Question: I’ve been using Photo Backup for a while and now my computer crashed. What do I do to restore things and keep doing my backup?

Answer:
I recommend that you download the recent version of Photo Backup from our download page. If you need to, you can have your purchase receipt automatically resent to your email address using the support page.

Start up Photo Backup. Use the startup wizard to create a new archive and tell it where your photos are. If your photos were deleted, don’t worry, you’ll get them from the backup DVDs.

You can save some time by manually selecting the folder where you’ve placed all your photos to avoid Photo Backup scanning your system to find that out.

After you’ve set up your archive from scratch, Photo Backup should report the number of photos you have and tell that they all need backup. Now, click on the ‘Archive Setting’ button on the toolbar and select the ‘manage archive’ tab. Insert your backup DVDs and select ‘Scan existing backup’ (once per DVD). Photo Backup should go through your backup and learn which files are already on archive. This process will take a while, as Photo Backup reads the photos from the DVDs and compares them to the photos on your hard drive.

At the end (after you’ve scanned both DVDs), Photo Backup will know which photos are already archived. It reports that on the top left of Photo Backup’s window (Archive Info).

We strongly recommend that you maintain an index CD. To do this, click on ‘Create index’. You can save the index to a CD or a DVD. This will help you avoid the rescan in the future as the archive information is also backed up on the index.

For any help, contact us.

Photo Backup 2.4.0 is the first release supporting MySQL database as archive storage.
Download it from here.

We’re still in Beta for this release, but you can already download and see if you like it.

To use it, you’ll need to have a MySQL server running, with a database setup.
If you’ve already got a server, just add the database (skip ahead), otherwise, follow these steps:

Setting up a MySQL server
Get the installer from mysql.org.

Run it and follow the instructions for local install. In the default storage type select MyISAM. It’s very important, as this is a fast database. We don’t need the functions that other database types offer, in exchange for speed.

Creating a database
Now, create a database for Photo Backup. It’s highly recommended that you use a dedicated database for Photo Backup, and not use an existing one. You should make sure that the database’s default table format is MyISAM.

What to do in Photo Backup

1. Make sure Photo Backup isn’t running.
2. Download Photo Backup and install it.
3. Launch Photo Backup.
4. Click on File and select Enable multiple archives (this would make Photo Backup as you for the archive name)
   Click on File->Use MySQL for archives (make sure it’s selected).
5. Click on File->Setup MySQL server. It will ask you the server’s location, database name, user name to access the database and password. If you’ve installed MySQL on the same computer as Photo Backup, just enter localhost. Otherwise, you’ll need to enter the network address of that computer.
6. If all goes well, no error message should appear. Photo Backup will complain if it cannot access the database.
   Then, save your archive to the database.
7. Click on File->Save archive as… and enter a name for this database.

That’s all. From now, your archive is stored in your MySQL database and will be loaded from there whenever you start Photo Backup. You don’t need to restart the program, just keep using it.

Different functionality with a MySQL server
So, what did we get by moving to an SQL server?
Good question!

• The most important feature is that data is always up-to-date. There’s no need to save the archive settings when you exit Photo Backup. Every operation you do is immediately stored in the server. That also means it permanent!
• You get true incremental backup. If your archive already includes a large number of photos, it doesn’t need to be read when Photo Backup starts. Photo Backup can read only the parts in the database that are relevant to what you’re doing. When you make new backup, this information is added to the database. The entire database isn’t affected by every file that gets added.
• In case of crash, only the very last thing you do might get lost. Any operation that completed is already stored in the database. If you burn multiple discs, the database updates after every one.

We truly hope you enjoy this new feature. If you have any ideas, or need any help, let us know.

Photo Backup 2.3.4, released on March 16th 2006, fully supports Adobe DNG and PSD files – making it an ideal choice for professional photographers and digital artists.

Digital Negative is a relatively new photo format from Adobe. The idea is simple and effective – combine the quality of RAW photos, with the information needed to process photos and produce true colors.
Until recently, professional photographers had to make a compromise. They could either use compressed photos with correct colors and white balance, but with compression loses; or they could store images in RAW sensor formats, but without the color balance information. Using Adobe’s DNG format, photographers can now save accurate photos, along with the sensor’s color balance information.

Photo Backup now archives DNG files and produces highly accurate thumbnails for those photos. So now, you can create a searchable index for all your DNG files, and keep track of your DNG archive.

In this release, Photo Backup’s PSD reader was upgraded to support all color mapping options of recent Photo Shop versions. So now, if you use Photo Shop to process and enhance your digital photos, you can also count on Photo Backup to maintain your work in the archive.

To download the recent version of Photo Backup, including these features, please visit:
Photo Backup’s download page