How to make incremental backups of a self contained Library?

This seems to have been avoided in any discussion relating to media archiving or perhaps I'm missing a trick?

My problem is that I have a 1.9TB Library containing numerous events, which gets update throughout the year. At the moment I backup that self contained library onto a single 2TB Passport drive but the question is how can I just copy over the stuff that has changed ie the projects and perhaps a few media files? I know I could do it manually by opening the library in the finder but surely there's a more simple way to do it?
Copying 2TB on a regular basis is costing me a lot of time and the only solution that I know of is to have all of the media in an external folder and import it all by reference, but that is not ideal!

So in a nutshell, how can one do incremental backups of a self-contained library without having to copy over everything in that library?

Any ideas much appreciated.

"Backups for Final Cut Pro" can do this. You can find it in the Mac App Store.

Works well.

Thanks that could be perfect but...

Do you know if these are incremental and only copy new media/changes to data - it says it creates a 'snapshot' of the library, which suggests it's the whole thing?

Just found this from the creator:

Actually I have. I wrote the program!

Some of the advantages of it are:

1) It knows the FCP X file structure so it know what to back up. It only scans your FCP X files, not your whole disk, so it is fast. When Time Machine kicks off, it can be quite bothersome.

2) It does incremental backups. With Carbon Copy Cloner and other such utilities you can only restore to your last save.

3) You can do very frequent backups, every few minutes, while you are editing, so if you screw up, you can recover easily. It only copies changed files. You can label backups.

4) You can select a date and individual project or event to restore.

4) It only $18 US! Restore once and it has paid for itself many times over. 4 & 1/2 stars! Great support! You'll like it!

Search for "Backup Strategies for Users of Final Cut Pro X" for my white paper on the subject.

NickP

So there you have your answer.

Yes it only backs up what is new. I just wish it could work just as well with external media.
But I guess this would be tricky.

Seanus, I've just installed it and the immediate and fundamental flaw it seems is that is wants me to choose a 'volume' to backup as apposed to an individual library or folder. Not much use as I have numerous libraries all over a terabyte on a single volume and I want to be able to choose which libraries to backup.

Can it not back up individual libraries?

I think it's probably my fault for not being clear enough but what I need is to create incremenatl 'duplicate' backups to an external hard drive of libraries on my edit drives.

I'm exactly where you are, Bjansch.

I stared a similar topic a few days ago, except you explained it more clearly than I did!

www.fcp.co/forum/4-final-cut-pro-x-fcpx/...-projects-and-events

I have also just installed Backups and want to backup incremenatl 'duplicate' backups to an external hard drive of libraries on my edit drives. Like you I can't see how to do that. I really don't need to backup the whole volume which is 3tb and backed up already.

I suspect there's a way to do this once we have had time to understand the program.

Hi Stew,

I've just emailed Ripple Training to see if their new training module deals with this problem and I'm hoping not to have to use a third party programme.

It might be as easy as dragging updated projects and new events (new media within a library) to the old backup and then consolidating? Used to be so straight forward on FCP7 and I'm hoping I just missed a meeting, and it's actually really simple in FCPX, which I love by the way.

Hi

Agreed re using as few programs as possible. Some are great (like Final Cut Library Manager - no connection just like to spread the word about good apps) but often it's just another step to learn and remember to do.

There was a song once: ch ch ch ch ch ch changes...

I'll be interested to see what Ripple Training say. Really like their style.

Whatever, it's such a basic requirement it's amazing it isn't built into FCPX. (Yes, sent a feature request.)

I believe you can just drill down to individual folders on Backups for FCP as opposed to just selecting the root volume. I keep my library's in separate folders so I can backup individual library's this way.

"2) It does incremental backups. With Carbon Copy Cloner and other such utilities you can only restore to your last save."

Not true, CCC can do incremental backups. I do them all the time with CCC. An "incremental backup" only writes files that are new, or have changed, since the last backup process, to the backup location. CCC does this just fine with OS X packages, such as FCPX Libraries.

Just to be clear.

As for only restore to your last save, well, not sure what that statement means. The last time FCPX saved the files? Yes, that's all anything can do. You can't save a file in between saves, the data simply doesn't exist. So that statement confuses me.

Backups For FCPX is nice as it concentrates on one thing and one thing only, and is easier to use.

So I guess the solution is:
Managed Library use Back Ups for FCPX.
External Library use Back Ups for FCPX along with Carbon Copy Cloner

BJansch wrote: Seanus, I've just installed it and the immediate and fundamental flaw it seems is that is wants me to choose a 'volume' to backup as apposed to an individual library or folder. Not much use as I have numerous libraries all over a terabyte on a single volume and I want to be able to choose which libraries to backup.

Can it not back up individual libraries?

Yes I understood what you meant and yes the program can do this. You just need to navigate to the Library you want to back up. I have a RAID that contains a number of projects. Most are un managed but all my personal work is managed and I use BackUps JUST to back up this one library WITH media.

Maybe try moving the Library you want to back up into its own folder and see if that helps.