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tkmd · Sep 20, 2005, 11:15 AM

I guess I am chicken. Any comments from anyone who has used the new version (speedier?)

DKeithA · Sep 20, 2005, 11:24 AM

I have and it seems great on my 15" Powerbook running 10.4.2; no problems at all.

analogika · 12:48 PM

I can't tell you how fast it is yet; it's only been running for two and a half hours now, backing up 50GB of data.

But I believe the final verdict on speed will be, "Excruciating to the point of complete and utter USELESSNESS. Bloody hell."

I will be going back to just manually copying my user folder onto an external drive every once in a while; this is just absurd.

Edit: see my next post below.

TETENAL · Sep 20, 2005, 12:42 PM

Backup 3 does incremental backups which is definitely faster than copying a 50 GB home folder manually to another disk. analogica, whatever problem you have with Backup could you describe it better?

analogika · Sep 20, 2005, 12:48 PM

One simple problem: I told it to back up my entire home folder (approx. 50GB) to an external disk, and it took more than two and a half hours to do so.

Seeing as you have a point about incremental backups, I will back-track a little bit and withhold my judgement until after the first follow-up incremental back-up.

-ch.

alphasubzero949 · Sep 20, 2005, 01:32 PM

It's still not ready for prime time. It's "good enough" for basic backups, but there are still some unresolved bugs. I can guarantee we will be seeing a 3.0.1 release if Apple gets an earful.

The "iDisk servers are busy" message is a known bug.

bighead · Sep 20, 2005, 03:32 PM

This version of backup doesn't suck. As much.

Basically, I was going to write an automator action to back stuff up to my server and to my iPod. It appears, at least, that this will do the trick instead. I'm interested in the incremental backups, but also backing up to the newly huge iDisk. Given, I pare my home folder to below 400MB and keep my photo library under 2GB, so I might not experience many speed issues.

Suprisingly, I might actually use this program.

suthercd · Sep 20, 2005, 03:42 PM

Set up two different "Plans" with one with about 100MB and the other 300 MB in each. Backed up each to my iDisk and there is no comparison between the new version and the previous. Much, much better. Of course, that isn't very helpful since v2.0.2 was unusable. First impression is positive.

Craig

tkmd · Sep 20, 2005, 05:04 PM

Can anyone comment on the first backup? What I mean is that I've used BU 2.02 - the first time I opened the ver 3 of BU it said that I need to do a "transfer previous backup settings" what is it doing ? Any data loss?

chabig · Sep 20, 2005, 05:10 PM

It's just copying over the settings that you had in Backup 2. No big deal.

parsec_kadets · Sep 20, 2005, 05:15 PM

It's taking the Backup schemes (or whatever they're called) in your old version and converting them to "Plans". When it's done you'll see seveal plans similar to "Migrated iDisk Backup". This kept all the settings about what files to backup and which ones to skip. The only downfall I saw was that I had to remove the old destination and add one back if I wanted to schedule the plan. I had to do the same for schemes that backed up to drives that weren't mounted at the time that I performed the conversion (instead they defaulted to the OSX drive). That's pretty painless though. As for how it treats old backup files, I'm not sure what happens since I didn't really use Backup much before today.

TETENAL · Sep 20, 2005, 05:38 PM

It keeps the old Backup 2 files. You need to select "Delete Backups from iDisk" from the Backup application menu to delete the Backup 2 backup from the iDisk.

beverson · Sep 20, 2005, 08:59 PM

First impressions are mostly positive. iDisk backups work great (especially with all the new capacity!). I'll see how my scheduled backups go tomorrow morning. It'd be great if they could run in the background without launching Backup except if there's an error, but I doubt that's how it'll work. Not a deal breaker.

This may seem redundant, especially since I use the local iDisk feature, but I did want to back up a folder on my iDisk to my boot drive. It's all of my current school year's work files and gradebook files. I'm not so much worried about losing them, but I would like to be able to revert back to old copies in case I goof something up. We'll see how that goes. Anyway, setting up that plan was a bit tricky as you can't select your iDisk from the "open" dialog in Backup. I was able to just drag the folder in question into the window for that plan and it worked fine, though, so problem solved.

I just realized that you can't edit other plans while one is running. Which is weird because I think more than one backup plan can run simultaneously. At least the app will respond while something is happening, which you couldn't say for previous versions.

I'm having a similar experience as analogika with my 60+ GB home folder. The initial backup is taking FOREVER. I expected it to take a while, but not this long. To be fair, I'm doing a lot of other stuff at the same time, so my system is pretty much maxed. I will be excited to see how the incremental backup feature potentially speeds up subsequent backups. It does take Backup a long time to count all those files, though, and that looks like it happens every time. Seems slower than it would take the Finder to count them before a copy, but I don't have any data on that to prove one way or the other.

Anyway, it's an improvement to be sure, so there's that. And I have yet to find any real problems or bugs. alphasubzero949, can you elaborate?

alphasubzero949 · Sep 21, 2005, 02:46 AM

I don't know if I'm still under NDA as one of the seed testers, but as much as I can tell you, there are a few cosmetic bugs and others that have already gone noticed on the Apple discussion boards. A few of us are not too happy about Apple's decision to release BU3 in the state it is in.

Cadaver · Sep 21, 2005, 07:34 AM

Originally Posted by alphasubzero949

I don't know if I'm still under NDA as one of the seed testers, but as much as I can tell you, there are a few cosmetic bugs and others that have already gone noticed on the Apple discussion boards. A few of us are not too happy about Apple's decision to release BU3 in the state it is in.

I was also one of the beta testers for Backup 3. I can only presume that a specific release date had to be met, and a few cosmetic bugs were left unfinished. Functionally, it seems to be doing fine.
Interestingly, it wouldn't do an incremental backup to backup(s) made with the prerelease versions - had to start from scratch.

And speed-wise, I've got no complaints. I'm backing up to a 250GB FW400 RAID 0 drive set and it'll do 70GB in about 15 minutes (which includes building the database and other housekeeping).

parsec_kadets · Sep 21, 2005, 10:16 AM

Originally Posted by beverson

I just realized that you can't edit other plans while one is running. Which is weird because I think more than one backup plan can run simultaneously. At least the app will respond while something is happening, which you couldn't say for previous versions.

It responds in the sense that you can tell another plan to start. However, that plan doesn't actually start until the one that's currently running is finished. Until then it has a status of "Pending." Still, at least you can queue up several backups and leave.

Last night I ran two pretty extensive plans. One was a backup of my iLife files to iDisk. This was about 300MB. At first I was excitied. The progress bar moved pretty quickly from copying files, to compressing, and through uploading. This took probably 45-60 minutes. However, my excitement quickly faded. Even though the progress bar was at 100% the status remianed at "Uploading" for at least another two hours! I oberved the network lights on my switch while this was happening and there was still plenty of network traffic to my machine. I wonder if this is one of the bugs the previous posters were referring to. I had started the backup at about 10:00. At 11:00 the upload progress was at 100% and the backup was still working when I went to bed at 12:00.

I also queued a backup of my home folder (about 60GB including music) to my Windows box via samba. I wasn't awake while this happened, but it appears to have been a success and the backup completed at 2:30. I had previously tested a single file backup to the windows box and was able to restore from it witout error. This thrilled me since I had stopped using Backup 2 because this did not work then. You could backup to a samba drive but you couldn't restore from it and the Mac couldn't delete the file (and the PC couldn't delete all the files created). Admittedly, I hadn't tried Backup 2 with Tiger, so this could have been fixed before today.

Randman · Sep 21, 2005, 10:23 AM

I did a quick and easy backup, one plan to the iDisk, one plan to the external hard drive. Both worked quite well and faster than the old Backup.

TETENAL · Sep 21, 2005, 11:28 AM

Backing up works fine with Backup 3 for me, but restore doesn't.

I tried restoring some files from both the backup to the external hard disk and I also tried to restore from the backup to DVD to another place (I chose the Desktop) and even though it lengthily displays "Copying files" it only restores empty folders. Of course without the ability to restore, Backup is pretty much useless.

Does this work for anybody?

ps:
WARNING!

Not only did my attempt to restore some files to the Desktop not restore them, it also deleted the originals!

This is a nightmare bug for a backup application.

parsec_kadets · Sep 21, 2005, 11:52 AM

What did you expect it to do with the originals? If the files have the same name as the ones you're restoring it's going to replace what's there now with what's in the backup. Always create a backup! That is espcially true if you're testing a new backup application. You should then create a backup using your old method (or in this case just copy the files to another folder), then create a second backup with the new method. If the new method fails you can then revert to the old one to restore the files. I agree though that restoring with nothing is a problem.

Weyland-Yutani · Sep 21, 2005, 11:55 AM

Does Backup 3 support proxies (http) because earlier versions didn't and effectively rendered the thing useless for me. I did file a bug-report and was wondering if Apple had done anything about this.

cheers

W-Y

legacyb4 · Sep 21, 2005, 12:10 PM

While incremental backups are good, I wonder at what point do you have to delete the whole mess because the full/incremental files are taking up more space on your iDisk than you would want...

TETENAL · Sep 21, 2005, 12:49 PM

Originally Posted by parsec_kadets

What did you expect it to do with the originals? If the files have the same name as the ones you're restoring it's going to replace what's there now with what's in the backup.

I expected it to leave the originals alone when restoring to a different location. I certainly didn't expect it to delete the originals and not restore anything at all except empty folders at the new location.

alphasubzero949 · Sep 21, 2005, 02:37 PM

Originally Posted by legacyb4

While incremental backups are good, I wonder at what point do you have to delete the whole mess because the full/incremental files are taking up more space on your iDisk than you would want...

This is something myself and others complained about. There is no dialog to ask you if you want to clear out your incremental backups after so many of them and decide which ones to keep. Currently you have to manually - from the application - clear the entire Backup folder in an all-or-nothing shot.

kcmac · Sep 21, 2005, 07:13 PM

I already use SuperDuper and am very happy with it. Backup previously would not copy Applications.

It appears now that it will. I began to set up a complete backup and it took about 15 minutes to do the scanning process. Not too bad. However, it then showed the file size as being 37.9 gigs. That's the size of my harddrive. Not the size of the files on my hard drive. Plus, it doesn't show me clearly what is being scanned or copied initially. What is going on in the scanning process?

I didn't quite trust it so I quit at that point.

For now, I am sticking with SuperDuper. It backs up fast, shows me what it is doing and I know from experience that it copies everything and restores perfectly. Scheduling looks nice on Backup though.

Randman · Sep 21, 2005, 09:11 PM

Incremental backups are better off being done to an external hard drive than your iDisk.

Gee4orce · Sep 22, 2005, 05:56 AM

I don't know about you guys, but backup is one area where I WANT an application to take it's time...I mean, if it was finished backing up my entire hard drive in 15 minutes I'd be wondering how much data it had missed.

alphasubzero949 · Sep 22, 2005, 06:23 AM

Well, here's something to chew on:

All of the attributes related to your plans are saved in ~/Library/Application Support/Backup. If something were to ever happen to this folder, you will not be able to restore your files. Not even those saved to media.

The attributes aren't saved with the Backup "package" file and there is nothing in Backup Help to tell you what to do.

Don't believe me? Make a few mock plans. Hell, try backing something up. Quit Backup and delete that folder. Relaunch Backup. So where did those plans go? Try restoring your backup. Oops.

TETENAL · Sep 22, 2005, 08:01 AM

You can always use the "Restore from Backup" command in the "Plan" menu and select your backup manually. So you don't need the ~/Library/Application Support/Backup folder.

alphasubzero949 · Sep 22, 2005, 03:17 PM

Originally Posted by TETENAL

You can always use the "Restore from Backup" command in the "Plan" menu and select your backup manually. So you don't need the ~/Library/Application Support/Backup folder.

How will Backup know what to restore if the attributes it needs are deleted? It won't work and is an issue among some of us. In my case, it hangs Backup at "Copying Files."

jfischetti · Sep 22, 2005, 03:53 PM

So can i assume with the new "incremental backup" that i'll have a ton of separate files as these incremental backups continue over the course of time. it's been two days and now i have two files -- a main backup and an Incremental.

Too bad they don't get wrappped up in a backup "package" or something...

TETENAL · Sep 22, 2005, 05:08 PM

Originally Posted by alphasubzero949

How will Backup know what to restore if the attributes it needs are deleted?

What do you mean with "attributes"? If you manually select the backup file for restoring then all files are there again.

alphasubzero949 · Sep 22, 2005, 05:44 PM

All of the information relating to plans, backups, and restores reside in that path. If that folder were to be deleted or corrupted, the next time the user launches Backup they'll be presented with a blank window that prompts them to add plans.

Backup Help does not give any advice on recovering from this situation.

There is no way to recover a previous backup because the information needed from the Backup folder in Application Support is gone. If you double click on the backup file you want to restore, yes, the files do appear in the Restore pane, but try to actually restore them. In my case, I was able to hang Backup several times at the "Copying Files" step. If the Backup folder remained intact, the restore proceeded as normal.

Worse, if one tries to use Finder to manually delete the backup files afterwards from an iDisk, they will be presented with an error dialog that "Backup.dmg" is in use. Goliath can delete those files.

TETENAL · Sep 22, 2005, 06:55 PM

alphasubzero949, restoring to a different location does not work with Backup 3 (see my post about it above). That's a major bug! It even deletes the originals at the original place. However, restoring a backup without the /Application Support/Backup folder works just fine. I just did the following:

1) Trashed a folder with some screenshots.
2) Removed ~/Library/Application Support/Backup/
3) Launched Backup 3 – empty plans window
4) Plan->Restore from Backup...->Hard Disk->Selected the latest incremental backup
5) In the "Restore" tab select the folder with screenshots to restore
6) I do not have "Restore to alternate location" checked because that doesn't work
7) Click "Restore Selection"
8) Replace existing items and click "Restore"
9) Wait a few minutes for it to copy over the files
And bang! Everything is restored successfully. So this works just fine.

alphasubzero949 · Sep 22, 2005, 07:05 PM

I'm thinking there's a bug with the iDisk backup, because I now tried as you posted (using the hard drive itself as a backup location) and I was able to successfully restore my files.

Restoring to an alternate location...ouch! I found out what you meant.

This is indeed a serious bug.

kcmac · Sep 22, 2005, 08:35 PM

Great. So what did we dotMac users really get? More storage and nothing else.

Macpilot · Sep 23, 2005, 10:02 AM

Hey guys...

I am confused and a little shocked at the overly involved interface of the new Backup 3.

I set up 3 plans...iDisk, firewire drive, and DVD-RW.

The DVD and iDisk are working fine, I think.

The firewire drive is backing up my whole enchilada, about 90 gigs of stuff.

Previously, in Backup 2, it would just look for the changed files and the backups would take little time. It appeared to just replace the old backup file.

Now, in the shiny new improved Backup, my firewire drive has all these Incremental backups, which I don't need and don't really understand. Now the Backup application tells me it failed because there "is not enough free disk space at the destination" to complete the backup.

What gives?

Is Apple expecting users to have to dig into these drives and manually delete the incremental Backups, and original Backups every day to make space to do new Backups? Weird.

WSKCONDOR · Nov 19, 2005, 07:25 AM

All,
I installed Backup 3 and was using it for a few weeks. Now my hard drive died YESTERDAY in France. So here I am after a morning of installing a new (old) drive in my 12" PB and I am trying to RESTORE. I can't seem to find a lot of information about it though (amybe part of the problem is that I am using an "emergency auxiliary one quarter impulse power computer)" to try to get information. But basically I had to:

-Reinstall Tiger on the new drive
-Install all of the updates for the system (over 100 MB download)
-Install Backup 3.0 on the new replacement drive

now I ran Backup and said I wanted to RESTORE. I plugged in my external firewire drive where my backups have been placed, and I pointed to it. Maybe someone knows better than me, but there are several folders, and the largest is the first (Home Folder) backup-
The rest are all incremantal backups and they are much smaller (as would be expected).
I ASSUMED I only had to select the LATEST backup, and it will be smart enough to go get everything it needs from all the other backups to actually restore my 50-60 GBs of Home folder stuff....I guess I will see when the thing is finished "Copying files.....".

By the way, this is not the last step, as the Backup program makes a SEPARATE set of folders/files for the iLife programs. SO I assume I will have to restore those next, after I get my home back....

Anyone have any more information or point to a good manual, or gotchas with what I am in the process of doing?

WSK

chabig · Nov 19, 2005, 10:22 AM

It sounds like your doing it right. I would recommend you look at Apple's restore instructions in Backup's help. I see that you have to restore iLife data separately--not sure why.

Chris

Cadaver · Nov 19, 2005, 07:49 PM

You should not have to restore the iLife stuff separately if you backed up your whole Home folder.

WSKCONDOR · Nov 20, 2005, 04:53 AM

Well,
I completed (or mostly completed) the restore process with BACKUP 3. I see that in the second post after my last, it is believed that the home folder should be EVERYTHING, and iLIFE restore should not be needed separately...

Well, I did the two restores, but I can't understand why they give you the option of separately backing up iLIFE if you backup the entire home folder.

It wasn't clear to me and DID look in the help for BACKUP, which was (I think) Lacking. I didn't see a tutorial type version either.

In any case, I THINK if I had only restored HOME FOLDER it would have worked. I say this because after restoring the iLife backup separately, the used up space on my "new" hard drive really was unchanged. It replaced what was there by the identical backup, because both were backed up the same night.

Some interesting points.

-BACKUP of course, does NOT backup or restore your applications if you are backing up only your HOME FOLDER. You have to reinstall everything (for me, this is a fair amount of looking through drawers for disks (Microsoft Office 2004, then the updates for that, iLIFE '05, iWork, Toast titanium, Photoshop, plus other apps I have paid for separately -almost all had "updates" as well. This was too much work. I wish I had backup up all applications.

-Because of how some of the programs store the registration information, I didn't have to re-enter data for EVERYTHING, just for SOME things. So some Apps must be storing the info in my Home folder somewhere.

I had used retrospect express and tried a program that came with wnother external hard drive. They were "free" as well, but I guess BACKUP was nice because it is a bit more APPLE friendly and overall, pretty easy to set up initially.

It DID save me in this instance of my hard drive failing. (Of course, it was an Apple hardware issue that PUT me in this situation).

From now on:

-Continue to BACKUP, but don't need both iLIFE and HOME folder backups (HOME will do)
-BACKUP applications if possible (I have to look at BACKUP again).
-Don't leave my powerbook on overnight consistently. Once and a while to catch up backups and sudo periodic stuff.
-When leaving on for extended periods, do NOT charge ipods, etc from the ports. This creates even more heat in the powerbook, and I am convinced that (heat) is what killed my hard drive after 18 months of use.

Any other tips are appreciated.

WSKCONDPR