Apple Prepping New Backup Update

[MacRumors]

http://www.macrumors.com/images/macrumorsthreadlogo.gif (http://www.macrumors.com)

TUAW claims that Apple is about to begin seeding a software update (http://www.tuaw.com/2006/11/08/apple-testing-new-backup-update/) for its Backup (http://www.mac.com/1/solutions/backup.html) application to select testers. While unable to pin down what enhancements or features may be in the update, the site speculates that the release may be reliability-related.

We're guessing it has something to do with making Backup's .Mac features not suck so much and having it work more than 40% of the time. At least that's what we're hoping for.

Backup may be deprecated by Mac OS 10.5 Leopard's Time Machine (http://www.macrumors.com/pages/2006/08/20060807161421.shtml), which promises to automatically backup and restore files corrupted or accidentally deleted or overwritten by the user.

[BlueRevolution]

My money is on new tie-ins between Backup and Time Machine. Can't have Apple making itself outdated, now.

[tjwett]

Yeah, I can't really see the value of the backup app when Leopard comes out. Yet another feature of .Mac NOT worth paying for.

[BornAgainMac]

I wish specific information was provided on why it doesn't work more than 40% of the time.

[aranhamo]

I wish specific information was provided on why it doesn't work more than 40% of the time.

I use it everyday and I've never had any trouble with it. In fact, I haven't been able to get Retrospect, SuperDuper or CCC to complete a backup since I got my Intel iMac, but Apple's Backup works flawlessly. If I should be pissed about anything, it's paying for licenses to Retrospect and SuperDuper, and then not being able to get them to complete even a single backup.

[Squonk]

I wish specific information was provided on why it doesn't work more than 40% of the time.

Good Point. Actually I have a question for y'all. Ever since I updated to 10.4.8, backup does not check it's scheduler and automatically launch and start backups - I have to manually run my backups. Does anyone know the solution to this problem? thx :confused:

[bagleyb]

Yeah, I can't really see the value of the backup app when Leopard comes out. Yet another feature of .Mac NOT worth paying for.

Time Machine is going to be real useful when your hard drive dies. :rolleyes:

[SilentPanda]

Time Machine is going to be real useful when your hard drive dies. :rolleyes:

It sure will... since I will be using my external 250 gig HD for timemachine backups.

[justflie]

Good Point. Actually I have a question for y'all. Ever since I updated to 10.4.8, backup does not check it's scheduler and automatically launch and start backups - I have to manually run my backups. Does anyone know the solution to this problem? thx :confused:

Hm, mine launches fine on its own. It's scheduled to run during the night but once and a while I forget to turn on my external drive so the Backup program is still waiting for it in the morning when I wake up.

[mechamac]

"We're guessing they'll make it not suck so much and work more than 40% of the time"?!?!?! What an outstanding observation! Honestly, people wonder why bloggers and websites aren't considered "real" journalists. Sheesh.

[twoodcc]

My money is on new tie-ins between Backup and Time Machine. Can't have Apple making itself outdated, now.

yeah i agree. looking forward to Time Machine though

[Rireal]

"We're guessing they'll make it not suck so much and work more than 40% of the time"?!?!?! What an outstanding observation! Honestly, people wonder why bloggers and websites aren't considered "real" journalists. Sheesh.
My sentiments exactly.

[maxplanar]

I...

[Well, that was frustrating. I just wrote a big rant, and the forum software seemed to fart when I submitted it, and it's all gone. I couldn't be arsed to sit here and write it all again. Oh well. It was all about how great I think Backup and .Mac is anyway]

[weitzner]

i really hope that .mac just gets a revamp that will allow us to use time machine to backup an entire machine to .mac i'd pay $99/year for that. but backup is useless when the storage you have is so little.

[ChrisA]

Yeah, I can't really see the value of the backup app when Leopard comes out. Yet another feature of .Mac NOT worth paying for.

I think they need to combine the two. Time machine is just automated incremental backups. Nothting new there except the user interface for restorring from a set of incrementals. I'm sure the reason the average user does not use incremental backup is that he doesn't understand it. Time machine makes it easy. Apple got this one right.

What .mac gives you is OFF SITE storage. You can backup to a local hard drive but what happens if there is a fire, theft or a power surge due to lightening? Your backup will be detroyed along with your system. OK we all know we should rotate backup sets through an off site loaction. but I wonder how many people do? The idea of .Mac is great what's not is the pricing and the very small amount of storage. It needs to be priced closer to the cost of local storage which is about $1.00/GB per year. If .Mac were $50 for 50GB I'd go for it. They need good integration with Time Machine and reasonable pricing.

[Maccus Aurelius]

At one time, i considered using .Mac, but when i saw Steve Jobs introduce Time Machine on the Quicktime vid, that consideration flew straight out the window. But i agree with the post above about the seriously ineptitude of this pseudojournalism. the moment i read the word "sucks" and then was deprived of a reason why i just thought.."Man this article sucks".

Now i wonder how many people will stick to their .Mac subscription after buying Leopard.

[starflyer]

I...

[Well, that was frustrating. I just wrote a big rant, and the forum software seemed to fart when I submitted it, and it's all gone. I couldn't be arsed to sit here and write it all again. Oh well. It was all about how great I think Backup and .Mac is anyway]

You should have backed it up. Sorry I couldnt resist.

[samh004]

I wish specific information was provided on why it doesn't work more than 40% of the time.

I use it everyday and I've never had any trouble with it.

Same here, it always backs-up to .mac perfectly fine and whenever I need to do a backup to a external drive it handles that flawlessly too. I didn't realize there were problems out there with it, but from the comments so far in this thread it looks like there aren't...

TUAW must just have a grudge against .Mac...

[ereddekopp]

Guys, I am sorry but there are some truly idiotic things being said on here.

First of all, when did Apple ever sell the .Mac service as a full service offsite backup solution? Never is when. The ability to Backup files is one of a list of things people can use the service for currently.

And concerning their pricing, for all I get and all I use my .mac service the price is quite reasonable. I keep to systems sync'ed, I have clients and friends and family easily uploading files to my idisk via the web interface. I host a personal website and 2 business sites on it and keep a backup of my main preferences, contacts, calendar, etc as a just in case...in addition to my local backup cycle.

Concerning Time Machine and Leopard hurting .Mac service...not likely. In the betas they have actually increased Leopards use of and options with .Mac

And concerning the person who stated .Mac storage should be priced like a hard drive one goes down and buys....ummm, a hard drive costs what it costs due to what it takes and the expenses involved in making it. No web storage whether it is .Mac or your favorite web host charges the same as the cost for purchasing a hard drive. Their is a whole infrastructure that must be contained for something like .Mac...which is far more involved and requires constant maintenance. And this idea that you would buy 50 gigs of storage to back up your whole computer??? My friend with current DSL and Broadband internet speeds...do you have any clue how long it would take someone like me with 80Gig of information on my hard drive to back up over DSL?? My current upload speed is 303kb a second. Hmmm. Well gee a backup would only take me DAYS to complete.

There are a number of great things the .Mac service offers with it...I use the majority of them and like the service immensely.

[Mustafa]

My Backups to .Mac rarely happen as scheduled during the night -- I leave my Intel mini in Sleep mode.

But the other night, I shut it down, and guess what? The next morning the mini was on, and the Backup had taken place as scheduled. How does that happen?

Since then it's gone back to its usual behaviour, i.e unreliable.

[pairof9s]

Good Point. Actually I have a question for y'all. Ever since I updated to 10.4.8, backup does not check it's scheduler and automatically launch and start backups - I have to manually run my backups. Does anyone know the solution to this problem? thx :confused:

I'm having the same problem. Backup just takes it upon itself to initiate a scheduled backup at the wrong time. I've deleted the setups and started from scratch, I've deleted the preferences, I've used different backup methods and sources, but all to no avail. I've even had it run a backup (at the wrong time), and then 2 or 3 hours later, ask to do it again!

Not sure what the issue is but my setup is MacBook Core Duo on 10.4.8 w/ latest Backup version.

[bdkennedy1]

I wish specific information was provided on why it doesn't work more than 40% of the time.

Oh dear, well I can be one to fill you in on that. I backed up my home folder using Backup 3 onto an external hard disk. 189GB. After I was done, I checked the image to make sure it was the right size. 189GB. After I formatted my hard disk to reinstall OS X I tried to use Backup to restore my home folder. Nope. I lost everything. 10 years worth of documents, email, videos, etc. Yes the image still said it was 189GB, but as I examined further, Backup had only backed up the folders and not the files. For whatever reason it happened, I will never trust another backup program EVER it doesn't matter what I'm told and I will NEVER use Time Machine. I will manually copy my home folder over to another hard drive.

[ejl10]

Time Machine is going to be real useful when your hard drive dies. :rolleyes:

I couldn't agree more. What we really need is Time Machine coupled with RAID-1 redundant hard disks in every Mac. But I think we're a long way off from that.

[Squonk]

Oh dear, well I can be one to fill you in on that. I backed up my home folder using Backup 3 onto an external hard disk. 189GB. After I was done, I checked the image to make sure it was the right size. 189GB. After I formatted my hard disk to reinstall OS X I tried to use Backup to restore my home folder. Nope. I lost everything. 10 years worth of documents, email, videos, etc. Yes the image still said it was 189GB, but as I examined further, Backup had only backed up the folders and not the files. For whatever reason it happened, I will never trust another backup program EVER it doesn't matter what I'm told and I will NEVER use Time Machine. I will manually copy my home folder over to another hard drive.

All I can say is OUCH! :eek:

[tjwett]

Time Machine is going to be real useful when your hard drive dies. :rolleyes:

Time Machine can back up to any storage device; local HD, iDisk, network drive etc. Same with Backup. How is Backup any better if a drive dies?

[barakthecat]

Backup had only backed up the folders and not the files

uh, your empty folders were 189GB?

Anyway, I have been using .Mac backup since it was released, and while I don't find it to be the world's greatest computer program, it's pretty far from suck. I've restored from my backup a number of times, and never had any problems with it. It will be interesting to see what backup's fate is when Leopard comes out with Time Machine.

[bigwig]

Time Machine can back up to any storage device; local HD, iDisk, network drive etc. Same with Backup.
That would be great, if Backup didn't require you to get a .Mac account in order to use it. Since I don't want or use .Mac (I'm a Fastmail fan) Backup is useless.

[Samurai]

Yeah, I can't really see the value of the backup app when Leopard comes out. Yet another feature of .Mac NOT worth paying for.

I believe that TimeMachine only backs up to a hard drive or server. People still need a backup application that will backup to multiple DVD/CD and .Mac.

[Samurai]

Oh dear, well I can be one to fill you in on that. I backed up my home folder using Backup 3 onto an external hard disk. 189GB. After I was done, I checked the image to make sure it was the right size. 189GB. After I formatted my hard disk to reinstall OS X I tried to use Backup to restore my home folder. Nope. I lost everything. 10 years worth of documents, email, videos, etc. Yes the image still said it was 189GB, but as I examined further, Backup had only backed up the folders and not the files. For whatever reason it happened, I will never trust another backup program EVER it doesn't matter what I'm told and I will NEVER use Time Machine. I will manually copy my home folder over to another hard drive.

Are you sure ? You know that Backup uses a format similar to application packages that basically hides all your data files (you need to control-click to show package contents). Did Backup actually say the data was bad ? Of course one rule in doing good backups is to verify them.

[Anonymous Freak]

What's with the snide comments? Backup works flawlessly for me on all four machines I have. Backing up to external hard drives, optical drives, and network servers (including .Mac.)

[mahonmeister]

I would like to compliment the writer's simplistic and childish writing style with a quote from a guy in the dorms: While trying to retrieve a napkin from a redesigned dispenser he declared: "This thing is stupid" and proceded to chuck said object to the ground where it cracked open and he was able to wipe his hands.

Ahh the power of words like "stupid" and "sucks."

Anywho. Updates are always welcome.

[EGT]

I use Backup to store stuff on my iPod. Emails, documents, Safari bookmarks etc. I also back up some larger stuff to DVD every so often, just to be safe.

It's useful but I'm not really a big fan of Backup. I'd prefer to have an option for something like SuperDuper's Smart update instead of storing incremental back ups.

[myawn]

I wish specific information was provided on why it doesn't work more than 40% of the time.

I'm surprised so many people report no problems -- for me, this has been a absolute piece of crap since the first time I've used it, and various updates have never improved it.

Problems:
- 99% of the time, the backup will stop at the very end with an error that the backup media is in use and cannot be ejected. This is an external hard drive -- (a) it's supposed to be in use, and (b) there is no need to eject it. Hitting retry anywhere from 1 to 30 times will usually clear the message. But this completely defeats the purpose of having automated backup software -- if I have to be sitting at my keyboard to click 'Retry', I could have just done the whole backup manually in the first place.

- The software will continue doing incremental backups until doomsday. It's not smart enough to do, say, a weeks worth of incremental backups, then do a new full backup so that I don't have to keep over 300 backup files per year. Common sense, any serious backup software supports this, and yet Backup can't grasp the concept.

- Recently, for no reason I can figure, it has decided to start doing my
backups mid-morning even though it's configured to go at 6pm nightly.

- Single-threaded. There is no reason why it can't be doing 3 different backups to iDisk, DVD, and external drive at the same time, but instead it waits until one completely finishes before starting the next.

The first one is really the only serious defect, although the second is a pretty glaring design deficiency. Maybe TimeBomb, er, Time Machine will address these issues.

[tjwett]

As a .Mac user since the beginning (when it was free and called "iTools"), I've tried to use Backup several times in an attempt to get my money's worth out of .Mac as my main backup tool. While the concept and interface is elegant, there are several problems. The main ones being that is has been known to corrupt data and it also takes a ridiculous amount of storage space. It will store incremental backups forever and there is no way to tell it to get rid of them on any kind of schedule. This requires a lot of stupid manual labor any time you want to "start fresh". It also compresses your data into a proprietary file format, never a fan of that personally. I HIGHLY recommend ChronoSync. It has loads of power features and the developer provides free upgrades for life. I just let it run its scheduled sync each night and I toss my firewire drive into a fireproof safe. That's about as secure as I can get in my home. I really don't understand how people can use CDs or DVDs as a long-term solution. Do you just stockpile them forever? I have about 200GB of active data at any given time, 80GB of that is just iTunes library alone. And the iDisk is useless beyond small text files and your bookmarks etc. Are people really backing up to burned media? I don't understand how that is any more reliable? Yeah hard drives fail every day, but CDs get scratched, dropped spilled on more. The best practice is to have a steady solution that works for you and get your media into something that can withstand a home disaster. That's about the best you can do I think.

[ssamani]

What Backup does that TimeMachine doesn't:

- Allow you to do backups of different subsets of your data to different locations. Advantage: you can do backups of critical data to DVD/CD-R. If you don't have enough space to backup all your data, you can easily pick out critical data, e.g., your AddressBook without knowing where in ~/Library it is stored

- Backup to .Mac. Off-site backups are a critical part of a robust backup strategy.

- Easy to restore big chunks or entire backups

What TimeMachine has that Back-up doesn't
- Easy to use UI for restoring data and browsing through previous versions of a particular document or item
- Application integration for restoring data

They basically solve slight different problems and there's a place for both. For Backup to continue to be useful it needs to:
- Allow scheduled full backups not just incremental. And in fact allow you to specify that a Backup config is Full every time, e.g. your DVD backups
- Allow you to schedule concepts such as "do a full backup monthly and discard the incremental backups since the last successful full backup"

Neither of those concepts make any sense in Time Machine which has a mentality of we're creating an incremental mirror of your full home directory / drive.

And that's the fundamental difference of the two. One is a backup solution the other is a mirroring solution. I also use ChronoSync for mirroring a remote website back to my machine which I then backup to an external hard drive using Backup (My hosting package doesn't include backups)

Developing a sensible backup strategy, particularly if you're running a SOHO might require multiple products with different emphasis on what you're trying to achieve. There's some data I have that is critical not to loose in case of fire. That needs to go off site and Backup gives me that through .Mac and DVD backups.

[elppa]

I'm pleased some people have had flawless experiences with Backup 3.

I am not one of them.

There are some major flaws, some of which have been outlined earlier.

People shouldn't bury there head in the sand and pretend it is fine - it is not. If MS shipped a product like this they would be ridiculed. It sounds like Apple is aware of these problems and is taking short term and long term (Time Machine) steps to make backup as seamless and easy as using a Mac itself.

I wanted to backup a FileMaker Database to iDisk everyday.

Sometimes, even though the database had changed, backup, in it's wisdom, decided it hadn't, and didn't backup any files to do with the database.

As myawn pointed out, giving an error saying "Backup has failed" is a stupid way to deal with the problem of running out of capacity.

Lastly how on earth are you meant to work out that to retrive a CD/DVD backup of multiple disks you have to put in the last disk first.* Otherwise you get another "helpful" error like "Backup file could not be read".

Serious panic set in when until I discovered this "feature". This is the kind of thing it should tell you after backing up.

"Your backup is now complete. As your backup spans multiple disks, to recover the files you have just backed up, you must enter the last CD".

*I am very grateful to whoever it was on the Backup Discussion Forum (http://discussions.apple.com/forum.jspa?forumID=956) who pointed this out.

[daver969]

I'm surprised so many people report no problems -- for me, this has been a absolute piece of crap since the first time I've used it, and various updates have never improved it.


I have to agree, in my experience Backup has been worthless to me. I abandoned it when it failed to restore my data after a hard drive failure. The backup files were there, and I started the restoring process, but for some reason the program couldn't finish. Rather than hunting through the dozens of incremental files to reconstruct all my data, luckily I was able to recover most of it off the original drive. So even though Backup *appeared* to be saving my data ultimately it was useless.

The other thing that bugged me was the inflexibility. As far as I could tell, all you could do were the incremental backups, which gradually ate away all of your iDisk space until you had to delete them and start fresh. Ugh, that was a pain.

I wanted to like Backup, it was part of the reason I bought .Mac, but it turned out to be pretty poor. When I heard about Time machine it made sense why so little effort was put into Backup (apologies to the people who did work on it, I'm sure they did their best, but it wasn't enough): Backup seems to have been a stop-gap solution.

[elppa]

I think no solution would have been better than a half baked one. Apple should have let people use the 3rd party solutions until they had finished with Time Machine.

If someone thinks files are being backed up (and the app is telling them backup has been successful) and then find that they can't restore those files, then that is unacceptable.

[daver969]

As a .Mac user since the beginning (when it was free and called "iTools"), I've tried to use Backup several times in an attempt to get my money's worth out of .Mac as my main backup tool. While the concept and interface is elegant, there are several problems. The main ones being that is has been known to corrupt data and it also takes a ridiculous amount of storage space. It will store incremental backups forever and there is no way to tell it to get rid of them on any kind of schedule. This requires a lot of stupid manual labor any time you want to "start fresh". It also compresses your data into a proprietary file format, never a fan of that personally. I HIGHLY recommend ChronoSync. It has loads of power features and the developer provides free upgrades for life. I just let it run its scheduled sync each night and I toss my firewire drive into a fireproof safe. ...

Yeah, what he said! (Especially about Chronosync)

[ptasker]

Having read all this I am wondering whether .mac membership was right for me. Still having paid for it I wanted to use the Backup facility. I downloaded it to my iBook and had a play. I decided it seemed OK for what I wanted so wanted to download to my G5 so to arrange backups to external HD.

Unfortunately I can only download a trial version (limit 100mb per backup) which is no good for me. As I have paid for .mac can I take it off the iBook and download the full version to the G5?

Alternatively, having read all this shall I just not bother and back up either manually or using one of the downloads mentionned ?

Only looking to backup iTunes and iPhoto.

:confused: