How do you backup your metadata?

[dgood]

Looking to see what people think the best OR most efficient OR most thorough ways of backing up your image metadata is.
Do you prefer MIE files, sidecar backups and if so, do you backup *.xmp or *.exif? Perhaps you dump everything into a giant CSV?
What do you guys and girls do?

[StarGeek]

I don't take time to extract and backup just the metadata.  I just backup the image files themselves.

[Alan Clifford]

What's the logic behind backing up the metadata rather than backing up the images?

[Phil Harvey]

It depends on the type of file.  For JPEG files I would recommend EXV format since this format is essentially a JPEG without the image.  For original TIFF-based RAW files I usually use EXIF format.  The problem with MIE format is lack of support by anything other than ExifTool.

- Phil

[dgood]

@Alan -
That's a very reasonable question. First point of clarification: I do backup image files. This is in addition to, not in lieu of backing up image files.
I have been spending a lot of time moving old digital images from the 2000-2009 years. Some of that image metadata is in tact, but for most of the images, the associated metadata has been stripped. I believe this is from the images having been transferred to/from multiple computers over the years.
Backing up just the metadata is a lightweight way to ensure the integrity of important aspects of the file outside of image data (description, gps, datetime, keywords, etc.).
To restore or replace the metadata from the raw/jpeg image backups would mean breaking out the external drives and putting those image backups at risk since they are being used. Just backing up the metadata is something you can do (which doesn't require nearly as much disc storage) without risking the image backups, themselves.
Hope this is helpful and happy to answer questions.

[Alan Clifford]

Sounds reasonable.   But it does indicate that rather dodgy "helpful" programs have been used for backups rather than simple cp or rsync.  If programs are gratuitously stripping metadata,  one wonders what they are doing to the actual images.