, if they don't find an entry that newer the file will be backed up. Logically the idea is to delete the files you don't want before the backup process, but I'm sure you know that already.

I hope this helps.

[ST1]

Hi Jim, this is my suggestion (see link below), I use it as it fits with my backup arrangements. I did purchase a solution that I thought would be better than that that I suggest below, from a company (Esus backup or something like that) But their software didn’t do what I wanted and their customer service wasn’t helpful.

With my suggestion you can run a “Compare” against the drive you delete files from and your backup drive/s to identify which files need to be removed from the backup drives. The software has the ability to run backup as tasks using the Windows task manager. I do mine manually but have tried the task feature.

As we I suspect confined to barracks I suggest you read up on the capabilities of the software I’ve suggested to see if it will fit your requirements/workflow.

https://freefilesync.org/

BTW did I mention it is free (some say you could describe a Yorkshire person as having short arms and long pockets )But there’s a donation edition too. IHTH


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[DanK]

Jim,

It seems to me that you have two different issues in your post: making sure that the work you are doing is saved/backed up frequently, and having access to a backup that mirrors your intentional file deletions.

Re the second: I have the same concern, and that is one of several reasons why my primary "backup" isn't a backup at all, but a mirror of the drive that includes my photographs. I create this, as Peter does, with a synchronization program. Quite apart from the issue of deletions, I find a synced drive to be much easier to use to correct my own errors.

There are many syncing programs. There used to be a crude sync tool, called sync toy or some such, that you could download from Microsoft. I don't know if it is still there. Powerful sync tools are included with some of the replacements for the Windows file manager. I have used one of those file managers, PowerDeskPro, for many years, and its sync tool does exactly what I want. It stores syncs, so I simply pull down the relevant one for my photos. It's set to duplicate the drive. However, there are other options, so I will often correct my mistakes by using "copy newer" or another option instead of "duplicate".

I sync to an external drive as soon as I upload photos, and again as soon as I have done an initial culling. Then I do it after each major editing session. Now that I am retired, I have to discipline myself to do this more often. Before I retired, I always did it at at least once a day, at the end of every workday, as that was how I synced the content of my office and home computers.

My second backup is a true backup, which is constantly running in the background, so it will include deleted files if I go back far enough. Since one backup should be offsite, I do this to the cloud. I currently use BackBlaze, which I think costs $50 or $50/year for unlimited backups.

If you rely on a sync, it's essential, IMHO, that the second backup be a true backup. Among other things, this protects you if you inadvertently delete something and notice it only after syncing. I have had to retrieve files from my true backup a few times for this reason--e.g., if I forgot to sync to one computer before using it and syncing from it. So it seems to me that a combination of a mirror and a real backup is the safest.