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How does everyone back up?

W

wowoah

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jul 16, 2003
187
0
Berkeley, CA
Hey everyone, I have a question that I've been thinking about for a while, but haven't found a satisfactory conclusion to. I'm a student with lots of important files on my computer (as I'm sure everyone does) and I'm wondering how you guys backup your stuff? The best way I can think of is to get my hands on an 20GB firewire drive or so and just sync the drive on my laptop to that, which would allow me to keep virtually an identical copy of my important files at home while I take my laptop around. The only thing is that I can't seem to find a cheap 20GB drive anywhere.

Does anyone know where I can get a cheap 20GB drive?

OR

Does anyone have another method of backing up their files that you'd care to share with me? :)

Thanks a lot everyone!
 
Spock

Spock

macrumors 68040
Jan 6, 2002
3,418
7,240
Vulcan
I back up my files on my iPod it works pretty good and I have my files when ever I have my iPod.

P.S I have my personal files encryted in case my iPod is stolen.
 
tjwett

tjwett

macrumors 68000
May 6, 2002
1,880
0
Brooklyn, NYC
I use Backup to keep important text files, docs, passwords, receipts, etc backed up onto my iDisk and I use a LaCie 80 Gig FireWire drive to keep a mirror image of my Home folder using the SilverKeeper app it comes with. It's working well for me right now.
 
IndyGopher

IndyGopher

macrumors 6502a
Nov 3, 2001
782
1
Indianapolis, IN
I guess I am old fashioned... I backup everything to a 400gig SNAP server, and then from there backup the important stuff to a 280gig robotic tape library. I then take each rotation (7 tapes) to work where I store them in a fireproof safe. Retrospect automates the backup to the SNAP server, and Veritas automates the backup to the tape library. I see 2 or 3 machines a day come into my workplace with some schmoe babbling about how they have hypercritical data on a computer or drive for which they have no backup. I prefer being labeled paranoid about my backup solution to being one of the people I chuckle at while charging $160 an hour to try and resurrect data that should have been backed up... The people with no backup strategy surpasses even the people who have years-old virus definitions for their antivirus software.
 
spencecb

spencecb

Suspended
Nov 20, 2003
1,187
215
I got a Lacie Firewire drive...120 Gigs...I only have a 30 gig harddrive on my PowerBook, but I figured if i get a large firewire drive, it can back up this computer, and will also be able to back up files on my G5 when I get it...at least for a while, because I have mine ordered with 250gigs...but, i would suggest the Lacie firewire drive...it works well and has an extra firewire port on the back of the drive so you're not even using up a port on your Mac!!
 
W

Wren

macrumors regular
Dec 10, 2002
114
0
Los Angeles
I've used the backup from my iDisk on my .Mac account. It is more cost effective than investing hundreds of dollars on a Firewire HD. I do have a couple of external HD though. A small one from SmartDisk and a bigger one from La Cie.:)
 
Horrortaxi

Horrortaxi

macrumors 68020
Jul 6, 2003
2,240
0
Los Angeles
I have a couple small files that change regularly but are very important (Quicken, for instance) that I back up to iDisk every day. Calendars, contacts, and bookmarks are backed up to iSync every couple days or whenever something changes. I use Backup to back up my home folder to an external drive roughly every week. Then every month or so, just for fun, I burn a DVD and leave it at work. At total catastrophic drive failure wouldn't screw me up too badly.
 
KC9AIC

KC9AIC

macrumors 6502
Jan 31, 2004
316
0
Tokyo, Japan or Longview, Texas
I back up occasionally on a CD-R, and keep the same files on multiple computers. I also have a few files on an old 640 MB Magneto-optical disk. I would back up a whole lot more if I had an external hard drive and a program. Doing all this manually makes me kind of lax on keeping up.

Frohickey, I got your joke immediately, and grinned as I thought of myself backing up a pickup truck and taking out a wall from a garage. (I don't drive)
 
HexMonkey

HexMonkey

Administrator emeritus
Feb 5, 2004
2,240
504
New Zealand
Originally posted by Nermal
I'm terrible at backups. I wait until I have a problem :eek:
Click to expand...

Ditto. Actually, my hard disk failed in December, and I had very few backups. Luckily I was able to recover most of my data, but it was certainly a wakeup call.
 
blue&whiteman

blue&whiteman

macrumors 65816
Nov 30, 2003
1,210
0
I have what I think is a good routine. I simply only back up important files and pref files by burning a backup cdr. I have a 120GB all one partition that I boot from and install all my apps on. I also have a 6GB that has a 5GB partition with another panther install and a 1GB partition with OS9. I use this 6 GB drive to boot from to run all utilities on the 120. this method seems to work well and far better than running utilities off a booted CD. booted cds are far slower and less stable. plus in my internal liteon burner won't boot any boot disk so to use a cd boot I would have to swap the burner for the original rom. my way is much faster, more stable and easier. my point to all this is that my machine is so stable by doing all this that I feel no need to back up anything but my big downloads.
 
wordmunger

wordmunger

macrumors 603
Sep 3, 2003
5,124
3
North Carolina
When I ran a business and had gigs and gigs of critical files, we backed up the server to tape every night and the IT manager took them home with him. It's important to have the backup in a different physical place--what if the office burnt down or flooded?

Now that I'm working at home as a writer my critical files take up much less space--I can easily back up all my writing and financial files to idisk. I've backed up my photos to CDs, but we'd be out of luck with them if the house burnt down. However, the best photos are also online (in lower res form), so even in that scenario we wouldn't lose all our pictures.
 
M

Makosuke

macrumors 604
Aug 15, 2001
6,663
1,244
The Cool Part of CA, USA
Originally posted by the future
Firewire HD + Carbon Copy Cloner = marriage made in heaven! :)
Click to expand...
Ditto here. In my case, I have a lot of data, but a lot of it isn't really critical (video scratch files), so I can't justify spending so much to back the whole mess up.

So, I have a 120GB FW drive (cheap do-it-yourself case) with two partitions: One for the OS, that I use CCC with--this is great because I can restore from the backup (in case of software failure, which is more likely than mechanical failure for me) or boot directly off of it in a matter of minutes. Then, I use the rest of the drive to back up only the folders I feel I might need to keep around.

I really should be better about keeping at least critical files on a CDR or DVD somewhere else physically, in case my house burns down, but I figure the REALLY irreplacable stuff I do is all on the web, anyway.
 
Hemingray

Hemingray

macrumors 68030
Jan 9, 2002
2,926
37
Ha ha haaa!
Retrospect and a secondary 20GB internal hard drive.

I got a 120GB hard drive a couple years back and slaved over my original 20GB. I use it now as a backup drive for my most important files in my home directory. Now I know that technically speaking, a slaved internal drive is a borderline true backup method, but it works.
 
M

michaelrjohnson

macrumors 68020
Aug 9, 2000
2,180
5
53132
all of my personal files are on an external HD anyways, but several times a year, i will slowly burn all of my files to cds @ 4x speed... it's fun.


i hope to change that with a new computer... sometime this year... {sigh}
 
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