Scott Kelby just posted his backup strategy, and I thought I would follow up with mine.

The thing that is really interresting about Scott and my solutions, is that there are a lot of similarities. But mine cost a lot less.

His first step is to save on location to an Epson P-500 (link). That would be cool. I have looked at those wistfully before. I don’t have anything comparable. I don’t travel as much as he does, so I just have to put in my empty card and go from there.

I do have a laptop and a small backup drive (just one) that I can use pretty much as he did to get the images off the cards. Most of the time I go straight to my main computer though.

On the main computer, I use Aperture to import my picures. But I don’t store them in my Library, I store them on a location on my hard drive by year, by reference in the Library. This means I know exactly where the pictures are, and I can use other tools to back them up.

First, I am also useing Time Machine. I use this to backup everything on this computer, and have a seperate drive (also stores my video collecion) that I use Apertures Vaults system to backup the Library.

I also have a backup system. Mine is not a Drobo (link). Mine is a older networked compter that lives under the stairs running Ubuntu that has a couple of drives in a RAID 1 mirrored configuration. I run a script from the command line to rsync the photos. This coppies only the new photos.

rsync –exclude=”.*” -ave ssh /Users/xxxx/Pictures/Aperture\ Masters/ xxxx@xx.xx.xx.xx:/media/pictures

I need to get that command into something automated, because I can go several days without doing a backup.

Ok, so now I have the pictures on a NAS, which means they are backed up, and, they are available on any machine I have via NFS and Samba. (Mac, Windows, Linux)

I also wanted to get some offsite storage. I thought about using an online backup site, but they are slow to get images up there, and I have less control. What was cheaper, was to buy two identical external hard drives, and use a system of rsync and physically rotating the drives to my work location. When I do the rotation, once a week when I remember, I do the rsync, then bring the drive from home to work, then bring the work one home.

This is the command I use with the drive, mounted at /mnt/freeAgent, plugged into my NAS:

rsync –exclude=”.*” –modify-window=2 -avh /mnt/pictures /mnt/freeAgent

At one time I could have my pictures on my Mac, my Time Machine backup, my raided NAS, and my two backup drives. 6 drives. A little redundant, if I follow my procedure.