by Jeff Smith
Camera Bag columns in the June and July 2024 issues of Railfan & Railroad provided options for storing your digital photography and video files. If you use one of the strategies discussed, then you have to keep your primary and secondary storage locations in sync. This column will focus on the options for doing so and help you make the right choice for your situation.
You might assume that keeping identical copies of files on two devices is as simple as copying them from one device to the other. While that is conceptually true, there are some complications that make manual file copying operations risky. First, while selecting files and copying them between two locations, it is very easy to make a selection error or drop them in the wrong place. If you don’t realize it, you could accidentally lose files or cause yourself a lot of confusion in determining if files have been overwritten or not. Additionally, a network disruption could occur, causing the copy operation to be incomplete and there is no automatic verification that the source and destination are identical. A failed copy operation may be difficult to recognize without a time-consuming manual inspection. If you have a large number of files, these manual copying operations can be very time-consuming and error-prone.
Backup versus Sync
There is a difference between backup and sync. Backup will copy all files from a source to a target. This is what you want to use if you always make edits to one repository and only use the secondary repository in case the primary is damaged. A scenario where this applies is if you have a network attached storage (NAS) at home where you always access your files (whether home or away) and use the cloud solely to back up your files. In this situation, your NAS always has your most current files. Backup will look for added, deleted, or changed files on your primary repository and replicate them to the secondary repository.
Syncing will compare a source and target and copy new or changed files from the source to the target and from the target to the source. This is the operation you want to use if you edit, add, or delete files in both locations. For instance, if you have a NAS at home which functions as your primary repository but you make edits to a secondary repository (an external drive for instance) when traveling, then syncing is a way of ensuring these two drives have identical copies of the files, regardless of where you make edits to the files.
Software Tools
There are a variety of tools available to handle syncing or backup operations automatically. The type of devices you are using for your primary and secondary storage and how they interface with the network will determine your best option for managing backup or syncing operations. These fall into three categories: cloud backup software, sync/backup applications that run on your laptop, and sync/backup applications that run on your NAS. Let’s look at these in detail:
Cloud Backup Software: If you are using an external drive as your primary file storage location and the cloud as your secondary, then the computer backup software provided by your cloud vendor might be a good option. For instance, Backblaze has a computer backup package (Backblaze Computer Backup) with unlimited data for $99 a year and provides software for you to use. It will only back up your computer and any external drives that are connected. Network shares, such as those used with a NAS, cannot be included in the backup. Generally, the software is less flexible than those described below in that Backblaze determines the types of files it will back up, finds the files on your drives, and then uploads them in the background. It is the easiest backup to set up. However, it does require your computer to be powered on for the backup to run.
Sync Applications: This category consists of third-party applications that can be purchased for a nominal fee, such as GoodSync or Carbon Copy Cloner. These applications run on your computer and allow you to configure and manage syncing and/or backup operations and schedules. These will connect to a wide variety of storage technologies: cloud, NAS, local computer, and external drives. These applications will require your computer to be powered on while performing syncing or backup operations, which, for large repositories, can take a lot of time. When the jobs are kicked off, they will compare the source and target and then update as necessary based on your settings and whether you have set it up to sync or perform a backup.
NAS Applications: Most NAS devices come with applications that sync or back up files with other NAS devices, cloud storage accounts, and local computers. Since your NAS is nearly always on, these applications can run in real time or be scheduled. In either case, they don’t require your computer to be on.
Versioning
A brief word about versioning — all three categories of backup and sync software allow you to retain multiple versions of your files when backing up or syncing your repositories. I recommend that you turn on this feature and retain two or three versions back for a few months or even a year. This provides some additional options should you accidentally delete files in your primary repository, have a file that gets corrupted, or simply want to go back to a previous version. It has saved me many times in the past on various publishing projects!
How to Choose the Best Option
Some of the questions you need to ask are: How large is your file repository? How frequently do you add, delete, or edit files? Do you always add, delete, and edit files from the same place or do you do so in both your primary and secondary repository? Let’s look at a few common scenarios to help guide you:
NAS with Cloud Backup: In this scenario, I would recommend first looking to see if your NAS has an application for syncing with the cloud backup solution that you have selected. My Synology NAS has two applications, Hyper Backup and Cloud Sync, that are applicable and I use the Cloud Sync app to back up my repository to Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage. The major NAS manufacturers provide apps that sync with vendors such as Backblaze, AWS, Dropbox, Google, and others. The application is configured to automatically sync the folder containing my photography between the two locations in real time but it could be done on a regular schedule instead. I sync mine in real time because my NAS is always powered on and I have versioning turned on in case I need to revert or there is a corrupt file. I retain three versions per file for one year.
NAS with External Drive backup: Here, you have a few options. The first would be to use an application on your NAS that will allow syncing with a shared drive on your computer (an external drive). This functions the same way as discussed in the option above. The second option is to utilize a feature common to NAS hardware where you connect an external hard drive to a USB port on the NAS and the NAS is configured to automatically back up files to the external drive. This can be a scheduled operation to run on demand. The drive can then be disconnected and taken to an off-site location. On my Synology NAS, the USB Copy application performs this function. The last option is to establish a shared drive on your computer to your NAS and use GoodSync, Carbon Copy Cloner, or a similar application to sync files between the external hard drive attached to your computer and the NAS shared drive.
External Drive with Cloud Backup: This option requires you to use either the software provided by your selected cloud provider or an application such as Good Sync or Carbon Copy Cloner on your computer. In either case, it will be critical to keep your computer on long enough and frequently enough for the backups to complete. If you have a large repository or add and edit files frequently, your computer may need to be on consistently.
NAS to NAS: For those who might be running a NAS in two separate locations, your best option is to have NAS devices
from the same manufacturer and configure the NAS-to-NAS sync offered by most NAS vendors. For my Synology NAS, this is an application called Synology Drive ShareSync. Once configured, this automatically syncs files from one NAS to the other when a change is detected (i.e., the file is saved to the NAS). Once configured, this is reliable and doesn’t require much effort to maintain.
This column is by no means an exhaustive list of how to keep your repositories of digital photographs in sync but hopefully it provides some helpful tips to get you started.
