Best way to set up FFS for archiving original photos

[camner]

My goal is to have FFS make an archive of photos I have ingested from cameras, phones, etc. The purpose is to protect against accidental deletion of source photos (idiot user error) as well as to protect against "bit rot" (no user error, but a photo becomes either unreadable or readable but corrupted).

I can think of two approaches:
1. Set up FFS to copy source to destination, but copy only files that exist on the source that do not exist on the destination. Do nothing with changed or deleted files. This approach means that I will have a destination full of files that have been copied once. Any file that has been changed or deleted will still be on the destination in the original form.

2. Set up FFS to copy source to destination and set FFS to versioning. Deleted or changed files will be moved the versioning destination. This way the destination will always reflect the "current" state and I'll have to go hunting in the versioning destination folder tree for the original file if I ever need it. This could be difficult since I won't know when the file changed or was deleted.

I'm leaning toward #1, but I'd like the opinions of those more experienced and wiser than I.

Thanks!

[xCSxXenon]

I would use method 2. FFS only creates a version when a file is updated or deleted, so finding the most recent healthy copy wouldn't take long, and will typically be the first or second most recent copy. The only way it wouldn't be is if it got re-corrupted and re-updated multiple times, but that isn't really a likely scenario.

The issue with method 1 is that there isn't an easy way to sync the files only once and then ignore any updates/changes after that. Technically, you could set a custom sync where:
- File only exists on left -> copy to right
- File is newer on left -> do nothing
- file is newer on right -> do nothing
- File only exists on right -> do nothing

But then any changes you make (renaming, editing, overwriting, etc) wouldn't be synced to the destination. If you are ok with that, then that custom sync may work fine for you

[camner]

Thanks for your thoughts. Here's the scenario I ran into a while back (I wasn't using FFS for this). The images being copied are photos managed by Lightroom. I was trying to export some photos from LR that were about 5 years old, and two of them wouldn't export. When I opened them up in Lightroom for editing, LR threw an error saying that the image files were corrupt. When they got corrupted in the last 5 years is anybody's guess.

Presumably, had I been using FFS using method #2, on the next run after the corruption took place (assuming I was using "content" as the method of determining differences), FFS would copy the corrupted version to the destination and move the good original to the versioning tree. How would I efficiently go about finding that? If the file name were the same, no problem. But I sometimes rename photo files.

[xCSxXenon]

Renaming files will complicate finding good copies in version history. I guess don't rename until you verify the content is intact, then it will sync a good copy with the new name

[camner]

Sounds good. Thanks for all of your help!