markngolf Loc: Bridgewater, NJ

It's hard to beat you at anything!! I wish I had 1/100 of your knowledge.
Mark

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

Probably actually worse because the actual upload speed will likely be slower than a short benchmark (and don’t forget that Network speed is in Mbits, and data is usually reported in MBytes), but let’s say 3Mb/sec., or roughly 11Gb/hour (3Mb x 3600sec = 10,800 Mb/hour). Then, about 1.3 GBytes per hour (11Gb /8 bits/byte), so something less than 100 hrs or 4 days 24x7 running in the background. No big deal unless it kills your download speed or if you don’t have an unlimited data plan (The download If needed, would substantially less). BUT, if either of those things are true, you have 3 choices: (a) forget cloud storage as unworkable (b) pick a cloud provider that will let you send them a disk to upload your data (they provide the disk) or (c) get a faster internet connection. Sometimes reality kills a seemingly good technical solution. (See, I am NOT a cloud apologist, I just beleive in keeping an off-site DR copy by whatever means is practical)

Good luck!

CamB Loc: Juneau, Alaska

I never, ever copy and paste for backup. I don’t see how this would work. I go on the computer, work with LR and PS, tuneup, adjust, change, do some save as’s, delete some files, add some others, shift a few around, add some key words. I may work with ten or fifteen or 300 different files. This is a normal work session. How would I ever copy and paste this to a backup? I use Carbon Copy Cloner. My backup drive is identical to my main drive. The file names and types are all the same. I can swap them out and I would never know the difference. It would take me as long to figure out what to copy and paste as to do the work. I back up every night or even after any big work session. I plug in the drive, open the program, hit the back up now key and go get something to eat. Simple. I am not backed up online. Tried it and decided I have too many files and the encryption drove me nuts. Multiple drives stashed here and there.
...Cam

kenArchi Loc: Seal Beach, CA

I simply save to external hard drive into folders. No unsafe internet things like cloud, etc.
There is nothing in my computer, zero, zip.

cjmax1000

I use a combination of backup methods for a computer with Windows 10. I use Acronis True Image to back up OS/Apps (Drive C). For data drives, I use Carbonite to synchronize files to cloud storage which is done in the background and places a green dot next to folders and files that have been backed up. If you have sensitive data, you can pre-encrypt files with a program like cryptoforge and then move to a folder that gets backed up via Carbonite. I use the built in robocopy tool which is similar to xcopy with many more options (robocopy SourcePath DestinationPath /MIR /R:1 /W:1 /NP /LOG+:C:\Logs\Backup.txt) this will mirror data from source to a destination (Can use a dated folder or use /E instead of /MIR if you don’t want to delete anything in the destination. You can go to a cmd prompt and type robocopy /? to see all options. You can also put many robocopy lines in a .bat file to have back to back jobs.

mwsilvers Loc: Central New Jersey

Either you have a really old or slow computer or a lousy backup program and/or backup drive. I run incremental backups of all my data, not just photographs every few days to four different hard drives and the whole process backing up to all four generally takes a total of around 15 minutes. If I have several hundred to a thousand new raw files that haven't been backed up before it may take an additional 10-15 minutes or so. The only time it ever takes an hour of two is if I'm backing a computer up for the first time. If you are not familiar with incremental backups you should learn about them. And stop backing up your important files with copy and paste. You WILL eventually come to regret it.

mwsilvers Loc: Central New Jersey

That's really slow by today's standards. For comparison I just tested mine and it was 209.07 mbps down and 47.24 mbps upload. For an extra $15 per month I could have the option of downloads of around 400 mbps. Perhaps your location and the available providers are the limiting factors for you.

mwsilvers Loc: Central New Jersey

Sorry but after 35 years of corporate end user support I can say with complete certainty that manually using copy and paste is not an effective or safe replacement for a good quality backup program. The reasons are many. But if you're comfortable with it and are not concerned about the inherent risks I won't try to talk you out of it.

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

Just curious - is your concern that there is something intrinsically error prone with mirroring or copying, or that the failure is that it won’t be regularly or properly implemented manually? Would you be comfortable with copying or mirroring (without compression and a required restore application) if it is automatically and regularly accomplished (incrementally)? Many of my enterprise accounts with large data sets have moved to mirroring instead of backup with classic backup SW for a number of reasons. BTW, I do want to make the distinction between mirroring or syncing of file systems and just copying data indiscriminately, and that the mechanism concerning deletions must be well understood and controlled (protection of an accidental delete propagating to the other copy as well).

The beauty of either asynchronous or synchronous mirroring is that (a) if the primary fails, you can just point the users to the mirror instead of the primary without going through a restore process, and availability of the data is unaffected. (B) It also eliminates the issue of a limited backup window that typically requires quiescing the file system (making it user inaccessible) during the backup (c) it prevents the issue of restore failure which does happen with compressed backup SW. it’s estimated that 5-10% of restores fail, and (d) if you locate the mirrors at a seperate location, each site can mirror to the other, so you not only share data, but accomplish DR for both sites.

mwsilvers Loc: Central New Jersey

I'm just talking about those home users who choose to manually copy and paste files from one location to another as a replacement for a proper backup plan. It is inherently slow, error-prone, and lacks an audit trail. I would never recommend it for anything more than non-critical files, or for files copied to a USB drive for portability. The backup software I use never compresses data. It is fast, accurate, and consistent from backup session to backup session. If set up properly backup software will not accidentally overwrite newer files with older ones, will not miss files, will not recopy files that already exists on the back ups, will track what was updated and when, can track and maintain multiple iterations of the same files and a bunch of other things. For the average user at home it is a much safer and easier way to ensure that their important files and images are backed up properly and protected.

Jerry G Loc: Waterford, Michigan and Florida

What is "proper backup"

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

I thought that’s what you meant, and I agree completely - an automated system (GoodSync) is what I use as well.

11bravo

Rather than copy/paste, I always use TeraCopy for my copy/move tasks. Freeware version works great. I set to details so I can see the progress though I don't watch in detail, just prevents the window closing when finished so I can easily see if any errors, and automatically verifies the copied/moved files. Doesn't hang if there's a problem and specifies which files had problems. You can select what happens if same file name already exists in target, and can reverify any files skipped due to target already existing.

mwsilvers Loc: Central New Jersey

I mentioned some of those things in the post just before yours.