Can anybody recommend a good photo back up program?

[Itchinjim]

I want to automatically back up my shots to an external HD. I'm doing it manually now and it's a bit of a pain
Thanks,
I-Jim.

[sir pball]

1. Get a two-bay drive enclosure and run a RAID 1 setup

Set it as your default save location in your transfer software and Bob's your uncle. You have to plug in the drive when you transfer photos, but that's a small price to pay for fully-mirrored safety IMO..

[Major Nikon]

3. That's what I do

But my NAS is connected to my network so it's always plugged in.

[rdking647]

2. i use carbon cloner on a mac

its set up to automatically backup my photo file whenever i connect my external drive 9a 4tb drive configured as raid-1
i aslo use crashplan for offsite backup at the same time

[ManiacJoe]

4. What is your current manual process?

I use a batch script to copy my new and changed files to the external drive. Hook it up to a desktop icon.

[ljm2002]

5. I use an external hard drive...

...specialized for automatic backup. It's an HP SimpleSave, cost about $100, stores 1Tb of data, and backs up files every 5 minutes or so. It has a default list of file types it will back up, which you can modify by adding or removing file types.

These days I'd guess you can get twice the storage for the same price, and there are many brands of this sort of device out there.

It's really easy and you can leave it hooked up on your computer. When I need to clean my hard drive (like removing raw images since they take up so much space), I just make sure they're already on the backup drive and then delete away from my C drive.

I was lucky -- one week after I bought it, my hard drive crashed and I had to replace it. That's what is known as "just-in-time" management...