Backing up photos on iOS

Software
, , ,
1

Hi,

I’m looking for some software that would run on my iPad and help me backup photos from different memory cards to an external SSD disk (without involving the photos library). I would like this backup to be incremental so I could backup a card one day, take more photos the next day, backup the new photos only, and so on. It’s actually not only photos but also videos but mainly photos.

An example of what kind of problem I would like to solve. The weekend before last weekend I went away for four days, I had with me four cameras and a stack of memory cards. During each day I captured a number of photos and a some video, and each evening I wanted to make a backup from the memory cards to the SSD - and I did using Files and copying the cards manually (which meant that I copied the full folder from a memory card to a folder on the SSD => copied some photos multiple times).

So I would like to pop in a memory card in a reader, tell the app to make an incremental backup to a folder, preferable each card would go to a separate folder on the SSD, and it would do this.

That weekend I took about 2000-2500 photos + 50-100 video clips, resulting in 250-300 GB of data so I do not want to do this manually (I’m going to make some mistake once I while).

Does anyone have a suggestion for an app that would help me with this?

2

PhotoSync might be a solution

PhotoSync Transfer and backup photos & videos

3

This might be easier to solve with workflow than SW. Why not format the card after backup? If you need two copies, get another SSD, a 1TB “keychain” size SSD is sub $100.

You could also just copy the entire card over, evert time and overwrite the previously backed up files or even just manually sort by day, then copy/paste.

If you’re getting paid for this, I would be hesitant to rely on any backup SW to be bullet proof.

4

If I’m reading the OPs requirements properly, they want to retain a copy of the photos on the Memory card AND copy to the SSD.

This is sensible out in the field as if the SSD dies there are still copies on the Cards.

Can Carbon Copy Cloner not do this? It would only copy new items for an incremental backup.

I’ve done this on Windows Machines in the past with a DOS script. That shouldn’t be too difficult in terminal either.

5

Yes, that was my first thought but it couldn’t figure out if it was possible to “copy from memory card to SSD”, do you happen to know.

But it’s an excellent program.

6

I don’t want to erase the memory cards until I’m home and sure that my photos are properly backed up.

The thing is that I want to avoid doing things manually, since the chances of me making some mistake is way higher than the software would fail. I really don’t trust myself :yum:

Unfortunately, I don’t get paid for it. The first thing I would do if I were, would be to buy a new main camera with a dual memory cards and create a copy there - then I would copy to the SSD. (3 out of the 4 cameras are single slot, one is a dual slot but not my main camera)-

7

Carbon Copy can perhaps do it, and I’m pretty sure ChronoSync can do it. Or simply using rsync would probably also work.

However, I don’t have a laptop and rely on my iPad instead, so that rules out those options.

1 Like
8

Sorry. That’s the first thing you wrote and I’ve completely glossed over it.