Dynamic Backup software – opinion’s please

[Neil Sadwelkar]

You’ve not mentioned what editing system you use (Pc or Mac, Avid or Prem Pro or some other) and whether you have projects and media on the same drive, or projects on internal drive and media on external drive.

Anyway, for an Avid MC system (would apply to Prem Pro too), system I have Carbon Copy Cloner clone my internal drive to an external drive once a day. Back when external drives could be used to boot a Mac from (pre M1/M2 Mac), an external SSD clone of the internal drive would enable one to boot from one external drive and have all of one’s work intact. If once a day was insufficient, then that external SSD could be left connected and cloning could be set to happen once every 2-3 hours.

As for the external drive with the media files, you can keep a spare drive connected, and have Chronosync sync the two, daily or once every few hours. So that as you add media to the external drive, the Chronosync clone would automatically have that media updated with folder structure intact.

If your external media drive failed, you could rename the clone drive with the same name as the original failed drive, and once you open your project all media will automatically relink because the system would ‘see’ that clone as the original.

For offsite backup of your project files, you could use Google Drive, or Dropbox to keep a continuous cloud backup.

If you’re not comfortable saving these on the cloud, then you can keep a clone drive at another location (office/home) and have a utility like Resilio Sync or SyncThing, to sync a folder/s on your work system in sync with a folder/s on the remote backup.

[Mark Foerster]

Hey Neil – Thanks for the Very thorough response. I usually leave core video footage on an external drive and keep the PP files and things like additional photos, music, effect passes, round trips on a desktop folder as (mac) the cloud would back that up. I’d have 2 copies of the source footage files on 2 separate external drives. But it would be simpler to just have a system that keeps both drives the same on an hourly basis – everything in one place – thank you again and I will investigate the two options

[Neil Sadwelkar]

Mark,

Like I wrote, if the media files drive and the clone of that drive are both attached to your editing system, then Chronosync can keep them in sync. And make an archive of what’s different so in case you accidentally delete a file on the media drive, Chronosync will also delete it from the cone, but keep a backup in an archive folder.

Carbon Copy Cloner can also do exactly that. As will SuperDuper

If the media drive and its clone are not attached to the same computer, but are on the same premises but on a network, then too Chronosync or Carbon Cloner will do the job. They will mount it as required.

If the media drive and its clone are in different premises and connected via Internet, then the free SyncThing, or Resilio sync can clone them over the Internet. Of course, copying TBs of data over the Internet would take time.

[Tom Morton]

What did you go with in the end, did you find a good solution?