I've been meaning to ask you for a while, what's your whole workflow here?
What happens once you get back from the trip and you have 2000 pictures (for example) saved in 3 places? where do you go from there?
i.e. what do you end up with when all is said and done? and what are the steps to getting there?
(I seem to remember you posting once what you end up keeping, but I can't seem to find it...)
Firstly, this instant backup system gives me two copies, not three. Additionally, these will be clones of each other, so I won't have a couple of files in one place and a couple of files in the other. (This wasn't the case in Iceland, since from the time your laptop died we had to backup stuff on spare memory cards and on Chaiml's tablet. This left a bunch of files in different places and was absolutely not ideal. But normally I'd have one backup on a laptop and another on an external drive.)
So the workflow is something like this:
On-location backup:1. Copy card to laptop.
2. Copy card to external drive.
3. Verify both copies by attempting to copy again and making sure everything triggers a "file already exists" error (very low-tech, but it does the job nicely).
4. Format memory card in camera to be ready for use again.
Sorting and culling:5. Get home and copy the files to the appropriate folders. Verify from both backup versions that everything's there.
6. Import everything into Lightroom.
7. Start sorting and culling the files using flags, stars, and color tags. Obvious garbage (out of focus, mistaken pictures, etc.) get flagged as rejected. Bad pictures get 1 star, meh pictures get 2, and good ones get 3. A series of pictures that needs more intensive sorting (bracketed sequences, high-burst sequences, etc.) get the red label.
8. Do this process again. Most 1 stars get rejected. 2 stars move to either 1 or 3. Red gets either 1 or 3; bracketed sequences which need to be HDR tonemapped remain red.
9. Erase the worst of the rejects. A picture so out of focus you can't tell what the subject is, so blurry it's just strips, etc. Series outtakes sometimes also get erased at this point.
Editing:10. 3 stars get edited in Lightroom's Develop module. If done, they get 5 stars. If they need further work in Photoshop, they get 4. HDRs get tonemapped and either 4 or 5 stars.
11. 4 stars move to Photoshop and get finished. Back to Lightroom where they get 5 stars.
Output:12. 5 stars get different color labels depending on output (save to computer, Flickr, email, printing, photobook, etc.). If a single picture needs more than one color it gets virtual copies, each with the appropriate color tag.
13. One by one a color is selected and exported as needed.
Redo:14. 3-6 months later, redo step 7. Chances are you'll find a hidden gem in the reject or 1 star pile, and not really like some previous favorites. Once you're a bit removed from when you took the picture, you're looking at things more objectively. You don't quite feel the emotions you felt while taking the photo, so you see things differently.
15. A year or two later, do this again. The advantage of this is that software is getting so much better, that some pictures that were rejected right away may now be salvageable. For example, a picture taken two years ago that was so underexposed it was completely black, could be easily fixed these days.
Erase:16. Only once a few years have gone by do I start deleting remaining rejects and 1 stars. I also erase some original RAW files at that time, depending on the situation.