[Ruahrc]

So recently I picked up a new 400GB WD My Passport Studio external drive for my mac. I got it because my 60GB HD is nearly full and I needed another drive on which to store photos. The fact that the drive is FW800 bus-powered and external and small means I can take it with me and still have my photos with me even though I am not at home at my desk.

Anyhow, previously, I was using a 250GB external HD as my computer backup. It is a desktop HD which requires an AC adapter and is not mobile. I had it partitioned up in to 3 parts, 1 NTFS to back up my PC, 1 HFS+ to back up my Mac, and 1 FAT32 that I could use for universally (read: mac and pc) accessible file storage.

With the new drive I wanted to move the Mac system backup to the 400GB external, and then put a duplicate copy of all my photos onto the old external drive as a backup. So I reformatted the old external to keep the 1 NTFS for my PC backup and made the remaining space FAT32 for universally accesible file storage.

On the new drive I have made 2 partitions. 1 60GB HFS+ for system backup and the remaining space being HFS+ for my photos and other random junk. The initial concept here was to use a program like CCC (or Synk, which I used to use) to make a bootable backup image of my drive on the small partition. The problem is that the WD drive won't boot from Firewire (research indicates that this is an issue with their SATA>Firewire interface chip), and since I don't have the ability to boot from USB (non-intel Mac) then I thought to myself that making a complete bootable backup doesn't make as much sense anymore.

Thus, I'm looking for a new solution. I read some about Time Machine back in the day but dismissed it as not being good for my needs at the time. I wanted bootable backups for disaster recovery, and didn't want to keep the HD attached to my computer constantly like Time Machine wants. I also don't see much personal value in the ability to go back an hour in time and get a file I accidentally erased. I back up more for catastrophic disaster such as a HD crash or major OS corruption.

Should I still consider Time Machine? With 400GB on the external which is quite a lot, I could increase the size of my backup partition to 120GB (double the size of my drive) to give TM more breathing room, and just let it go. I still don't intend to have the drive connected to my computer 24/7 but as I understand it now I can just plug in the drive when I want and TM will back up as much as it can, when it can? What if I only connect the drive for a few minutes and it can't copy over all the data it wants?

I admit that using tools like CCC are kind of a hassle and the transparentness of TM is an interesting concept but I just am not sure that it is robust enough to back up a system when the drive only gets intermittently connected to the computer. And recovering from a TM backup requires a reinstall from the OS X DVDs and a lengthy TM restore.

Again, to summarize, I would still go with the full bootable image route except now I think that the effort is wasted given that I cannot boot from my cloned image on my external HD. Thus I'm opening myself to other backup options.

What do you guys think? How do you manage your data backup?

Ruahrc

[steve626]

You've introduced way more complexities than I would guess anyone wants to delve into in these forums. However I can offer a few suggestions:

* "Clones" are convenient to have, but aren't really a complete backup solution. If something gets damaged and then cloned to your backup drive, all you have is a copy of a damaged entity.

* If having a bootable backup is a priority, then get a disk that boots a Mac, the vast majority of them do. You can use the non-bootable disk for use with your PC or to make copies of files (non-bootable backups of files).

* You should devise more than one backup method and keep multiple backups, made at different times. For instance, backup to one disk on Monday and to a different disk on Wednesday. What you want is another layer of redundancy. Also, if a power failure damages both the source disk and the backup during the backup itself, you'll have another (older) backup as a fail safe.

* Another good thing to do is copy documents/files to another media (DVD, or that disk you can't boot from) and store them in another location (guards against fire, theft).

* You've introduced many complexities by partitioning and having different PC/MAC formats on those partitions. I'd simply get a few more hard drives and make it simpler. Drives are very inexpensive nowadays, I see Fry's selling 1 TB drives for about $100 on special.

* If you store your photos or music on a separate drive, be sure to clone or copy that drive also in your backup scheme.

[frdmfghtr]

Originally Posted by steve626 

* You've introduced many complexities by partitioning and having different PC/MAC formats on those partitions. I'd simply get a few more hard drives and make it simpler. Drives are very inexpensive nowadays, I see Fry's selling 1 TB drives for about $100 on special.

I'd go a step further and say that a backup drive should have only one purpose--to serve as a backup drive. A partition on the same physical drive as other drives in daily use is NOT a backup drive, in my view.

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by Ruahrc 

What do you guys think? How do you manage your data backup?

A 2 TB drive for Time Machine, for all my Macs.

All other backups (important data) are on my Dreamhost server via Mathusalem.

-t

[OreoCookie]

A few thoughts: first of all, you shouldn't use your backup drive for anything other than backups. Don't use it for storage or stuff.

(1) I would dedicate one of the drives (probably the full 400 GB) to backups. You can get 1 TB for 80, 85 € these days, so there is no need to skimp out on storage.

(2) Regarding backup applications, I would recommend you start with Time Machine. This solution has optimal integration with Migration Assistant, i. e. you can restore any to point in time that you have backed up in a very simple dialog.

Personally, I use Time Machine for my primary backups and Synk for my offsite backup.

There are a few things you cannot backup well: big monolithic files that change very little. Once Apple has migrated to ZFS (which will still take 2-3 years, I reckon), this won't be a problem anymore, but right now, if you change 1 byte, the whole file needs to be backed up. Standard examples are Entourage's database file and movie files.

(3) Regarding bootable backups, they aren't nearly as useful as people think: they break with a fundamental rule of backups: Never work off backups!

Ditto for clones, clones are a very, very poor backup mechanism. Since you have Synk (which can work incrementally, an option which you definitely, definitely should enable!), this is not a problem.