[Digikam-users] Re: On backing up

[Uwe Koch]

Hello,

I am running digiKam on a linux box with openSuSE 11.3.
New pictures are downloaded form the camera with digiKam,
then I run a shell script that renames the pictures (from IMG1234.jpg  
to 2011.02.23_201500_IMG1234.jpg with the real EXIF date and time) and 
then the script copies these files to an other file system on an 
external disk.
So I have a copy of all pictures without any modifications, just like 
negatives in former analog times.
Then I work on the pictures in digiKam, like adding geo tags, removing 
red eyes, adding tags and so on.
After that I rename them using digiKam to names like 
2011.02.23_2015_Party_001.jpg.
Then I move the pictures to the appropriate album (folder) in digiKam.

Every evening my pc runs a crontab started script that copies all new or 
modified files to a "HiDrive".
This is a virtual drive offered by the german provider Strato 
(www.strato.de). This HiDrive can be used by web browser,
ftp, webdav, rsync and some more protocols. My linux script uses rsync 
to copy all changed files.
I also can mount this HiDrive from my business pc running Windows.
After this rsync job every evening I delete the pictures from the camera 
memory card at the next day.

So even if my pc and my external drive should crash I have all files 
backed up at 2 large professional data centers in Karlsruhe and Berlin. 
The HiDrive is mirrored by Strato to their 2 data centers.
I use this not only for my pictures but also for all my personal 
documents (odt, ods, odp, pdf, txt, ...)

Unfortunally Strato (www.strato.com) has also offerings in other 
european countries,
but up to now HiDrive is only offered in germany, great britain and the 
netherlands.