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Old 11-24-2017, 02:41 PM
 
Location: Mendocino, CA
858 posts, read 949,846 times
Reputation: 573

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My photo harddrive has 20 years worth of pictures and videos and PowerDirector project files. It is a total of 6 TB.

I have a main harddrive, and a backup harddrive. The backup was made two years ago and was an exact clone of the main harddrive. Over the past two years I have added new stuff, and has gone into different old folders to make changes or create projects; there are updates here and there that I cannot fully account for.

I would like to back up those changes and addition now. The recent addition I suppose I can just copy the whole year's files. What is the best way to deal with those sporadic updates?
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Old 11-25-2017, 11:59 AM
 
Location: Cleveland, Ohio
16,464 posts, read 19,490,320 times
Reputation: 13172
YOU MIGHT WANT TO TRY CLONING.

https://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2421302,00.asp

For backup to drive software, this is one of the best:

ASCOMP: Windows Software for Backup, Synchronization & Cleaning / PC Optimization
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Old 11-26-2017, 11:45 AM
 
14,394 posts, read 11,105,371 times
Reputation: 14163
Depending on how valuable those files are to you, I would add another backup to that backup, and ideally store it somewhere else. Update that one on a periodic basis, and as Peregrine said, look at cloning for the regular backup drive.
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Old 11-26-2017, 12:20 PM
 
Location: SE corner of the Ozark Redoubt
8,620 posts, read 4,449,955 times
Reputation: 9021
Quote:
Originally Posted by markjames68 View Post
Depending on how valuable those files are to you, I would add another backup to that backup, and ideally store it somewhere else. Update that one on a periodic basis, and as Peregrine said, look at cloning for the regular backup drive.
As a slight variant of that, the OP has drives "A" and "B."
Acquire drive "C," a remote location "1"

Move Drive B to remote location 1.
Clone Drive A to drive C.

Move drive C to remote location 1,
bring back drive B and clone A to drive B.

This will give you two clones of drive A,
one of them in a remote location. From time
to time, switch the two clones and re-clone.
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Old 11-26-2017, 05:52 PM
 
14,394 posts, read 11,105,371 times
Reputation: 14163
Quote:
Originally Posted by TRex2 View Post
As a slight variant of that, the OP has drives "A" and "B."
Acquire drive "C," a remote location "1"

Move Drive B to remote location 1.
Clone Drive A to drive C.

Move drive C to remote location 1,
bring back drive B and clone A to drive B.

This will give you two clones of drive A,
one of them in a remote location. From time
to time, switch the two clones and re-clone.
defintely an option, but I’d worry about physically moving HDDs around too much.

I have a primary NAS, which backs up via rsync to a lower-end, backup NAS. It also backs up to an even older NAS on a periodic basis, and from that one I back up to my Google Drive account (encrypted, in chunks with random file names). The older one sits on another site. Overkill, but works for me.
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Old 11-26-2017, 06:07 PM
 
Location: SE corner of the Ozark Redoubt
8,620 posts, read 4,449,955 times
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Quote:
I back up to my Google Drive account (encrypted, in chunks with random file names).
Good idea, but beyond the tech skills of the average poster here.
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Old 11-26-2017, 06:41 PM
 
14,394 posts, read 11,105,371 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by TRex2 View Post
Good idea, but beyond the tech skills of the average poster here.
Hence the “overkill” comment.

BTW, look up Stablebit Cloud Drive. That’s what I use for it...also Stablebit Scanner and DrivePool. The last is amazing for aggregating odd drives into a single target, with duplication, etc. Can’t recommend it more highly - found it when I was looking for a Windows storage spaces replacement when WHS 2011 came out.
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Old 11-26-2017, 06:52 PM
 
Location: SE corner of the Ozark Redoubt
8,620 posts, read 4,449,955 times
Reputation: 9021
Quote:
Originally Posted by markjames68 View Post
Hence the “overkill” comment.

BTW, look up Stablebit Cloud Drive. That’s what I use for it...also Stablebit Scanner and DrivePool. The last is amazing for aggregating odd drives into a single target, with duplication, etc. Can’t recommend it more highly - found it when I was looking for a Windows storage spaces replacement when WHS 2011 came out.
Not quite my cup of tea.
I am more of a Karen's Replicator kind of guy
Mucho Simplicity.
(I am a bit of a crypto guy, though)
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Old 11-27-2017, 07:50 AM
 
Location: Florida & Cebu, Philippines
2,805 posts, read 3,236,897 times
Reputation: 2910
To backup my photos and data to an external drive,
I plug in the external drive and open it,
I open my photos and documents,
I then highlight the items I wish to copy by holding down the control key and click on the photos or folders I want to copy, then when done I right click and click on copy, then I right click in the external drive box and click paste, pretty simple.

If a person wishes to move them, then click cut instead of copy or just drag them over.
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Old 11-30-2017, 01:25 PM
 
Location: McAllen, TX
5,947 posts, read 5,400,688 times
Reputation: 6741
If it's really valuable I usually do 2 backups to 2 locations but if it's 6tb that makes it more difficult.

You can do a full image backup to start with and then do subsequent incremental or differential backups to pickup the changes. I would use Acronis True Image or Acronis Backup and Restore for this. When you do image backups it backs up entire partitions. If you keep your photos and videos on the system partition then they would be part of the backup as well as all of the other files. I would split up the OS and data into separate partitions.

You can also get a large external hard drive. I just bought an "8tb" WD drive for $179 at Best Buy. Inside of the unit you will find a WD Red drive which is known for it's reliability. You actually get 7.27tb out of it. Copy all of your valuable files to it and then use a program like FreeFileSync to synchronize any new files to it. You choose source and destination folders and it pretty much does the rest for you and best of all it's free. It iwll detect the new files and update or mirror the target for you. No need to do this manually. It's a great program.

You can never have too much redundancy in my opinion.
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