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View Full Version : Backups, Checksum and Parity


eoren1
Feb-14-2011, 04:02 PM
Lately I've become quite paranoid about my photos and whether my current backup scheme is sufficient.
Here's the current setup:
Images imported from CF to Macbook hard drive and processed in Lightroom
Time Machine of Macbook drive insures a copy of the images exists on an external and modified as changes made
When finished culling and processing, upload 'picks' to Smugmug. Move images from Macbook to 1 TB external via firewire from within LR to insure no errors in breaking file locations (I have all 50,000 photos in a single catalog)
I use Carbon Copy Cloner to run incremental backups of the 1 TB externals photo directory to a 640 gig external

Now, I realize one flaw at present is lack of off site backup. That will be addressed in near future when a work server is transformed into a personal NAS.

My main concern now is silent corruption of data. I've started to wonder about using a checksum generator on the CR2/XMP files to insure integrity but then doubt that I would check those ever to see if there were any problems. Was also thinking of using Quickpar to create parity files of the folders on the 1 TB external. I don't plan on having RAID functionality until that server mentioned above is up and running so this will serve as a pseudo RAID5 setup.

I'm open to any and all suggestions on insuring data integrity
Thanks!
E

arodney
Feb-15-2011, 06:07 AM
Slow but useful, check out ImageVerifier.
http://basepath.com/ImageIngester/ivinfo.php

eoren1
Feb-15-2011, 08:04 AM
Thanks for the link Andrew - will give it a try