Backing up Photos on Macbook


SigmaInigma

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My fiance is a photographer. She works off a Macbook Pro. Currently she stores all of her data on her Macbook without any sort of backup, other than the photos she has on her SD cards. Being an IT person this scares me! She knows she needs to start backing up her photos, but hasn't found a good solution yet. I currently have an unRaid server running that I use for my Plex Server. Right now all I store on it is movies. I was wondering if my unRaid server could also be used to help her with a good backup solution for her needs.

 

Her Macbook storage is almost full. I think it would be best to have all her data stored on a network drive instead of being on the Macbook. Since the network drive would be her working drive and not only for backup, it would need to be fast enough to not slow down her workflow. I think unRaid should be able to handle this without an issue considering I have a pretty good local network. The problem is I don't know how to implement this backup in the most efficient and organized way. I'm not super familiar with how photos are organized on a Macbook. I know there is a Photos Library that can be backed up as one file, but I don't think she really keeps her photos in this library. She exports RAW files from her camera to the computer, which I don't think are stored in the Photo Library. She then used lightroom to edit the RAW files and export them to a JPEG. 

 

Should I just setup a share and connect it to her computer and have her store everything on that? Since I have a parity drive in my server she should be able to use that to work off of and also be confident that if the drive fails the parity drive will be able to reconstruct it. I also would like to implement cloud storage into the solution. I have unlimited Google Drive storage, so may as well use it for this I think. If I just install Google Drive on the Macbook though the files will be stored on the Macbook as well as in the cloud though. I don't want that. She doesn't have enough storage for all her photos to be on the Macbook. The key is I need to get all these photos off the local system and still be able to work with the files at a high speed, while also being backed up. 

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If the working copy is on the network instead of the local drive, that's NOT a backup. I think you need to address this a little differently, especially since you are so confident in a parity drive keeping your data safe. Unraid's ability to reconstruct a failed drive is NOT a backup. Data loss can happen from so many scenarios, drive failure is pretty low on the list.

 

In my opinion, she needs to keep working locally off of her macbook, periodically archiving off her less accessed files to a share on unraid, but also keep a FULL backup of all work to date on some other media, probably the most cost effective being an external drive that is updated every time there is significant work done. If you have a second unraid server that would work as well, or archive to the external drive and backup both the macbook and the archive drive to unraid.

 

Bottom line, at any point in time you should be able to access at least 2 different copies on different physical systems, preferably 3, of any given file. Recent stuff should stay local for the working copy for speed reasons.

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59 minutes ago, jonathanm said:

In my opinion, she needs to keep working locally off of her macbook, periodically archiving off her less accessed files to a share on unraid, but also keep a FULL backup of all work to date on some other media, probably the most cost effective being an external drive that is updated every time there is significant work done. If you have a second unraid server that would work as well, or archive to the external drive and backup both the macbook and the archive drive to unraid.

This is a general description of how it is handled in my house. Our "desktop" is a PC I built for my wife to use as a photoshop/lightroom workstation. All of its local storage is SSDs, with separate disks for OS and data. Nightly backups to unRAID, but all "working" files are retained on the workstation. Monthly backups from unRAID to externals for storage offsite for the important stuff, such as her photos.

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1 hour ago, trurl said:

This is a general description of how it is handled in my house. Our "desktop" is a PC I built for my wife to use as a photoshop/lightroom workstation. All of its local storage is SSDs, with separate disks for OS and data. Nightly backups to unRAID, but all "working" files are retained on the workstation. Monthly backups from unRAID to externals for storage offsite for the important stuff, such as her photos.

 

How do you manage what is working and archived? Is this process automated? Do you use software to move files to your NAS or do you just manually move older files there? Also for some reason I've had trouble getting AFP working on our Mac computers. You just connect to server and then type AFP://IPADDRESS/Share right? I usually get errors that I don't have access or the share doesn't exist even though I have it set to public. SMB seems to work better but still is a little wonky sometimes. 

Edited by SigmaInigma
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2 minutes ago, SigmaInigma said:

How do you manage what is working and archived? Is this process automated? Do you use software to move files to your NAS or do you just manually move older files there?

All files are already there due to nightly backup, and if old enough, on offsite backup also, so they can just be deleted from the local storage as needed by age, and restored from backup if needed again.

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1 minute ago, trurl said:

All files are already there due to nightly backup, and if old enough, on offsite backup also, so they can just be deleted from the local storage as needed by age, and restored from backup if needed again.

How is the nightly backup handled? Is that automated? If so, how is that working? Also, if you delete files locally, how do you ensure those files don't also get deleted on the NAS?

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1 minute ago, SigmaInigma said:

How is the nightly backup handled? Is that automated? If so, how is that working? Also, if you delete files locally, how do you ensure those files don't also get deleted on the NAS?

Probably a lot of different backup software would have the capabilities, but what I do is use DeltaCopy on the PC to rsync to unRAID on schedule, so yes automated. DeltaCopy stores everything in folders/files just like the originals, instead of an archive, and can be configured to not delete at the destination. Since the backup is just files, no software is required to get files from the backup. And my offsite disks are NTFS so those are easily readable also.

 

In addition to that, I also use Acronis for a monthly image of the complete PC.

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3 minutes ago, trurl said:

Probably a lot of different backup software would have the capabilities, but what I do is use DeltaCopy on the PC to rsync to unRAID on schedule, so yes automated. DeltaCopy stores everything in folders/files just like the originals, instead of an archive, and can be configured to not delete at the destination. Since the backup is just files, no software is required to get files from the backup. And my offsite disks are NTFS so those are easily readable also.

 

In addition to that, I also use Acronis for a monthly image of the complete PC.

Awesome, thanks for all the info

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1. I personally use Resilio Sync via the Dockers and it syncs files off my Desktop Mac and Mac Laptop to my unRAID machine

2. I then use RoboCopy and make (2) different copies to a Toaster style NAS on my network:

- Copy 1 is exactly Dupe of all files backed up from both Macs to unRAID which contains all changes via workflow, editing so forth and so on

- Copy 2 is more or less a dump that will not over write anything. I like to call it my OH !@#$ Folder so I can at least retrieve files and not worry about things being deleted or edited

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