For those that don’t know, rsync rules. My photography workflow starts with a script I wrote to copy the files from my memory card (I use Linux here) to a directory structure on my local box. That script then rsyncs that directory structure over to my server as a backup, in case I lose the drive. Later, I burn a DVD or two.
Recently, I put some Windows XP on my machine to check out the latest graphics tools offered there. A friend of mine had expressed an interest in a particular photo, so I was going to try giving it a nice edit job and print him off a copy. So I mounted my backup drive via Samba and went searching for it within Picasa and RawShooter Essentials. I found the series of photos quickly, but the particular one I wanted wasn’t there. Strange I thought, there aren’t even any missing files. The sequence is complete.
Back into Linux to get the exact file name from my Working directory. That same filename existed on my backup server, but was a totally different image. Checking closer, I found another file with the same name, but with a ~ on the end. (This is why Picasa and RSE didn’t see it, wrong extension). I renamed it in a temp directory and sure enough, it was the photo I was looking for. This image did NOT exist on my local drive in it’s original RAW form, and only existed in my backup set because rsync made a backup of the original before it copied over top of it. For some reason, my camera had decided to not count 4 shots I had taken and used the filenames over again, even though the shots were fine. I suspect I had battery troubles around this time.
So, lesson learned. Rsync kicks ass.
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