Make sure you're taking full catalog backups
Something I've discovered when recovering from C1P 10 crashes (which seem to happen quite frequently and are the subject of other discussions) is that the Phase One advice regarding restoring catalogs (https://www.phaseone.com/en/Search/Arti ... nguageid=1) doesn't always work, depending on the severity of catalog corruption. If you can't reload a catalog following this type of restore and are seeing repeated error messages regarding failed database connections then a full restore of the catalog is probably going to be required.
My catalog was already being backed up to a Time Machine volume but that can take well over an hour to restore and the times when a backup was taken may mean that significant pieces of work won't be restored. I'm now starting to use Chronosync to incrementally backup the folder containing my catalog to an external drive at the end of editing sessions. Be aware that although the catalog appears as a single file in Finder, it's actually a 'package' which is a particular type of folder containing many files. Chronosync and some other backup utilities will recognise just the changes made to individual files within the package and just back those up so after the initial backup, incrementals will be much quicker. Also, this involves an overwite of the catalog backup - it's not possible to choose a specific 'snapshot' from a given date / time as you can with Time Machine.
Restore times will depend on the speed of the external drive and connection (for me, it's a little faster than a Time Machine restore) but if it means I can get back to a usable state more reliably it's a small price to pay.
My backup strategy now has 3 components - regular backups from within C1P of the catalog database, Time Machine for snapshots and Chronosync for manually triggered full backups.
Hope this is useful...
My catalog was already being backed up to a Time Machine volume but that can take well over an hour to restore and the times when a backup was taken may mean that significant pieces of work won't be restored. I'm now starting to use Chronosync to incrementally backup the folder containing my catalog to an external drive at the end of editing sessions. Be aware that although the catalog appears as a single file in Finder, it's actually a 'package' which is a particular type of folder containing many files. Chronosync and some other backup utilities will recognise just the changes made to individual files within the package and just back those up so after the initial backup, incrementals will be much quicker. Also, this involves an overwite of the catalog backup - it's not possible to choose a specific 'snapshot' from a given date / time as you can with Time Machine.
Restore times will depend on the speed of the external drive and connection (for me, it's a little faster than a Time Machine restore) but if it means I can get back to a usable state more reliably it's a small price to pay.
My backup strategy now has 3 components - regular backups from within C1P of the catalog database, Time Machine for snapshots and Chronosync for manually triggered full backups.
Hope this is useful...
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You can also use Backup Scheduler for Time machine to control when your Time Machine backs up.
Having multiple backup methods is the wise thing to do.
1. I have Time Machine running as my main "oh darn" backup system for grabbing a file or restoring from a drive failure.
2. I use Carbon Copy Cloner to "clone" my photo and video files to external hard drives. Both are done on a weekly schedule, Sunday night and Wednesday night.
3. Crashplan backs up my computers and is my last resort backup. if the house burns down or I have everything stolen I at least can get my stuff back. Albeit very slowly or at a cost for ordering my stuff on hard drives.
I also have my user folder on a RAID 1 so if I lose a drive I am still in business. This is not a backup but more of data protection.
I am not a big fan of Backup software that compresses everything into a single proprietary file. I prefer just to sync folders and files.0
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