How do I back up my iPhoto library to my .mac account?

December 8, 2007 1:14 PM

How can I automatically back up my iPhoto library to my .mac account?

I have a .mac account with plenty of room. I use Backup to back up an assortment of files, and they all copy over just fine -- except for my iPhoto library. I have never managed to get it to work.

Looking at the error messages in Console, I don't see any pattern. Backup poops out on different files on different attempts, and doesn't give a reason why it stops working.

OS 10.4.11 and Backup 3.1.2, by the way. I've tried the Apple support boards, but no luck.

posted by The corpse in the library to Computers & Internet (4 answers total)

I do this using SuperDuper with no problem (to a mounted network drive, not to .mac, but I think they look the same to the mac), but note that the iPhoto library (in new versions of iPhoto) is an odd new kind of archive that some programs see as a single giant file. SuperDuper, Carbon Copy Cloner and ChronoSync have been updated with specific options to deal with these files (unpack them, check the files inside, and make incremental backups of only the changed files) which is why I use SuperDuper for the task. I don't know Backup at all, but that may be why it's choking. How big is your iPhoto library?
posted by The Bellman at 7:08 AM on December 9, 2007

Response by poster: Hey Bellman -- my iPhoto library is a hair over 8 GB. I just downloaded a trial of SuperDuper, but it isn't letting me select just the iPhoto library to backup. Do you copy your iPhoto library, or does it get copied as part of a larger backup?
posted by The corpse in the library at 8:35 AM on December 9, 2007

Best answer: Yeah, the trial will only copy the entire drive -- you would have to pay for it to make it do what you wanted, and frankly it's not especially easy to use even then. ChronoSync does the same thing (as long as you check "dissect packages" under the options menu) and it's more intuitive and the demo of that might actually work and let you test what you want to do. I think it can also run on a schedule (so the "chrono" would suggest). Give it a look and feel free to hit my email if you need further guidance.
posted by The Bellman at 9:19 AM on December 9, 2007

Response by poster: It's taken this freaking long, but ChronoSync did the job. Thanks!
posted by The corpse in the library at 7:58 AM on December 17, 2007