[Miguel]

I know there's lots of clever comments and procedures going on in this thread, it's just this one line above, gives me a feeling of uneasiness, eggs and baskets.

Me, I try my best, Time Machine running all the time on the iMac (time machine keeps, hourly backups for the past 24 hours, daily backups for the past month, weekly backups for all previous months and the oldest back ups are deleted when the disk becomes full, which has currently 3TB available) 3 external drives, 1 of which kept off site.

I also use an "Ingestion" backup work flow, i.e. always copy the images to your backup first and then copy from this to the primary location, By doing this, a single visual check of the images on the primary version will validate both the primary and the backup. For more security you could then copy images from primary to a second backup. This may sound a bit heavy handed, but I would suggest it as best practice method.

Also I got a UPS, for my iMac and external drive, I bought an iDowell iBox UPS 550 VA, it just keeps it all safe and sound and works straight out of the box, the iMac even recognises it's there.

Plus the really old fashioned back up, of actual prints hanging on the wall.

Overall that's a sane and easy way to backup. Only suggestion I'd make is to create a clone of your system startup, library and user files on a separate volume using SuperDuper or CarbonCopyCloner. Time Machine can be unfun and very time consuming if you have to recover key startup files. I created a 120 GB partition (essentially my SSD) out of a larger drive for all that stuff using SuperDuper. To recover the rest of the goods that Time Machine has ably backed up is a matter of starting up from that clone drive.

M

[Kerrowdown]

create a clone of your system startup

Thanks for the heads up, I'll look into that, this forums just an amazing place to be.