[lug] syncing deletes in backup (or picture workflows)

[Anthony Foiani]

Davide Del Vento <davide.del.vento at gmail.com> writes:

> So, I want to change the workflow. The obvious solution is to do the
> backup first, and the delete later. But I need two kind of deletes:
> getting rid of actual useless crap (which must propagate on the backup
> medias) and delete the old stuff that my poor wife's laptop can't hold
> (but keep these on the backup medias). I haven't figured out how to do
> this, besides using a version control system (which of course I don't
> want to do, regardless of how much I love version control for many
> other purposes).

For whatever it's worth, I find that my time is more valuable than
disk space.  (And with 2TB drives costing only 130$ these days...)  So
I just keep every stupid photo.

My current workflow:

1. Copy images off camera onto [OSX] laptop.

   This involves moving from external media to the hard drive, and
   then doing the first sort by date and event.

   a. Copy from external media (SD card or USB cable).
        -> ~/Pictures/Unsorted
   b. Automatically bucket by date (using a script that examines EXIF data).
        -> ~/Pictures/Unsorted/2011-02-01-xxx
   c. Manually bucket further by event:
        -> ~/Pictures/Unsorted/2011-02-01a-first_thing
        -> ~/Pictures/Unsorted/2011-02-01b-second_thing
   d. Manually file by date:
        -> ~/Pictures/2011/02/2011-02-01a-first_thing
        -> ~/Pictures/2011/02/2011-02-01b-second_thing

2. Make a local backup of my by-date files.

   I use rsync to one of my desktop servers.  (The plan is to invest
   in a nice NAS to consolidate the zillions of drives I've
   accumulated over the years, but that won't happen until later this
   year at the earliest...)

3. Make a remote copy.

   My gracious web-host (hi, Kevin!) has allowed me to store a copy of
   all my images on his server.  Again, I use 'rsync', and these files
   end up in ~/photos on the remote host.

4. Create galleries on remote server.

   I use: http://foiani.com/perl/examples/quick-photo-index

5. Selectively publish galleries.

   Another script: http://foiani.com/perl/examples/link-photo-dir.plx

   This creates links from ~/photos to ~/.public_html, so the
   galleries are actually visible.

Granted, I haven't been taking as many pictures of late, but since
1999 or so, I've accumulated only 30GB of photos or so.

If nothing else, you might consider just dumping everything onto an
external drive, and then do your weeding out later.

For another perspective on this, consider:

  http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/201x/2010/04/17/New-Photo-Workflow

HTH,
t.