Best Tips For Keeping On-top Of Your Backups?

For a while now, I've been keeping my own "backup archives" all sorted and referenced on different devices. I have 2 128GB USB sticks and another HDD in my PC containing all the backups and I've also listed exactly what was backed up & when (for future reference) but now things are getting a bit confusing:-

My Ableton Tracks folder for example is growing practically every day and its pretty hard to know what I've already backed up and what isn't. I can't rely on "date modified/created" because both of those fields show an identical date for every single file (I think this is because the Ableton Tracks folder itself is actually a backup of its original version and the dates just show when the entire folder was populated). This is forcing me to backup the WHOLE folder (well over 8GB's) highly compressed down to 3GB's with Winrar (lovely!). All of this takes ages to do though and I'm probably backing up about 6gb's of stuff thats identical to whats already backed up.

This is the same problem for my Music & Pictures folders, my Photoshop projects. All are massive in size but I can't find a way to back up ONLY what has been changed or what is new. Maybe I can use programs like DupeGuru & Everything to help but I've found it a bit finicky, maybe I'm just going about it all the wrong way?

Thanks in advance!

 

You can buy a 1 TB hard drive external at walmart for like 60 dollars.It would solve your space needs.I use one for all of my game files and videos,music ect and plus backups.You should only back up once a month mainly at the end of the month it would create less confusion.

If this is a personal system than this is best option.

 

I will definitely invest in a new 1TB soon, just for backup, butt my main problem right now, rather than space, is actually keeping on top of what needs backing and what doesn't.

The best examples I can think of are my Ableton Tracks, music & my pictures folders. They're all huge so copying the entire folders (maybe split in 2gb chunks) takes forever (that's how I originally did it). I need to find a technique or app that looks at a folder, then compares it to the backup version and tells me only which files have been changed since the last backup. I would just rely on "date modified/created" but the dates don't match up at all (they all th same time/date) so I'm in the dark right now lol.

I'm a bit bad at explaining things sometimes, hopefully that made sense! Cheers!

 

You need backup software that synchronizes or does incremental backups.
Have a look over here.
http://www.majorgeeks.com/mg/sortname/local_backup.html

Here are two that does what you need.
http://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/puresync.html
http://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/max_syncup.html

 

Thanks for that I'll check them out. My brain and my hand made backup lists just don't cut it for backup scenarios like this!