[hart]

I've combed through this forum for info on what everyone's doing to backup in OSX and still feel at a loss.

I'm probably in the middle for computer skills generally so I'm looking for a moderately accessible system to backup plus I don't want to spend an arm and a leg. In OS9 I've been using Synchronize! to copy my entire HD to two external firewire HDs (in theory I take one HD off-site so it's safe in case of disaster). I do periodic full backups to CD too. I still have an upgradable license for Synchronize so there is some advantage to using it but I don't know if it functions well in X. Any feedback? It also appears that I have to get Synchronize Pro (a much bigger chunk of money) to backup everything and I really want to back up everything, not just my home folder. I have a superdrive and an external cd burner to work with as well as the external HDs.

What's with Backup at .Mac? The info is a bit sketchy on the website. Does it work with external HDs? Can you back up everything or just some data?

Reading all the other posts it sounds like carbon copy cloner is most likely to give me a setup in which I just duplicate my entire HD to an external drive. Any other candidates for this function?

And what about Retrospect Express? It seems to get short shrift overall from other posters. Anyone using it and likeing it? 3 or 4 years ago I tried using it but found it more trouble than it was worth.

and finally, the idiot question: could someone please explain what's the deal with having a bootable backup set.

anyway, any and all help appreciated. Thanks

Julia

[Miniryu]

I really am probably to the least qualified person to be responding to your post, since my back up plan usually consists of my grabbing chunks from my hard drive and burning them onto a CD.
As far as using Back-up goes, I wouldn't trust it. After the fiasco and lost data that iCal has caused me, I wouldn't bet on the reliability of any iTools for a while, until they have been refined.

[SMacTech]

If your drive is partitioned or you have an 2nd drive, use Carbon Copy Cloner from bombich.com

[lookmark]

Backup (of .Mac) works well. You can back-up to your iDisk, or burn to CD to DVD. It has a nice feature of a QuickPicks section (e.g. AddressBook entries, or all Word documents) though it's still limited. AFICR it doesn't backup to external drive. Personally, I find useful for small backups, and not the whole enchilada.

What I strongly recommend, however, is Carbon Copy Cloner. It's donationware -- basically free unless you wish to donate -- and it's so good you very well may feel guilty unless you do.

The latest version of CCC includes synchronization.

Retrospect Express and Sync! Pro are supposed to be OK (I haven't used them), but sound to me very overpriced.

[snerdini]

Man, if CCC would backup to a network drive, it would be perfect...

[Samanoske]

try psync . search at www.macosxhints.com

[Cincinnatus]

If you want to drop a bit of cash (~$50), you can go the commercial route - Retrospect Express. You can backup to tape, CD, or HD (even across a network). I use this solution to backup user data to an NFS mounted file server. You can set-up an automated schedule, complete with backup rotation this way. You could have the server back-up run nightly, then copy these backups to removeable media for offsite storage (if you need that level of data recovery).

If, on the other hand, you wish to economize, there are numerous free options available to you. Samanoske mentioned psync, but you could also use hfspax (as was mentioned on a forum over at arstechnica) to grab specified files and write an archive of them to a specified location (local or remote). 'hfspax' is available via fink, I believe. If you are comfortable with writing scheduled jobs, you could automate this process via a shell script - to backup any old archives (or just keep the most recent) and create a new archive. You could then schedule this task to run in whatever timeframe you require. Simplistic (you don't get incremental backups this way), but effective and cheap (only requires your time). You could then take these scheduled backups and create a DVD backup of the [nightly, weekly] snapshot.

/cincinnatus

[Sarc]

Toast would be a great backup solution if it had some sort of 'droplet' as Photoshop does ...

for instance my mom doesn't know the first thing about CD burning, so I installed toast on her iBook and I have to do her backups ...

it would be great if you could drag a folder to a droplet and toast atomatically defines CD Format (ISO 9660 for instance), CDName (the folder + current date for instance) and contents (the folder ...) ... so then she only presses Record ...

well just a thought, hope the guys at roxio are listening ...

does anyone know if this can be done in the finder ? via applescript, shellscript or otherwise ?

Sarc

[hart]

Their hardware support! My EZquest CD burner wasn't on their list for a year after I bought it. Now it's on the list with qualifications. Finally. As for the superdrive (which is pioneer dvr-104 right?), it looks like it will work, just not with cd-rw. My external EZquest HDs aren't even on the list.

The hardware support info is full of qualifications and hedges which aren't very reasuring.

I'm still trying to process all the info you all have provided. Thanks for the help.

J

[malvolio]

I use D�ja Vu to do automatic backups. It works as a preference pane, easy to set up and then you just forget about it and let it do its stuff.

[hart]

Lost the first sentence of last post. I was talking about retrospect and dantz. I finally found my hard drive listed in their supported hardware lists buried in a generic hard disk section.

think I'm going for a test of CCC as the praise and support for it is almost unanimous.

j

[Rastar]

Anyone have a URL link to Carbon Copy Clone ?
Thank You !

[chris v]

Originally posted by Rastar:
Anyone have a URL link to Carbon Copy Clone ?
Thank You !

http://www.bombich.com/

His suggested donation is 5 bucks. I liked it so much, I sent him 20.

CV