Whats the best way...

...To back up my iPhoto library?

I tried the usual copy and paste from my mac into a shared drive on my PC but it often complained that the file name was too long and couldnt be copied.

I could if i had to, rename them but it would be a big pain and would rather there be another way.

I am taking lots of photos recently that i have been keeping in my library (approximatly 200 a month seem to be staying) and i don't want to risk loosing any of them!

So - Best way to back up?

Cheers everyone!

~~ TS ~~

If it is an option, an external hard drive. The Windows drive formatting doesn't support as many characters as Mac. If I were you, I would shop around and look for a deal on a reliable external.

I found a couple, what do you think??

http://www.ebuyer.com/UK/product/109356/rb/24924103117

http://www.ebuyer.com/UK/product/113888

If i brought one of these, i understand formatting the drive etc but for backing up purposes, would i just want to copy and paste the entire iPhoto directory to the external drive or is there a better way to do this?

~~ TS ~~

Personally, I love the looks of MyBooks. I think they are really cool looking, and they had all the options I was looking for. As for backing up, I think you can just go to File>Export, and send them over to your drive, full-sized. I'm not 100% sure if that will work, but otherwise you can just find the directory and copy it over. I'm sure that someone more knowledgeable than myself could give you an easier way to do it. I really don't use iPhoto that much.

It seems like iPhoto should have a back-up option. iTunes is always asking me to back up all of my music. Go figure...

Thanks jeff for all your help so far!

Im going to fire up my mac now and have a look and report back what options i've got.

I will probably by the mybook next week when i get paid!

~~ TS ~~

Thankyou so much Jeff!!

I went to iPhoto > Export and it worked a treat!

simply asked what format and size i wanted, and where i wanted to and it happily chucked all my photos into one nice folder for me

Presumbly then, when i purchase my backup drive, i can just point iPhoto to backup to there and ill be sorted?

Thankyou once again!! ++ rep added ++

~~ TS ~~

After some more thinking, I'm sure that you could get Autoamtor to add any new photos to a back-up folder. I was playing around with it, and it seems perfectly do-able. If you get to that stage, just post a new question. There will be some serious explaining involved, LOL.

And you're very welcome for any help I gave. I just wish there were more challenging questions at this hour. I'm bored.

Hmmm this seems rather strange (in a good way)! My wages have gone in early (as in this morning!) and so i can buy it today!

Should arrive monday or tuesday!

So automator... want to start explaining that one to me jeff?

~~ TS ~~

Sorry, I kinda forgot about this thread. So here's a decent answer to the question, if you haven't already gotten one.

First, select the "Find Finder Items" command and set that as your first action. Then select the "Copy Finder Items" as your second action. For the find action, select the directory where iPhoto puts your new pictures, and today's date. In the copy action, select where you want your picture back-ups to be stored. OK, so whenever you run the workflow, it backs up what you loaded into iPhot that day. You could also select a different date range if you don't want to have to do it that day. That's it. Saves you the trouble of doing it manually. You could alse add an action that does it automatically, so you don't have to do it. I think that would get in the way for me, but you could toss it in there.

the easiest thing to do is just drag the iPhoto folder (Your User Name/Pictures/iPhoto Library) onto the external drive. Whenever you want to back up again you just drag the folder over again and it will replace files that were changed, so it won't take long to do after the first backup.

This way is the best way because should you lose everything on your harddrive you can have iPhoto open that folder as the new library by holding Option and clicking the iPhoto icon. A screen will come up asking if you want to create a new library or choose a library, you select the folder on your external drive and it loads up exactly as you had it when you last backed up

So it won't have to rewrite the whole thing every time? I guess I have never tried it. I am used to Windows where it is either replace everything or add nothing.

Nope it will detect which files have changed and ask if you want to replace those files

Thanks trpnmonkey41 for your reply!

So you think its better to copy the entire library over (including folder structure etc) then just to do "export" the images onto the external HDD?

I presume (now i think about it) that copying the entire library etc over would preserve the dates etc in the library so things are still in the right order?

~~ TS ~~

G'day TS.

I would just drag the whole iPhoto folder and as you say, everything is preserved if and when you want to rebuild your library.

...and here's something for nothing....

ctrl+1 takes you to the MF home page
ctrl+2 takes you to the todays posts page
ctrl+3 gives you the print version of a thread.

Cheers for the great help Pulse-8

~~ TS ~~