Luminoir

On a mac, rsync is already built in, so the core functionality is already in the system.

There are a number of GUI frontends around that help make this more user friendly, but most of them make you pay for what is essentially a juiced up copy and file difference comparison tool. Unless the sync frontend offers advanced features like complex rule based scheduling, watch folder triggering and versioning, you are getting ripped off.

Just use terminal, I’m not a linux geek but it’s not really as hard as it seems.

the command is
rsync -avr --progress --exclude '*Render Files*' --delete /your/source/directory/ /your/destination/directory/

I’ll break it down for you

rsync

is the command that is being run

-avr

are switches that specify how the command works

a= archive (so files are copied with the same settings/permissions on the destination as the source)

v= verbose (so you have detailed error messages if any)

r= recursive (so files within folders are also copied)

--progress

so you know the status of the backup and which file is currently being copied

--exclude

so you can exclude folders that don’t need to be backed up

'*Render Files*'

because folders like Audio Render Files and Render Files have a space between them, we enclose them within ‘ so that the command does not interpret the space as a cue to look for the next “switch”.

The * is a wildcard operand which means all files and folders which contain the phrase ‘Render Files’ will be ignored, regardless of what is behind or in front of the phrase itself. The location of the * indicates whether the wildcard applies before or after the phrase.

example

‘*Render Files’ will select Audio Render Files but not Render Files for GFX

‘Render Files*’ will select Render Files for GFX but not Audio Render Files

--delete

This makes the backup a direct mirror of the source at the time of the backup. For example your source contains 2 folders, Project Runway and Drag Race. You finish the Project Runway project and trash the folder.

if --delete is enabled, the backup will also delete Project Runway from the destination, hence the term direct mirror; your files lost on the source will also disappear from the backup. If you want it to retain files, then do not include --delete.

Bear in mind that if --delete is not enabled, if you move files around on your source in between backups you may end up with multiple copies of the same files in their old and new locations.

For example, you had your still files together with your video files when you first backed up, and you’ve now organized them into a folder. If --delete is not enabled, your backup will have the stills together with the video files as per the first backup, AND the new folder with the stills that you organized; you would have duplicates of the same stills in two locations.

That can get messy, so to be safe, rsync without --delete, but when your source folder is organized exactly the way you want, add --delete so the correct/organized version is mirrored and the extra/misplaced files are deleted.

An easier way to get your directory locations into the terminal is to drag the folder into the terminal, the full address of the folder will show up.

It will look like this /Volumes/YOUR_HD_NAME/yourfolders/

It makes a difference whether there is a / at the end of the folder name or not. Test this command on a folder with a few text files to see what happens and get a feel of it before you use it on your large video files.

You can also download Cronnix which can help you schedule this to run automatically based on time triggers.

You can also backup to another machine on the network, but the instructions for that delve into ssh-key-authentication. I can provide the instructions if you want those, just leave a comment if that is the case.