What's a good program for backing up photos?

[Jredtugboat]

Hi,

I was just reading the thread about photo management, and wonder if anyone here knows a good program for backing up photos? I imagine this functionality is bundled in with some photo managers, and if so, which have had the best results for y'all.

My situation is this: between my Mac and my PC I have about 9,000 images from my digital camera. I want to be able to go in, tell the machine, "grab everything from these folders and import them. Then tell me how I'm going to split all these things into DVDs or CDs. While you're at it, organize them for me visually, name the CDs/DVDs, create a burn list, and burn them--prompting me to put the media in when you're done."

Does such a program exist? One that would also name the CD/DVD volumes for me? One that could generate some sort of 'contact sheet' that I could put into my CD holders so I know what the contents are visually?

Am I on crack, or has this been done?

Julian

[jaykinghorn]

My situation is this: between my Mac and my PC I have about 9,000 images from my digital camera. I want to be able to go in, tell the machine, "grab everything from these folders and import them. Then tell me how I'm going to split all these things into DVDs or CDs. While you're at it, organize them for me visually, name the CDs/DVDs, create a burn list, and burn them--prompting me to put the media in when you're done.

There are at least 3 programs in existance that fit your description (in part). They are: IView Media Pro, Extensis Portfolio and Canto Cumulus. All three have a "folder watching" option where you point it to a folder in your hard drive and with one or two clicks the contents of your image catalog are synchronized with the contents of your drive. Exensis Portfolio seems to have the best built-in backup schema. However, it won't spread the contents across multiple CD's/DVD's, forcing you to manually adjust the items selected for backup to fit on a DVD. None of the programs will organize the files for you, but they do make organization considerably easier.

Does such a program exist? One that would also name the CD/DVD volumes for me? One that could generate some sort of 'contact sheet' that I could put into my CD holders so I know what the contents are visually?

Again, Portfolio seems to be the easiest in this regard, although IView makes quick work of this as well. IView has the better contact sheet generator that can quickly make a sheet of thumbnails to fit in your Jewel Case. Better yet, when you burn the files to CD/DVD you can have the software remember which disk the files have been burned to. You simply find the image you want from the database, click on it, and you are prompted to insert disc number 27.

[Jredtugboat]

Hi Jay,

Thank you very much for your time and thoughts on this. I will take a look at these programs.

Yours,

Julian