[uv23]

Hi folks. Well, I've learned a lot in the month since switching but I need to ask a newbie question once again.

Now that all of my eggs are in a portable/more fragile basket, I'd like to do regular backups. I am thinking of purchasing a Lacie external firewire drive. But I am wondering what software I need to do a full fledged backup?

I know there's an application called Carbon Copy Cloner out there but I have no idea how to judge whether that's the thing to use or not, of if I should just copy my user folder over.

It would be nice to have a bootable, full backup so that if the HD goes bellyup in my 12" Rev B or if it gets nicked, I can do a full restore.

As always, any advice/experiences, PowerBook-specific if possible, greatly appreciated.

[guigo]

Hi,

I have a Lacie external d2 120GB and it's a excelent equipment.

It's my backup (misic, pictures, soft installers, etc, etc) and I install a panther to use when I need repair the PB HD....

Is always good have a second drive. You can install drive 10 and diskwarrior, or norton, and make good maintenance on both. I'm buying a third one, portable.

When I change PB, all I do for backup was save my user folder and the primary library (you know there's two), just in case.

Then, I install panther, all the applications again (which is the best - just copy the system to another computer never works 100%) and transfer the files from my backup to the computer....preferences, library, etc....

It's easy...i don't know how much stuff you have, but was very simple procedure...

listen a second opinion

best regards

Guigo

[naknek]

When I got my PB12 in October, I decided I needed a couple external drives - one for data (all those movies, photos and songs can really add up) and one for backup. I decided to get a couple separate 3.5" enclosures so I could easily upgrade my external drives in the future (and take advantage of the great rebate promos that often pop up for hard drives.)

I'm using the internal 40GB drive just for applications and the OS, an 80GB drive for all my files, and a 160GB backup drive, split into two partitions (one partition backs up my internal drive, and one backs up the data drive.) I have Carbon Copy Cloner set to backup the drives early each morning before I get up, and it's worked great so far.

For the enclosures, I just went for a couple inexpensive Triumph Tech models (TT745 for the 80GB, and TT746 for the 160GB -- the enclosures run about $50 each), and I snapped up a couple Maxtor deals for the hard drives. The setup's worked fine for me, and it should make it very easy to move all my stuff over to a new mac in the future. I may add a second backup drive so I can rotate the backup drives offsite every week for an extra layer of security.

[SEkker]

Another vote for CCC, just be sure to get the latest version that's necessary for running with Panther.

[effgee]

Carbon Copy Cloner is without a doubt the best "bang for the buck" backup solution! Also, depending on how valuable your data is (e.g., work files, financial data etc.) be wary of only backing up to (external) drives - they're not that reliable.

here's a (somewhat elaborate) answer I posted recently to a very similar question by iMacfan:

Okie, let's talk backup strategy

For the sake of the example below, we'll assume that you have a DVD burner (CD will work, too) and that you work a lot on your computer:

1. Get three DVD-RW's
2. Download and install "Carbon Copy Cloner" (CCC)
3. Using CCC, make one backup disk image of your User folder. If you have tons of movies and mp3's, set CCC to create several disk images as needed (and get extra DVD-RW's for this backup) it will do so automatically.
4. Repeat this backup every 2 weeks by overwriting the DVD(s)
5. Using CCC, create a second backup disk image of the following folders: Documents, Library, Pictures (if you're a slacker like me and have a lot of files on the Desktop include that, too) and any other folders you have important docs in. Repeat this once a week on Tuesdays.
6. Create a disk image identical to the one above to be burnt on DVD #3 and repeat this backup every Friday

This way you'll always have a relative recent (max. 2 weeks old) backup of your entire User folder plus with the other two backup sets, even if one of the DVD's should go bad (unlikely), you'll still have the second one and no files older than 7 days will ever be lost.

Depending on how much work you do on your machine and how valuable your data is, you can repeat the steps above as often or as rarely as necessary.

BTW, all the DVD (CD) images crated by CCC can be burnt to the appropriate media using the Finder's burn function.

P.S. There are of course more convenient forms of backups (Retrospect + tape drive would be one example) but they're usually quite expensive. Also, I would stick to at least one backup set on optical media (DVD/CD). A backup on an external hard drive is better than no backup, but recent events with Panther + FireWire have shown quite clearly that this is not the safest route to go.

HTH + cheers,

eff

[uv23]

Thanks for the responses guys. A question re: CCC. Lets say I've cloned my machine to an external drive with CCC then for whatever reason I put a new blank harddrive in my PB (due to upgrading or failure). How do I get that computer image back on my new hard drive? Do I have to install CCC on it and then ask for it to load in the image from the external drive. It would be nice to have a complete image so that I don't have to reinstall all my apps etc.

[typoon]

.Mac. is your friend. You can use the backup app to backup what you need to a drive or to Disc. Also with iSync your addressbook and Safari bookmarks are all backed up. IMO I don't see the point of doing a full system backup since you can just re-install everything, yes I know it's time consuming but like I said just my opinion.

I just backup the files important to me and not worry about the rest.

[tooki]

If you have Panther (which I assume your PowerBook came with) you don't even need CCC.

Just boot from the system software DVD (not strictly necessary, but advisable) and when the installer comes up, choose Launch Disk Utility.

Then click on any drive in the list, click on the Restore tab, and drag the PowerBook's internal drive from the list into the "source" box, and the drive you're backing up to into the "destination" box. Press restore, leave it for a while, and you have a perfect, Apple-sanctioned clone of your drive. (A few apps -- *cough*Final Cut Pro *cough* will not work due to being copy-protected, but they're in the minority. And it doesn't affect your files, just the application itself.)

tooki

[uv23]

Originally posted by tooki:
If you have Panther (which I assume your PowerBook came with) you don't even need CCC.

Just boot from the system software DVD (not strictly necessary, but advisable) and when the installer comes up, choose Launch Disk Utility.

Then click on any drive in the list, click on the Restore tab, and drag the PowerBook's internal drive from the list into the "source" box, and the drive you're backing up to into the "destination" box. Press restore, leave it for a while, and you have a perfect, Apple-sanctioned clone of your drive. (A few apps -- *cough*Final Cut Pro *cough* will not work due to being copy-protected, but they're in the minority. And it doesn't affect your files, just the application itself.)

tooki

I do have Panther. Awesome! Can I then do a restore from the external drive in the future, in the same manner but with the source/destination reversed? Are there any issues with different drive sizes?

Also, I'll likely be getting an 80gb external drive and my PB only has a 40 so ideally I'd like to use half the external as a pure backup and the other half for whatever random storage I might need. Is that a problem?

Thanks for everyone's help.

[SEkker]

CCC is simpler, easier, and it allows sequencial backups where only modified files get copied.

I have to admit, I've been living with two copies of my files stored on HDs for several years, but I've begun archiving data to DVDs.

In other words, a backup is not an archive, and if your system gets corrupted, the backup is likely also affected if you're backing up regularly.