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kman42 · Oct 22, 2006, 07:43 PM

My mother has .Mac so I hooked her up with Backup and a 300GB external drive for backups. That works great for her account and my parents' Shared folder, but my father can't backup more than 100MB with a trial .mac account. I just got them using iChat and I haven't started on iWeb or iPhoto yet, so I can't see having them buy a second .Mac account.

Are there any other backup solutions out there that would be easy to use and free? I need to be able to walk them through it over the phone. For example, in formatting their new drive I had to say things like "Click on the Finder in the dock. That's the blue smiley-face. Click on Applications on the left side of the window." So it needs to be easy.

kman

scattered · Oct 22, 2006, 08:09 PM

If they already have an external drive, get Carbon Copy Cloner or SupeDuper ($30 but worth it). SuperDuper is easier to use and will let them back up everything.

TETENAL · Oct 22, 2006, 08:42 PM

SilverKeeper

kcmac · Oct 22, 2006, 10:01 PM

SuperDuper has a free version. The better feature version has a cost. Best imo.

Simon · Oct 23, 2006, 01:59 AM

/Applications/Utilities/DiskUtility > Restore

Free, fast, simple.

Big Mac · Oct 23, 2006, 02:58 AM

The thing about Disk Utility Restore is that you're cloning the full drive, which takes a lot of time. Incremental backups make a lot more sense. I like having a cloned drive, but after the clone I also do incremental backups with .Mac Backup.

Simon · Oct 23, 2006, 03:12 AM

Originally Posted by Big Mac

The thing about Disk Utility Restore is that you're cloning the full drive, which takes a lot of time. Incremental backups make a lot more sense. I like having a cloned drive, but after the clone I also do incremental backups with .Mac Backup.

Indeed, incremental backups are faster. But IMHO I prefer waiting a few minutes more (especially since my backups get done on Sunday at 3am) and getting a full bootable backup. In the past I have been able to boot from the backup, clone back and be up and running less than hour after complete HD destruction.

Another nice thing about incremental backups is that you can have some kind of version history. I try to get that advantage with full backups by backing up to several partitions. The oldest one gets formatted and rewritten while the other 4 or 5 stay around for a few weeks. That way I can get access to different versions of files from my backup partitions.

OTOH if you don't have the space/money for full backups, incrementals are probably the best alternative.

analogika · Oct 23, 2006, 04:10 AM

Another vote for SilverKeeper.

Free, fairly simple, and does incrementals.

zerostar · Oct 24, 2006, 12:46 PM

A vote her for synk 6

Decimus Software, Inc.

The basic version is $25 and once you set it up you will never have to touch it again.

I have it set to backup my home folder to a folder on my external drive, then it does daily archives of anything that has changed that day, and stores them in a folder I call "older file versions" that is kept by date order. The archives can be compressed to save space.

There is also a feature called "zero scan" that uses spotlight technology to "know" what files have been modified, and a normal backup for me takes about 10 seconds once the first big one is done.

For just $25 or $35 (I would get the standard as it is much more flexible) you can't go wrong and they have been great about updates too!