[ero2]

Which is better? I have all three and just wondered what is more efficient at incremental backups, includes all data, etc?

Thanks in advance!

[CharlesS]

I don't think CCC and SuperDuper do incremental backups at all but rather just do a straight disk clone, so Time Machine is probably your best bet there.

[Cold Warrior]

I used Time Machine for the first time yesterday and was satisfied. It backed up 50GB over FW400 to one of my external drives.

I'm seriously considering a FW800.

[besson3c]

There are a number of backup solutions and technologies. It is impossible to assign a label of "better" or "best" without you outlining what your needs are and what your setup is like.

[ero2]

just simple incremental backups to be honest. BUT, I need to be able to trust the reliability of the product that if I need to restore my computer, I can do a restore and have it work just as well as my previous computer...I know it sounds odd, but I know some backup programs remove files which can expedite the backup process but change the end result of the restored machine (at least I think this is the case)


And yes, I forgot CCC does not do incremental, however superduper does. Nothing crazy I am looking for, just reliable and incremental backups that are bootable and can be completely restored if need be...

[mduell]

Time Machine copies everything (too much in my opinion... backing up browser caches and other temp files is a bit silly) by default, so there are no files excluded. If your hard drive ever dies, pop in a new one, pop in the 10.5 install DVD, and choose the recover option.

CCC/SD/dd have their uses, but for backups Time Machine is usually the way to go.

[Kenneth]

I thought SuperDuper is still not 100% Leopard friendly.

[wataru]

I swore by SuperDuper (which does do incremental backups) in Tiger, but it's not Leopard-compatible yet, so I'm using Time Machine now.

[angelmb]

SuperDuper! 2.5 Leopard compatible is out !!

SuperDuper!

[Kenneth]

^^
You beat me on that. Just read about that on Macworld.com

[TETENAL]

Originally Posted by mduell 

Time Machine copies everything (too much in my opinion... backing up browser caches and other temp files is a bit silly) by default, so there are no files excluded.

Time Machine does not back up browser caches or other temp files.

[SpaceMonkey]

Originally Posted by wataru 

I swore by SuperDuper (which does do incremental backups) in Tiger, but it's not Leopard-compatible yet, so I'm using Time Machine now.

"Smart Update" in SuperDuper (which I use as my primary backup method -- I'm not trying to say that it's worthless) is not the same as what most people think of as "incremental backups": Incremental backup - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[eyadams]

I used to use CCC and Super Duper, but frankly I wasn't regular about it. The thing I really like about Time Machine is that you just plug in the backup drive, turn it on, and forget about it.

Oh, and the nifty animation when retrieving deleted files. That's cool.

[wataru]

Originally Posted by SpaceMonkey 

"Smart Update" in SuperDuper (which I use as my primary backup method -- I'm not trying to say that it's worthless) is not the same as what most people think of as "incremental backups": Incremental backup - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Oops, you're right.

Incidentally, SuperDuper was recently updated to 2.5(?) which is fully Leopard-compatible.

[OreoCookie]

Synk also has `smart and incremental updates', but to be honest, none of it works as well as Time Machine does. It's not as flexible (you can backup to only one drive, for instance), but it does the job -- very well, reliably and transparently.

[Peter]

retrospect has a very powerful incremental backup system.

[Krusty]

Originally Posted by eyadams 

I used to use CCC and Super Duper, but frankly I wasn't regular about it. The thing I really like about Time Machine is that you just plug in the backup drive, turn it on, and forget about it.

Oh, and the nifty animation when retrieving deleted files. That's cool.

Ditto. I like and have used SuperDuper and CCC. But now with Time Machine, I set and forget and don't have to concern myself with how up to date my latest backup is.

[cgc]

Synk Professional

[Too Artificial]

Synchronize Pro X is another tool, and it can be configured extensively.

[ero2]

okay, so...now I am looking for a program that does two way syncing... i.e. I have two or more computers, and a my documents folder on each. If I change something on A, B, and C, I want it to analyze files and sync the new ones, delete the old ones, and it has to be able to delete folders too...I tried synchronize pro x on a friend's computer, and LOVED it, BUT it is very expensive (around 100 if I recall)

any other ideas?

And thanks everybody, just bought a new 500gig FW 800 drive, and backups with time machine are a breeze

[turtle777]

For regular backup purposes, I can not think of ANY reason not to use Time Machine

I fiddled so much with backups in the last years, for the first time, I feel truly secure and I know restoring my files will be a breeze.

-t

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by ero2 

okay, so...now I am looking for a program that does two way syncing... i.e. I have two or more computers, and a my documents folder on each. If I change something on A, B, and C, I want it to analyze files and sync the new ones, delete the old ones, and it has to be able to delete folders too...I tried synchronize pro x on a friend's computer, and LOVED it, BUT it is very expensive (around 100 if I recall)

any other ideas?

And thanks everybody, just bought a new 500gig FW 800 drive, and backups with time machine are a breeze

Rsync is a great free (open source) and powerful sync tool, but it requires some comfort on the Unix command line. Are you comfortable enough working in a Unix environment?

[Sherman Homan]

By default it backs up way too much, but Time Machine can be easily set to exclude certain folders. I used Chronosync in Tiger for years and it worked great.

[LeeG]

I have been using CCC for a few weeks now, and I have it set to do a scheduled backup every night around 1am. The computer wakes from sleep, it compares the hard drive to the backup drive, and syncs them. As far as I could tell, it does not erase and recopy the entire drive, just adjusts any changed files - which is "incremental" in my book. The end result is I have a clone of my hard drive at all times, bootable, and detachable from my mac. If the internal HD went down, I could boot from the external, and it would be a seamless transition, or take that HD to another mac, and continue working like nothing happened. Sure I lose the days work, but I dont work at home, so not much lost, and time machine will grow in size and keep stuff I dont need, and I cant boot from it, I need to "restore" from it if something happened, which is very time consuming, and requires another drive to restore to.

The idea of plugging this drive into ANY mac, and restarting from it, and having my EXACT system immediately available is priceless - no downtime. And its automated. CCC has worked out great so far- I have not seen the advantage to TM-

L

[OreoCookie]

It's not incremental, because you don't have older copies of your data -- that pretty much defeats the purpose of a backup. Once you have synced a faulty harddrive with your backup, your backup contains faulty information as well. This is a very bad way to do backups!

With Time Machine (or other, real incremental backups), you can restore older files and go `back in time'. In this way Time Machine is a substantial over your simple CCC solution.

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by besson3c 

Rsync is a great free (open source) and powerful sync tool, but it requires some comfort on the Unix command line. Are you comfortable enough working in a Unix environment?

I have used a pacthed version of rsyn that retains the a resource fork and Finder metadata, for backups to non HFS+ destinations (e.g. FTP server). It works, but if you try to stitch it back together, it's tedious as heck.

rsync+hfsmode

-t

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by OreoCookie 

It's not incremental, because you don't have older copies of your data -- that pretty much defeats the purpose of a backup. Once you have synced a faulty harddrive with your backup, your backup contains faulty information as well. This is a very bad way to do backups!

With Time Machine (or other, real incremental backups), you can restore older files and go `back in time'. In this way Time Machine is a substantial over your simple CCC solution.

Exactly.

If you want a clone of your drive you'd be better up setting up software RAID-1. I don't see the point of scheduled cloning.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by turtle777 

I have used a pacthed version of rsyn that retains the a resource fork and Finder metadata, for backups to non HFS+ destinations (e.g. FTP server). It works, but if you try to stitch it back together, it's tedious as heck.

rsync+hfsmode

-t

This page is dated 2005. What's the difference between this and the -E rsync option that Apple provides?

[cgc]

Originally Posted by ero2 

okay, so...now I am looking for a program that does two way syncing... i.e. I have two or more computers, and a my documents folder on each. If I change something on A, B, and C, I want it to analyze files and sync the new ones, delete the old ones, and it has to be able to delete folders too...I tried synchronize pro x on a friend's computer, and LOVED it, BUT it is very expensive (around 100 if I recall)

any other ideas?

Like I said earlier, Synk Professional which is different from Synchronize Pro.

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by besson3c 

This page is dated 2005. What's the difference between this and the -E rsync option that Apple provides?

Well, if you use -E to rsync to a NON-HFS+ volume, you'll still lose the resource fork, right ?
-E is only for syncing to HFS+ volumes, but not to FTP or likes.

The patched rsync will actually create two files to maintain the resource fork.

-t

[besson3c]

Ahh.. I missed that part. So what happens when the separate metadata file is separated from its parent?

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by besson3c 

Ahh.. I missed that part. So what happens when the separate metadata file is separated from its parent?

Well, if you want to restore the full file (data + resource fork), you'll need them both in the same directory. If not, you'll be able to access the data file, but you might be missing crucial information, depending on the app you're using.

-t

[besson3c]

Okay, does this work with xattr metadata, or just pre-xattr metadata (i.e. prior to Tiger)?

I'm just a little thrown by the last updated date on the project site in light of the changes to file metadata.

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by besson3c 

Okay, does this work with xattr metadata, or just pre-xattr metadata (i.e. prior to Tiger)?

I'm just a little thrown by the last updated date on the project site in light of the changes to file metadata.

You are asking me too much

In case of doubt, I think it will NOT work with xattr metadata.

-t

[OreoCookie]

I tried using rsync when 10.4 came out -- it just wasn't reliable enough. I came to love rdiff-backup on my (disassembled) FreeBSD server, but if rsync isn't reliable, there is simply not much use for it. Not sure whether it works reliably now.

[Peter]

rsync was fixed in 10.4.7

[besson3c]

It was also Apple's modified rsync that was the problem, the stock rsync has been reliable for ages.

[MacosNerd]

Another vote for Leopard's Time Machine. It does everything it's advertised to do. I used it the restore features a couple of times and it worked like a charm. I even did a total restore (needing to boot off my leopard disk) and that worked.

I'm a big fan of the one stop shopping that apple provides. While no one technology can fit everyone's needs. I can see TM being a very large benefit to a lot of people.

[ero2]

does time machine make a bootable backup? I.E. my internal drive fails, can I plug my external with my time machine partition on it into another mac and boot from it? That is VERY important to me

[OreoCookie]

No, but you can restore immediately when booting with a MacOS X DVD. TimeMachine creates a backup -- and you should never, ever work with your backup drive.

[Hal Itosis]

Originally Posted by ero2 

does time machine make a bootable backup? I.E. my internal drive fails, can I plug my external with my time machine partition on it into another mac and boot from it? That is VERY important to me

Time Machine doesn't provide a bootable volume, nor should it.

If we want a volume to be bootable, we simply install an appropriate version of OSX there, and configure it for emergency-boot purposes. Then we can use that same volume for our Time Machine folder [or another partition, if desired.]

The concept of using an exact clone of our daily boot volume isn't *necessarily* the most suitable approach, when the purpose of that external boot disk is for dealing with emergencies (repair, restore, etc). A custom boot disk -- with all unnecessary "iApps" and such [extra fonts, languages, printers, etc] removed, plus extra utilities added -- is better.

[wataru]

Originally Posted by besson3c 

It was also Apple's modified rsync that was the problem, the stock rsync has been reliable for ages.

But the stock rsync doesn't support HFS+ metadata.

[besson3c]

wataru: I know. I use the stock rsync because I don't care about OS X metadata, I don't use it, as many others don't as well, I'm sure...

[TETENAL]

You might not use it, but the system does.

[besson3c]

what do you mean "the system"?