Backing up pix

[Steamer Dave]

My wife has a "million" pictures on our Imac. They are backed up on a separate hard drive. One of the "worries" is a power surge that could damage the main hard drive. My thought is that it could also damage the back up drive. I have a surge suppressor in front but am concerned because that is the only place those pix exist. There are no boxes of printed pix. Is there a way to store these pix on a couple of sticks and still have them available for Iphoto or am I going to have to use the sticks as secondary backup only.

Dave

 

[honestone]

A good approach would be to invest in a portable external hard drive (they make some nice, slim ones these days), and then use SuperDuper! to make a backup of your entire system on your iMac. That backup will be bootable, so if need be, you can plug it in to your iMac, start up your iMac with the Option key, select that bootable external drive/partition, and the machine will re-start from it.

As far as your current external drive is concerned, do you have to have it plugged in/attached to your iMac all the time? Having it unplugged when not needed would be another good safeguard.

 

[honestone]

Yes I normally have that drive on whenever the computer is in operation. However yesterday I got tired of it backing up every hour and turned it off. Will turn it on later today to let it gather the new changes/additions. This is the Time Machine software. Tks for your input. Take care. Dave

You should also consider using SuperDuper! to backup/clone your system. That software has the ability to make a bootable backup, which can be a life saver. If you use SuperDuper! and don't need the drive turned on after that backup is complete, you'd be good to go!

If you need that drive on, even without doing any backups (Time Machine and/or SuperDuper!), then you'll need to consider getting a portable external drive that you don't need to day-to-day operations.

 

[Steamer Dave]

I think that this is a good solution to my concerns. Thanks

 

[DennisRFreitas]

Hi, I agree I also use Super Duper and creating a notable back up is a great idea.

However, You can also just off load your iPhoto Library to an external Hard Drive as well. Then when you launch iPhoto hold down the Alt/Option key and iPhoto will see that as where your photos are stored. This mat work out for you. I have been doing that since i got my Macbook Air it only has a 128gb SSD HD that fills up quick. Let me know if you have questions on using this method. Its pretty straight forward.

Dennis