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Backup Solution for OSX
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Junior Member
Join Date: Jan 2003
Location: Dartmouth College, NH
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Howdy.
I just purchased a 120gb harddrive to backup my 12" AlBook. Now I need to find
a) a cheap firewire enclosure with an open firewire port. Any suggestions? Do most enclosures have this?
b) the right software to do automatic weekly, if not daily, backups. Are the open-source solutions good, carbon copy cloner or psync for example? What do the commercial offers have that these don't?
Thanks,
KStor
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Registered User
Join Date: Oct 2003
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b) the right software to do automatic weekly, if not daily, backups. Are the open-source solutions good, carbon copy cloner or psync for example?
The simple classic unix solution (and what's built-into OS X) is to set up your crontab to run some small homemade shell script that tar's up the stuff you want backed-up and copies it to your other drive.
Whether you go that way depends on how fun you consider the prospect of learning: how cron works, how to write a simple bash script, and learning a few more unix commands like tar, cp, rm,...
Dunno what folks recommend as a GUI tool though.
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Mac Elite
Join Date: Dec 2001
Location: Atlanta, GA, USA
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Retrospect is THE backup program for OSX. It's very nice, and supports all sorts of things that a good backup utility should.
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Mac Pro 2x 2.66 GHz Dual core, Apple TV 160GB, two Windows XP PCs
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Junior Member
Join Date: Jan 2003
Location: Dartmouth College, NH
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Since I have a lot of extra space on the harddrive, I'd really like it to be a full backup, restorable and bootable. So I guess that's another requirement for the software: that it should allow for the backups to be easily restored.
Also, Arkham, has Retrospect been aquafied and updated for Panther?
KStor
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Clinically Insane
Join Date: Mar 2001
Location: yes
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Probably the best free solution I can think of is using Diskutil (the command line Disk Utility) to make an image of your drive (assuming you'd want to automate this via cron), and using ASR (also command line) to restore from this image. Works very well.
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Addicted to MacNN
Join Date: Mar 2001
Location: Seattle, WA
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Originally posted by Arkham_c:
Retrospect is THE backup program for OSX. It's very nice, and supports all sorts of things that a good backup utility should.
except it does not work with superdrives.   
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The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it always to be kept alive.
- Thomas Jefferson, 1787
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Mac Elite
Join Date: Nov 2001
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Originally posted by Arkham_c:
Retrospect is THE backup program for OSX. It's very nice, and supports all sorts of things that a good backup utility should.
Yuck.
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Mac Elite
Join Date: Nov 2001
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Offline
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Originally posted by johnMG:
b) the right software to do automatic weekly, if not daily, backups. Are the open-source solutions good, carbon copy cloner or psync for example?
The simple classic unix solution (and what's built-into OS X) is to set up your crontab to run some small homemade shell script that tar's up the stuff you want backed-up and copies it to your other drive.
Whether you go that way depends on how fun you consider the prospect of learning: how cron works, how to write a simple bash script, and learning a few more unix commands like tar, cp, rm,...
Dunno what folks recommend as a GUI tool though.
Be careful with this -- be aware the OS X unix utilities (cp, tar, etc.) are not aware of resource forks -- if you use them, the resource forks will be stripped. Better to use 'ditto' or 'CpMac" from the command line.
.Mac backup is pretty decent with the 2.0 release for data/home directory backup. It's not for full system backup (CCC would work fine for that).
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Professional Poster
Join Date: Jan 2002
Location: London, UK
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Offline
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Originally posted by kstor:
Howdy.
I just purchased a 120gb harddrive to backup my 12" AlBook. Now I need to find
a) a cheap firewire enclosure with an open firewire port. Any suggestions? Do most enclosures have this?
KStor
A few places to look for enclosures are FireWire depot.com, FireWire Direct.com and e.g. OWC. Most enclosures will come with at least two FireWire ports so one will be left open for other attachments.
I've bought from both FW depot and FW direct (which as an overseas customer was a hairier experience than it otherwise would be...) and have no complaints about either.
HTH
Btw, I don't know how to use it, or if it even generates bootable volumes, but Panther's Disk Utility has a Backup/Restore function built-in.
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Mac Elite
Join Date: Dec 2001
Location: Atlanta, GA, USA
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Offline
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Originally posted by kstor:
Also, Arkham, has Retrospect been aquafied and updated for Panther?
Announced today:
Dantz Development Corp. today announced Retrospect 6.0, the latest version of its backup and restore software. Version 6.0 is now compatible with Power Mac G4 and G5 computers running Mac OS X "Panther," backs up Xserve RAIDs hosting multiple terabytes of data, and supports SCSI and Fibre Channel tape libraries. It is expected to be available as an electronic download on January 26. Pricing starts are $130 for the full Desktop version.
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Mac Pro 2x 2.66 GHz Dual core, Apple TV 160GB, two Windows XP PCs
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Dedicated MacNNer
Join Date: Apr 2003
Location: Detroit, MI
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Offline
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how much did you pay for that 120 GB HD?
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Junior Member
Join Date: Jan 2003
Location: Dartmouth College, NH
Status:
Offline
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I'm going on a cheapo budget here, what with being a college student.
Thus:
a) $130 for Retrospect is a bit steep. How do open-source/shareware products compare? (Carbon Copy Cloner, Psynx, Deja Vu)
b) $100+ for the enclosure is also a bit steep. Anyone see anything wrong with this one?
c) After rebates, the HD is going to end up costing $60. Sweet deal at ¢50/GB, and all the more reason to keep the enclosure and software cheap.
KStor
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Clinically Insane
Join Date: Mar 2001
Location: yes
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Originally posted by kstor:
[B]I'm going on a cheapo budget here, what with being a college student.
Thus:
a) $130 for Retrospect is a bit steep. How do open-source/shareware products compare? (Carbon Copy Cloner, Psynx, Deja Vu)
As far as I know, CCC is just a front-end to ASR, which is built into Panther's Disk Utility and command line equivilent (diskutil).
The open source equivilent solutions are more than capable, in fact many of these utilities are probably just front ends for these. Retrospect is great for backing up to tape drives and doing things that the open source utilities won't.
I'd plan on using one of these, many of them have GUIs you can use if you don't want to mess with the command line.
My recommendation would be to use Disk Utility at least as a starting place.
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Mac Enthusiast
Join Date: Apr 2001
Location: Rochester, MN USA
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Offline
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On hold with Dantz (Retrospect) now.
Have been waiting for them to fix their software so it will work. Have two different servers and two different tape backups. Both are failing differently (but failing non the less)
For a single user backing up to an external drive, I highly suggest using DataBackup by Prosoft
http://www.prosofteng.com/products/data_backup.php
It's easy and it works. (but it's not cheap $46 at PCmall) It used to be cheaper.
http://www.pcmall.com/pcmall/shop/de...sp?dpno=354710
At the moment I am not happy with Retrospect
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