Saving raw images to hard drives.

[limey]

What is the easiest way to save raw images from P/Mechanic to two back up hard drives at the same time?  ( or one after the other)

[Kirk Baker]

What is the easiest way to save raw images from P/Mechanic to two back up hard drives at the same time?  ( or one after the other)

During Ingest or at some other time?

-Kirk

[limey]

After I have ingested and deleted the rejects.

[Kirk Baker]

After I have ingested and deleted the rejects.

Use the Copy command (twice), or use Ingest, but choose the Folders option.  Set the Primary destination to your first HD and the Secondary destination to the second HD.

HTH,

-Kirk

[Hayo Baan]

The problem with this manual approach is that if later on you edit your images your backups are out of sync. If this is not a problem, the manual approach is fine, otherwise it would be a good idea to work on some more automated backup approach. If you're on a mac you already have time machine which is a good option for your first backup. For the second backup you could also use timemachine but that would involve switching your timemachine backup destination each time. Perhaps a small script using eg rsync is a better solution in this case (it's how I do it)

Cheers,
    Hayo

[Woodie]

The problem with this manual approach is that if later on you edit your images your backups are out of sync. If this is not a problem, the manual approach is fine, otherwise it would be a good idea to work on some more automated backup approach. If you're on a mac you already have time machine which is a good option for your first backup. For the second backup you could also use timemachine but that would involve switching your timemachine backup destination each time. Perhaps a small script using eg rsync is a better solution in this case (it's how I do it)

Cheers,
    Hayo

I work on a Windows system and use SyncBack to keep files on the main computer, an external drive, and a NAS in sync.  There is a free version as well as a paid version available.  This is one of the apps that I have set to run automatically overnight so the backups are out of sync until 2:00 am but that's not critical for me.

[limey]

Hello everyone thanks for replying. Kirk I tried to do it as you suggested using Primary and secondary folders but when I hit the ingest button I get a drop down panel that says "NO source folders selected. Please select one or more folders from which to copy photos"   And to add to the confusion I went to download images from a card and I got the same drop down panel and message. This is the first time I have seen this panel and the first time I have had problems downloading images.
Any suggestions?   

[Luiz Muzzi]

The problem with this manual approach is that if later on you edit your images your backups are out of sync. If this is not a problem, the manual approach is fine, otherwise it would be a good idea to work on some more automated backup approach. If you're on a mac you already have time machine which is a good option for your first backup. For the second backup you could also use timemachine but that would involve switching your timemachine backup destination each time. Perhaps a small script using eg rsync is a better solution in this case (it's how I do it)

Cheers,
    Hayo

Hi, Hayo
I also use two backup drives and I change backup destination each time.
I would like to do the same as you do, but I don't know how.
Could you please tell me what the script would be like and how to run it?
TIA

-Luiz Muzzi

[Kirk Baker]

Hello everyone thanks for replying. Kirk I tried to do it as you suggested using Primary and secondary folders but when I hit the ingest button I get a drop down panel that says "NO source folders selected. Please select one or more folders from which to copy photos"   And to add to the confusion I went to download images from a card and I got the same drop down panel and message. This is the first time I have seen this panel and the first time I have had problems downloading images.
Any suggestions?   

You need to add folders to the list box in the upper left corner of the Ingest dialog.

-Kirk

[Hayo Baan]

Hi, Hayo
I also use two backup drives and I change backup destination each time.
I would like to do the same as you do, but I don't know how.
Could you please tell me what the script would be like and how to run it?

Hi Luiz,

I'm assuming you're on a Mac and know a little bit about the terminal here, but if you just like to keep a second backup completely in sync with the latest state of your data, rsync can be used in a straightforward way from the terminal like so:

rsync <options> <source…> <destination>

Note: Do not put a trailing slash at the end of your source directories or rsync will put the content into destination, not including the directory itself (unless you want that of course).

There are tons of options to rsync, but the ones you will probably want to use are:
-a this sets a lot of options automatically and basically takes care of copying the files as they are (permissions etc.)
-v show progress (i.e., each file that is copied)
--delete this deletes files no longer found
-n is a very handy option to test if you've set everything up correctly; it will run rsync like normal but no files are actually copied/deleted.

I also add --delete-excluded --exclude='.DS_Store' as I don't care about the .DS_Store files on my backup.

So you rsync command-line will look something like:
rsync -av --delete --delete-excluded --exclude='.DS_Store' /Users/luiz/Photos /Volumes/SecondBackup/BackupDir

If your backup drive is actually a shared drive on another Mac or on a NAS that is rsync capable, replace /Volumes/SecondBackup with <USERNAME>@<HOST>:/BackupDir
rsync will now copy over only the bits of file that really changed, dramatically speeding up the process   

After you've tested your script, save it into a script file you can then run from the terminal whenever you want.
You could even automatically run it every once in a while, but that's more advanced stuff.

Hope this helps,
    Hayo

[Luiz Muzzi]

Hayo,
Thanks for your complete and helpful reply.
I will try it as soon as possible. (I generally use muCommander to do this, but I think your script will be easier and faster - after I save it, I mean).
Regards,

-Luiz Muzzi

[Hayo Baan]

Hi Luiz,

If you need any further help, just give me a shout

Cheers,
     Hayo

[Luiz Muzzi]

Hi Luiz,

If you need any further help, just give me a shout

Cheers,
     Hayo

Hi, Hayo,
I managed to use the script and it was really much faster and easier...
I couldn't save it as a script file, though (I don't know what I did wrong). Finally I saved the command as a txt just not to forget it 
Best regards,

-Luiz Muzzi

[Hayo Baan]

Hi, Hayo,
I managed to use the script and it was really much faster and easier...

Great to hear it worked!

I couldn't save it as a script file, though (I don't know what I did wrong). Finally I saved the command as a txt just not to forget it 

The script should be a plain text file so if that's the format you saved it under, you're actually nearly done as you can then already execute it using the slightly awkward syntax of
$ . yourscriptfile
(that is a period followed by the name of the script, including its path)

If you want to make it easier to yourself, make the script a proper executable using chmod +x yourscriptfile, you can then execute it by typing the fully qualified name of the script (i.e., including the path). If you don't like to type the full path to the file each time, move it into a directory on the PATH, or make an alias for it that is loaded each time the shell starts. How to do all that is going a bit far for here I think though

Cheers,
    Hayo

[Luiz Muzzi]

Hi, Hayo,
Thanks a lot for your help.
I managed to replicate your first idea after a small amount of trouble as the command was not after all saved as a plain text file, although it looked like one - Text Edit does not do it. I had to download and use another text editor (TextWrangler) to save it as a txt.
Now it is working pretty fine.
Best regards,

-Luiz Muzzi