[BostonMACOSX]

Well i've determined that CD's are just now to small to keep frequently backing up to.

My question is how do you affordibly back up your information as to not loose what you are working on.

thanks
BostonMACOSX

[wataru]

Originally posted by BostonMACOSX:
My question is how do you affordibly back up your information as to not loose what you are working on.

Sorry, but for affordable backups, CDs are still the best by far. Unless you need to do terabytes of data. In that case you must be a large company with resources to spend on cost-effective storage solutions. Otherwise, it's CD-R for the most storage for the least dime.

[BostonMACOSX]

Originally posted by wataru:

Sorry, but for affordable backups, CDs are still the best by far. Unless you need to do terabytes of data. In that case you must be a large company with resources to spend on cost-effective storage solutions. Otherwise, it's CD-R for the most storage for the least dime.

I'm sure it is for the least dime....but a 30GB backup takes FOREVER!!

[fats277]

Hey,

CDs are out I'd have to think. Grab a cheap external 40 GB FireWire Drive and Deja Vu (freeware), and you'd be all set.

It's been great so far for me.

Fats277

[Macola]

I use an external FW drive and Retrospect Express for daily (unattended) backups. Works great, especially if you set up incremental backups after the first time.

[::maroma::]

So are you guys backing up your entire drives/systems, or just the essential data? And if you're backing up your entire drives, has anyone had to restore from a full backup yet? Were there any problems?

I too am working on setting up a permenant backup system. I'd love to have it be invisible to me, and have it backup my entire drive. I remember a while back hearing difficulties with OS X and full backups.

[dampeoples]

I use an external FW DH to backup my home folder, and .mac backup for the preferences, etc that are hard to find.

[Mithras]

I backup my Documents to a firewire disk.

In my opnion, the #1 program for backups is iMSafe. Flexible and powerful, but a clean, easy interface.
The author sells it as shareware, but it is also GPLd.
I built a version that makes registration optional, rather than required.

[ download the free backup app here ]

(FYI, I already had paid my registration when he released the source)

[ism]

I backup using RsyncX (see O'Reilly and macosxlabs ) on to an external firewire hardrive. Might as well take advantage of OSX and use all the available FREE unix underpinnings. I backup my user folder and applications, cause everything else I should be able to reinstall relatively easily. Not too sure if I need to backup /Library or /System

Will probably start burning user folder to DVD-RW or something. Should probably do the same with my music and video since they are already on the external drive.

AIT firewire tape drives have got to be the way to go, just need 700 quid for a one.

[rhogue islander]

Hi,

Go to a CompUSA and buy an ADS firewire drive enclosure and mount a 40gig ide drive in it. Total cost should be about $180. I also use one of these enclosures to house an external CDRW so that I can copy CD's on the fly.

I use carbon copy cloner to replicate my OS X installs. I just drag and drop the OS 9 ones.

[rhogue islander]

DOH! double post

[kentuckyfried]

speaking of backing up, how do you back up mail messages?

I would've thought that burning the .mbox files from my user account under OS X would've done it, but something or another got messed up.
When I drag and drop those .mbox files from the cd-r, and double click on them, it just pulls up the mail application instead of my archived messages. *sigh*

I could just select all my messages, and save to a .txt file, but the I'd lose all the attachments.

what's the correct way to handle this? Are the other apps (like Eudora) better at handling this kind of thing?

[Mithras]

Originally posted by ism:
I backup using RsyncX (see O'Reilly and macosxlabs ) on to an external firewire hardrive. Might as well take advantage of OSX and use all the available FREE unix underpinnings.

Incidentally, iMsafe is just a nice Cocoa wrapper around rsync, plus an interface for crontab to schedule the backups.

As I said you can download it free here.

If I or anyone else has the time, I'd like to rewrite iMsafe to use "psync" instead, because that seems to be faster than rsync. It'd also be nice to enable easier remote backups to non-Appleshare disks, like WebDAV, SMB, etc.

* I also backup now and then to CDs, which I stick in the refrigerator to keep safe in case of fire.
* I also backup to a remote Web server, in case the house falls down or something. Can't be too careful when your documents are your living.

[pinlo]

You might try D�j� Vu:

http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macos/16206

It's great for easy, unattended backups. (It's also quite capable of making a bootable copy of your system.) I use it to backup my Home folder every night to an external FW drive.

[sja777]

Originally posted by BostonMACOSX:

I'm sure it is for the least dime....but a 30GB backup takes FOREVER!!

Are you sure you need 30GB of data on your hard drive(s)? Can't some be archived?

It seems to me that you need to rethink your file storage regime.

If you do need all that info on your hard drive(s), then do you update it all regularly? Can't you save some onto "Archive" CDs and make a distinction in the filing structure between data that has already been archived and that which has not?

I know that we're all dealing with far more data and all have greater storage requirements ... but we should only be backing up working documents. The rest should have been archived.

Just my 2p ...

Stephen

[OreoCookie]

CD-Rs, a lot of them. There is no cheaper way for me till now. I guess I will eventually buy a FireWire HD (lots of gigglebytes).

Even then I would still do some CD-R backups.

[CheesePuff]

So a lot of you guys use HDs to back up your HDs? Heh... and what happens when both fail? Wouldn't it suck to be you.

Tape backup all the way!!

[Brass]

Originally posted by CheesePuff:
So a lot of you guys use HDs to back up your HDs? Heh... and what happens when both fail? Wouldn't it suck to be you.

Tape backup all the way!!

Yeah, 'cause tapes are non-volatile and never fail.

NOT!

Whatever you do, if you want SAFE backups, you must have multiple copies in multiple locations. Most people can't afford this and therefore live with less-than-ideal backups.

[sandsl]

I backup all my documents to my iDisk with Apple's Backup program.
I backup applications, home directory, etc once every 6 months maybe.

[chris v]

Firewire drive, drag and drop files, email, checkbook, etc. Carbon Copy Clone my OS X install.

My firewire drive is an exact replica of my internal. If I have a drive failure, all I have to do is restart, and I'm back in business.

My 2 art machines at work have 2 internal drives, set up the same way. Functional copies of OS's on each. We organize our jobs by month. At the end of the day, we just overwrite the folder for the month from one drive to the next.

CV

[real]

When useing ImSafe Do you have to lauch the app or will it launch and do the backup unatended. thats what im looking for. Any thought would be great.
REAL

[real]

Ok one more question it seems I am having permission troubles with IM safe when i manually run the app and run task it runs for a min then in the backup report I see that it saying Permission denied How do you fix this. So it wil run the backup unatented
thanks