Backup ideas for pictures

I have never been very good about backing up my data but I have started to get into photography and have been thinking about setting up a way to back up the pictures.

I would like to import my pictures onto my main drive, have them copied onto another drive on the same computer, then uploaded onto my QNAP nas maybe once a week. I would feel fairly comfortable with a setup like this since I have never had to deal with hard drive failures.*knock on wood*

It seems like there should be a software solution for this, but I am not too familiar with backup programs. Ideally, I would like to be able to choose folders on my main drive that I would like to be backed up. I am not too concerned about backing up the OS and the installed programs.

Is there a downside backing up data in this way that I am overlooking? Or is there a simpler way to do this?

tia

Look at crashplan and a simple NAS. This gets you local backup as well as cloud backup for pretty low cost. Once you get into many many TB's of phoot's...may have to look at other options. Doesn't get much easier or brain dead. Fairly low cost for cloud backup.

http://www.crashplan.com/consumer/store.vtl#single-plan

That is surprisingly cheap, but I was looking to do local backup since I already have the hardware.

Take a look at applications like:
Acronis
HandyBackup
SyncToy
NovaBACKUP (disclaimer I work for NovaStor maker of NovaBACKUP)

Photo's are static. You load new ones, but the old ones never change. Synch tools are probably the best bet for this given the plan you have.

Free but simple: SyncToy from MS. You'll have to do the scheduling manually using task scheduler
Rock solid but not free: Goodsync. Scheduling support built in, includes "safe delete", etc. Costs something like $30.

Google either one. There are more...probably others will chime in with their favorites.

Thanks for the suggestions. I had no idea that MS had such software and it was pretty much what I was looking for.

You might also consider getting in the habit of burning each set to DVD/CD/Blu-Ray as you create them, in addition to whatever backup solution you use (unedited, and all that).

So you have all of the data on a drive and you want to copy it to a different drive once a week? Just set up a robocopy script to do it for you. It's stupid easy. If you need an example just say the word. You ca also make a terracopy script that will verify the copied data. No need to pay for this at all. Jeez. Robocopy sounds like the best tool you could think about right now..

here's what i did /do to back-up my photos (currently at about 1TB)

OLD
Into my desktop I installed two 1TB hard drives (1TB was the largest drive at the time)
One hard drive was my "working drive"
I then used syncback to manually mirror the working drive to a second drive
I would run syncback after making any significant changes to the files stored on the working drive

NOW
I now have a WHS, the back-up is now a folder within the WHS
Duplication is enabled for the target folder
Again, the mirroring process is performed with syncback

Other folders about which I am not so bothered (mainly archive stuff from old commissions) are held on a RAID6 array within the WHS. Files are copied to the RAID6 array manually

Photos are one of the things for which I have protected temporary storage and they go into my "permanent" archives.

I have an "incoming" directory on my local system in which I perform my sorting and other workflow. This directory structure is copied to a server on my LAN (which is running anyways). I do the copy via synctoy. The server is running disk mirroring and has nightly backup cycles to tape.

When I'm "done" with my workflow the directory is copied into my archive structure. This used to be multiple burns to optical media - one copy on Taiyo Yuden YUDENT03, and another on Verbatim gold archival MGC020s. One copy goes into my home firebox and the other to the bank in a safety deposit box.

My new archival scheme is based around 2.5" disks in Ineo I-NA205Ue chassis units. My main workstation now has an Archive directory structure which contains everything for the archives. I have two Ineo units with 500GB drives in them. I have a robocopy script which is set up to copy from the archive staging area onto the external disk. One archive disk lives in my home firebox and one goes to the bank. When I have new archive material I retrieve from the box, sync, drive to bank, exchange Ineos, return home, sync, return other unit to the fire box.

My new plan is working OK so far, leaving me an online copy of my archives, one in a firebox and one offsite. One problem I do have with the system is that I have been unable to make the archive staging area read only as a whole. I would like to have the staging area "locked" unless I'm making updates so that there are no accidental changes, no touching of file dates (so robocopy copies more), no thumbnails updated etc... I do not wish to recursively set and unset "read only" flags on the entire archive directory tree. I haven't been able to come up with anything that doesn't involve the use of Truecrypt or something for the Archive staging area so that I can mount it read only. A post here in the OS area yielded no responses.

My favorite is SyncBack. Simple and effective.

I will give another vote for Crashplan. One because it can do all all your local backups for free. You can set multiple backup destinations and even have different backup sets for different destinations. You can add on the online backup whenever you like but you don't have to. The nice thing is that if you do, you have a single piece of software that does all yours backups, both local and online.

PS- add to the above the unique ability of crashplan to do offsite backups to friends and family computers for no extra cost. A pretty neat feature.

EDIT: Forgot...with the free home version of Crashplan you can't backup to a network storage location. You need Crashplan Pro for that. Rather than pay for that you could instead a separate piece of software just for the push to network location.

Vote for Syncback + Filezilla Server. Used both the pro and free version, simple to set up, reliable, can do push or pull backups.

+1 for Crashplan. Works great, software is great. I have a little over 200GB backed up with them now.

You can buy a few years worth to get a cheaper per month cost, and if you decide to ever leave them they'll rebate you for time not used too.