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

[Davide Del Vento]

Hi,
the workflow for the pictures I take with my cameras is as follow:

0) use the cameras, delete some really bad pictures but not all the
"bad" one in camera (display's not good enough to judge some)
1) move the pictures on (actually my wife's) laptop
2) rate the pictures, deleting some (which might be a large percentage
for some subjects)
3) backup the pictures on a portable USB drive via rsynch
4) backup the pictures from the portable USB drive to a large disk on
a desktop via rsynch
5) delete the pictures on the cameras
6) goto 0

This has a very clear flaw, which is getting worse: step 2) is slow
and I don't want to perform step 5) before the backups.

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).

I think what I need is pretty simple: a version-control-system-like
thing which would do just the bookkeping (i.e. this picture must be
deleted, this one has been renamed - uncommon, but happened: there was
a name collision - , this other picture is missing from this drive,
but must not be deleted from the backup). It doesn't sound like
something really complicated, and it does sound like something very
useful in different contexts. But I couldn't find anything like this,
but maybe I looked in the wrong place. Suggestions?
I'm not completely ruling out "normal" version control systems,
provided that they can manage a TB repository without much overhead
(especially in disk space, but not only - if disk space is doubled,
this is a non-starter)

I am also open to change my workflow in some non-obvious way that
would solve my problem (but still keep my paranoia at bay: don't tell
me to do 5 before 4) and wouldn't require weird stuff like rotate
among (too) many memory cards (I have not enough and I will not be
able to manage them: they'll get lost, my 8 months old will eat them,
etc).

Thanks,
Davide