[Leica] OT: Technical Question on Backup External Hard Drives

[henningw at archiphoto.com (Henning Wulff)]

Retrospect writes files in a proprietary format for incremental 
backup, and in that mode does not delete previously archived files. 
It can also make mirror image backups that will delete files in the 
backup that aren't in the original any more.

With iPhoto, you can make a photo library on an external drive your 
main library.


1. Quit iPhoto
2. copy your iPhoto Library folder to your external drive
3. rename your original iPhoto Library folder 'old iPhoto Library'
4. when you start iPhoto again, it will complain that it can't find 
your library, and will prompt you to find it. Direct it to the 
library on your external drive.

also,
Look under 'switching between photo libraries' in the help in iPhoto.

The problem with iPhoto is that it makes duplicates of stuff at the 
drop of a hat (or byte) and leaves little thumbnails and other bits 
of files all over the hard drive. Fairly inefficient in that regard, 
and that is also part of what makes it sluggish with larger numbers 
of images. Better to use something like iView MediaPro or Extensis 
Portfolio. I used to use Portfolio, but switched to iView a number of 
versions ago, and prefer it. It will allow you to keep a catalog on 
your main drive, and let you know what external drive it needs to 
access the full files so you can switch it on if it isn't on-line. I 
have some 250Gb drives on-line for my images and primary backups, and 
occasionally attach additional drives for off-line backup purposes. 
iView and probably Portfolio as well will allow you to have 128K 
files per catalog.

On the Mac, at present I use DejaVu for backup purposes (mirror image 
only). It seems to be a lot less finicky than Retrospect at present. 
Retrospect has lots of options and also an incredible number of 
dialog boxes and forgets it's schedule at times and its scripts seem 
to get corrupted. I used it for years, but gave up on it about 3 
years ago. DejaVu lets you continue to work while it's backing up, 
while Retrospect and some other programs whine and complain a lot if 
you try this. It's also inexpensive.



>I'm not sure that Retrospect does what Rob wants. Rob is asking for
>something
>that can archive data onto his external hard disc. (maybe not a good
>idea but
>that's what I take it he wants to do)
>
>Retrospect probably can be used to archive data but I didn't get a sense
>it's
>"automatic" Most likely the user needs to keep track of backup sets that
>represent archives and make sure they don't get overwritten or deleted.
>
>If I'm wrong then that's great and Retrospect gets a kudo from me.
>
>Philippe Orlent wrote:
>
>>  Buy Dantz Retrospect:
>>
>>  http://www.dantz.com/en/products/index.dtml
>>
>>  > From: Rob McClure <rmcclure2@woh.rr.com>
>>  > Reply-To: Leica Users Group <lug@leica-users.org>
>>  > Date: Tue, 5 Jul 2005 19:29:34 -0400
>>  > To: Leica Users Group <lug@leica-users.org>
>>  > Subject: Re: [Leica] OT:  Technical Question on Backup External 
>>Hard Drives
>>  >
>>  >
>>  > Hello,
>>  >
>>  > Here's a question for your computer techies out there.  I recently
>>  > acquired a large-capacity Seagate external hard drive and back up my
>>  > entire Mac iBook G4 hard drive every few days.  However, the hard drive
>>  > on the Mac is over half full and is really sluggish when using iPhoto
>>  > (more than 4,000 images).  I'd like to delete the albums on iPhoto and
>>  > keep my entire collection on the Seagate.  I can't figure out how to do
>>  > this as I'm afraid that the external drive will mirror my deletion of
>>  > the internal Mac drive the next time I do a back up.  The,
>>  > instructions which came with the Seagate were totally inadequate in
>>  > this regard.  Thanks!
>>  >
>>  > Regards,
>>  >
>>  > Rob McClure
>
>
>_______________________________________________
>Leica Users Group.
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    *            Henning J. Wulff
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