Hey all,

I have an iMac and an HP MSS ex485.

I have my entire photo collection stored in iPhoto. I would like to some how be able to "sync" my iPhoto collection to my MSS to take advantage for the amazon s3 backup feature.

I obviously do not want to use time machine. I want to sync the photos to the picture share already on the MSS.

Any ideas? Suggestions? Recommendations?

Thank you!
-rudy

I am not a Mac user but if this were a Windows machine the answer is quite straight-forward:

Use SyncToy (v1.4, NOT v2.0), RoboCopy or some other synchronization tool to sync your local photos folder(s) with the Photos Shared Folder (or subfolders) on the MSS. Schedule this operation to run on a regular basis (I do it nightly) at a time before the S3 backup is to run.

I am sure there is an equivalent tool for the Mac environment...

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....JBick

EX475, 2 GB, LE-1640
PC1: Vista-->W7 Ultimate/32, (D-Drive RAID-5 Array)
PC2: Lenovo Laptop, Win XP Home SP3
2xLinksys WRT54G v1.1 and 2xNetGear GS105 Gbit switch

Looks like Apple produces such a tool, though I've no experience with it. Let us know how it works, would make a good tutorial for the Wiki!

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Alex Kuretz
Remote Notification: Monitoring and alerting for your Home Server via email, Twitter, text message, RSS, push notifications, and on your Mac desktop
Have you tried our Add-Ins?

Alex, I will have to check that one out. I use a program called iPhoto Library Manager by FatCat software.
http://www.fatcatsoftware.com/iplm/
I use it to make sure that my iPhoto libraries are the same between my iMac and MBP. I have not figured out how to do it automatically yet though. I am sure it probably could be done with a script though but, I am not sure. So far I have been pretty happy with this. Of course the downside of this is that it is for the sole purpose of iPhoto and it looks like the other tool could be a lot more versatile.

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Marc

EX475 - 5.5 TB Total - 3.5TB MSS w Rosewill RSV-S5(2TB Backup Pool)- LE-1640 (AMD X2 BE-2350 unstable) - 2GB Ram
2.5 Unofficial Software Update/Time Machine Backup
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24" iMac, 2 MacBook Pros
2 Apple TV's

Cool, I'm not familiar enough with the Mac's yet, though we got my wife a Macbook a couple months ago for work and I've been meaning to get it set up for backups. When I do that I'll also look into sync programs a bit. Let us know if you try this!

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Alex Kuretz
Remote Notification: Monitoring and alerting for your Home Server via email, Twitter, text message, RSS, push notifications, and on your Mac desktop
Have you tried our Add-Ins?

I was doing a little more digging on this type of service and talking to a friend of mine, he is a Apple Certified Technician, and he suggested Retrospect.
http://www.retrospect.com/products/soft ... troformac/

He told me it is about the best backup solution for Mac period. Mainly because of the flexibility. He was telling me you can do whole, partial, incremental backups. You can specify certain folders/files. You can back up to network, attached external, and even tape. I am planning on getting it, at least to demo, to try it out. Just thought I'd tell you my findings.

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Marc

EX475 - 5.5 TB Total - 3.5TB MSS w Rosewill RSV-S5(2TB Backup Pool)- LE-1640 (AMD X2 BE-2350 unstable) - 2GB Ram
2.5 Unofficial Software Update/Time Machine Backup
_________________________
24" iMac, 2 MacBook Pros
2 Apple TV's

iPhoto does not store photos in folders like Windows. It stores them in a single file. You can right click the iPhoto Library file and select "Show Package Contents" to view the photos in folders. But you can't share the individual photos with the media server. For example, I can't view my iPhoto pictures on my Vista machine. Windows sees the iPhoto Library file as a single file.

If anyone knows how to sync iPhoto pictures with the HP Server automatically, please let me know.

I also tried storing the iPhoto Library on the server. But because I have a MacBook, I am usually not at home when I want to view my photos. iPhoto freaked out when it could not find the photo library, so that idea didn't work for me.

I am trying to accomplish this same thing with iPhoto as well as iTunes on my aluminum Macbook. Time Machine has worked flawlessly so far, but just want those media files in the WHS Shares to view/play on other machines on my network.

iTunes is simple because once you add a files into your iTunes library, it organizes ALL them in folders in music/iTunes folder. As of right now, I am just manually copying that entire iTunes/music folder over the WHS Music share. Not the most automated way, but works well for now.

iPhoto is a little tricky because there are several folders where your pictures are stored. You have an originals and modified folders within the library. Not like iTunes where your entire library, edited or not, is all in one folder. You can manually copy this entire iPhoto library to your WHS share, but trying to navigate through these folders on another device is going to be ugly. There is an Export feature in iPhoto. Not quite sure how it works as of yet, but may be a viable option. Will be what I try next.

Biggest problem with this is that it's a one way only sync. You wont be able to update the files on WHS, and expect your Mac libraries to update. Will most likely will screw them up. So - the Mac needs to be the only machine to add, edit or modify these files and libraries. The WHS Shares can only be used to view or play on other devices.

well... somebody should post a request to HP to port a media collector for Mac.

Yeah, I'm trying to accomplish the exact same thing. I want all photos to be stored on the WHS. I was hoping everything could be edited and saved on the server so any updates to photos would be reflected throughout the network. Sometimes Apple really makes things a pain in the you know what.

For syncing you could probably use an application like Chronosync http://www.econtechnologies.com/pages/c ... rview.html to keep your iPhoto library (or your whole pictures file for that matter) synced between your mac Pictures folder and the Pictures folder on the MSS.

I may use Chronosync myself for some things as I do have a copy, but not for the iPhoto library. What I'd like to do is just relocate my library to the MSS and run folder duplication on it to keep a backup on another drive.

I just won't open my iPhoto when away from home with my MBP. You can always keep a local separate library on a macbook. If you hold down Opt when clicking on the app in the dock, you can select which iPhoto library you want. Just select the onboard one when away from home.

The cool thing is that you can just view your whole library remotely using the remote MSS features if you wanted to access them.

I use windows live sync on my mac and pc's it works great and is free. Might be worth a look if you have not yet found a solution.

I use this to sync iphoto, imovie and itunes folders

has anybody tried this method before? Move your iPhoto library on the MMS and then when launching iPhoto, hold down Option and it will ask you where you would like look for your library and then point it towards the MMS. Then from another Mac, launch your iPhoto and again while holding down option and again, point it towards the MMS. Then they both look to the same library so you should be able to work off of the same thing. I know this method works on a shared network so im curious if this will work off of the MMS as well.

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EX495: 3x1.5TB * MacBook Pro * 27" iMac i7 * Custom PC
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Blu-ray: 297

There has to be a good way to do this. I thought the HP 3.0 software was going to be my solution, but it's not when it comes to pictures. I put my iPhoto library in the Shared folder on my MBP so my wife's account on the MBP can access the same pictures when in iPhoto on her account. I was hoping the media collector would keep me from having to load pictures into iPhoto and then separately into the MSS.

I have a script to move files i download using transmition to another folder after completed. I am working on one that will take the pics from iphoto and copy them to the share folder in MSS. I will post the script when done.

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Freedom is not only to do what you love, but to love what you do.