Today’s Question: What program do you use to back up your photos? I keep my main photo folder on an external hard drive and would like to back up to a second hard drive.
Tim’s Quick Answer: I use a product called GoodSync to backup my photos. This software provides a synchronization approach to backing up your files, and is available for both Macintosh and Windows platforms. You can get more info at http://www.goodsync.com.
More Detail: I outlined my preference for a synchronization backup solution in the September 2014 issue of Pixology magazine (http://www.pixologymag.com). In short, my primary aim is to have a backup copy that is an exact copy of the original files. In other words, I don’t want to go through a “restore” process if I experience a hard drive failure, but rather want my backup to be a direct replacement for the failed drive.
With a synchronization backup, you are creating an exact copy of the source data structure. That means that after your initial backup the software only needs to update files that have changed since the last backup. In other words, each backup will take a relatively short amount of time, all things considered.
There are, of course, other backup solutions available, including other software that enables a synchronization approach to backup. However, I’ve found that GoodSync provides the features I need, and is relatively easy to configure. I’ll also have a video course on the use of GoodSync available soon in the GreyLearning video training library (http://www.greylearning.com).