Backup Processes

Backup Processes

Laptop Backups are kept up by using TimeMachine with an external drive. The TimeMachine is configured to backup everything except for Photos, Music and Movies. By doing so the backup takes far less time and the backups are more reliable.

Backing up Photos, Music and Movies is done through a cloud backup solution and external drives. Processed images are uploaded into Google Photos for unlimited free storage - if you choose the compressed option which I am fine with since my high res images are in Lightroom.

Specifically focusing on Photos - what I do is use Lightroom to manage images across my internal laptop drive [for images within about a year] and an external drive - for many years worth of images. I use an additional external drive to backup the internal and external drive - so - there are two copies of each image - and - the cloud-based backup backs both copies up.

I configure a cloud-based backup solution from BackBlaze - which is $50/ year for unlimited backups - to backup all of my Photos, Music and Movies across all of the drives that I have [laptop 1TB drive, one external at 1TB and one external at 2TB].

Essentially: Laptop drive + External Drive 1 ==> External Drive 2 AND all of that goes into the cloud using the Backblaze backup service.

To copy files from External Drive 1 to External Drive 2 I use Carbon Copy which is installed on my laptop and is highly reliable. I set up Carbon Copy to copy sections of photos rather than the entire drive - just because my image library is so large and I want it to be in manageable chunks. I set up Carbon Copy to begin copying the files at least once a day when I plug in the external drives.

Every time your laptop is connected to WiFi BackBlaze will backup the files to the cloud - this is automatic.

BackBlaze was selected after an extensive search after I had to move on from Carbonite. Carbonite is fine for smaller backups but at some point they began to throttle back my ability to backup files after I had several hundred thousand. BackBlaze is by far the best backup I have found. It truly is hands-free. I check it once in awhile "just to make sure" but it is so stable it "just works". I am impressed by their communications out to their customers. Not surprisingly the team was a spinoff from Apple. Might be why it "just works" and that it works great on the Application platform.

If you have a few files to restore you can do that online. I have had to do an entire hard drive restore and they send you out a drive - for free [with a deposit] - to restore your files from. Once your files are restored you can keep the drive - pay for it - or send it back.