A rule to backup my pictures folder to a network share…

Hello I’m still learning how to use Hazel and only really used it for simple stuff. I would like to create a rule to backup my entire pictures folder monthly to a network share and a little confused on how to set this up.

On my Mac I have a pictures folder:
:arrow:

In here I have subfolders from iPhoto, etc. with all my pictures.

On the Network share (Windows home Server) I have a “Pictures folder” share:
:arrow:

In here I would like to copy my pictures from my Mac monthly (every 30-days).

So I thought I can setup a rule to copy the contents every 30-days to the share creating a new folder with the month and year, and copying the files into it. Can hazel do this? I tried but my rule didn’t seem to work. Any assistance / tips on the rule setup would great.

Once i did this and got it working right, I would then setup a rule to remove the previous months backup after 60 days.

Thanks in advance
N00b-Noodler

While I always recommend backup software made for this specifically, you can mostly do what you want in Hazel. I'm assuming you want to copy the whole folder each time?

I think you'd want a rule like the following:

If Date Last Matched is not in the last 30 days
Copy <<photo folder>> to <<folder on network share>>
Sort into subfolder <<pattern based on date>>

To clear out old ones, you would need to have Hazel monitor the network share folder and do:

If Date Added is not in the last 60 days
and Kind is folder
Move to trash

That should work for the most part though you'll need to tweak it a bit for your situation. Note that you can't control exactly when it will run but it shouldn't happen more frequently than every 30 days.

Let me know if you need more assistance.

Oh yeah, I'm using Time Machine for my backups right now. But I wanted to add another level (of backup security) just for my photos and now music folders...just in case. :wink:

This is why I figure every 30 days should be good then delete the old one. Thanks Mr_Noodle I'm going to try and setup these rules like you posted and if I have any more questions I'll post back. Love your Hazel app BTW.

Mr_Noodle wrote: If Date Last Matched is not in the last 30 days

Another general "Date Last Matched" question:

How would Hazel know to move these files, since the rule technically doesn't originally "match" to any criteria? Or does "Date Last Matched" work more like "Date Last Scanned by Hazel", even if it doesn't match any criteria?

If a file was never matched, then the date last matched is some date in the distant past such that every date is later than it (and it definitely won't be in the past 30 days). Hope that makes it more clear.

Yep, makes sense. There is still a psuedo 'date last matched' just so the rule works as expected. Thanks for the info.