[Tee]

David Pogues Mac OS X Hints says that if you copy files from the Finder it won't copy the various hidden system files that OS X uses.

To backup your Home he specifically recommends using ditto form the terminal.

Is this true?

[besson3c]

Originally posted by Tee:
David Pogues Mac OS X Hints says that if you copy files from the Finder it won't copy the various hidden system files that OS X uses.

To backup your Home he specifically recommends using ditto form the terminal.

Is this true?

The hidden OS X system files are all located within the root (base level) directory of the system. There are no files of consequence that I know of that are located in your home directory.

There are many ways to backup your home directory. If you need to so frequently, as far as free solutions I would checkout rsync, as it will allow you to only copy the new files, rather than doing a complete dump over like ditto, ASR, etc. will do.

[Tee]

I'd like to just drag my Home folder over to another drive and have everything copied for a quick backup...

[besson3c]

Originally posted by Tee:
I'd like to just drag my Home folder over to another drive and have everything copied for a quick backup...

That should work fine. You will probably get error messages about files being in use, and skipping over them will mean that your dock settings and other perhaps useful (although easily re-creatable) information won't be transferred, but if this isn't an issue for you, this should work fine.

If you are looking for automated backup scheduling, or a means to copy over everything *exactly* as is (via imaging, tar, sit, etc.), this is a different story.

[Tee]

I guess I could use Carbon Copy Cloner and deselect everything except the Users Folder.

If I needed to restore my Home files for some reason, would I be able to drag them from the backup disk back to my system?

[hudson1]

Check out Psync on VersionTracker. It's very simple to use, does the job without a fuss, and is free.

[Toyin]

I've restored my home folder several times in my OSX history and it doesn't copy everything. Most of the important stuff is copied, but I still have to re-register some apps. I figure some invisible files aren't copied. If you want an exact duplicate, something like CCC will be requirefd.

[mikemako]

I usually just log in as root and drag the home folders of the users I want to backup to a DVD or CD, that works fine and since I'm logged in as root there shouldn't be any problem copying any of the files..