I am having some trouble with SuperDuper!. It is saying that it “failed to enable ownership” for one of my hard drives.

What can I do?

Thank you.

AT

This works OK for me. As any backup professional can tell you (e.g. DBump, above) crafting a really comprehensive backup plan that covers a wide variety of scenarios is a non-trivial problem and any solution will radically increase your storage overhead (the one I describe above basically triples my storage requirement). Any strategy is a tradeoff of cost, complexity, and coverage. Above all, the strategy has to be simple enough (in practice) that you actually use it!

I’m also buying carbonite online backup in case the house burns down..

The problem is when my 200GB internal drive is full.
How do I securely backup the internal drive _AND_ external drive?

Maybe my only option is to buy a 500GB internal an leave everyting on there?
(+online backup)

I convert my RAW files to DNGs upon import and have the “Automatically write changes into XMP”, but am still confused about if this setting writes instantaneously.

Martin Evening’s book (pg 176) says, “Checking this option will ensure that all the files in the Lightroom catalog will eventually get updated. However, if you want to be sure that a file’s XMP space gets updated right away…then you can use the Metadata>Save Metadata to Files command.” Martin recommends using the Ctrl/Cmd S function.

In regards to a PC back-up I find HP’s MediaSmart Home Server to be fantastic! It’s networked to my desktop and two laptops. Not only are all 3 computers completely backed-up every night (in case of complete failure), it also acts as my main/central archival storage for all my photos. I have them marked for “Folder Duplication” on the HP Home Server so that the photos are placed on two separate drives in case one fails (you can use up to 9 drives in total – 4 internal bays & 5 external ports).

I use the free Microsoft SyncToy software to back up my personal and current year’s business photos on a 1TB external drive and then store it at work. Except for the external drive EVERYTHING is automated and hassle free.

I keep my photos and catalogue on a portable hard disk which is always up to date as I have the SyncToy copy all changes to photos and catalogue to the desktop hard drive and vice versa in the opposite direction back to the portable disk which makes it always ready to go with the laptop. I let Lightroom leave the backup catalogue on the hard disk of the machine in use. Just in case. Once you get your head around this it’s worth it if you’re running two units.

I also use Sidecars like David Terry but I don’t know if this handles the two computer scenario easily.

SyncToy is also handy for other uses and is worth a try. Mac might have something that mirrors this program. Don’t know.

But the catalog itself … I simply don’t worry about it.

When I import images, I have LR automatically create the sidecar files (.XMP) at the same time. Any changes I make are stored in the sidecars. If my catalog gets blown away (and I used to have to do that regularly before LR 2.0 came out), that’s okay, I just reimport the images into a new catalog and viola’ all of my metadata is still there!

My backup strategy? I backup the images! And since the images and the sidecars are in the same folder, they get backed up at the same time and to the same place and are easily restored all at once without having to figure out “which catalog goes with which images”.

I totally dislike the idea of the catalog being a separate entity and the confusion that can arise from them being in separate locations, separate backups, separate time schedules (i.e. potentially out of sync).

Sidecars rule for me.

I’m trying to figure out what hardware to use to backup a new Mac Pro, and taking an interest in what ZFS could do for RAID like arrays (reliability) as well as external backups… also considering Amazon S3.

mike meyer