Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

back-up advice needed

ero87

ero87

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Jan 17, 2006
1,196
1
New York City
hi friends,

So after reading many horror stories here on MR, I've decided to implement some sort of file backup system for my iMac G5. What do you guys think is the best method for me: I have about 17 GB of music, 3 GB of photos, 1 GB of movie projects, and 1 GB of documents, though all of these are slowly growing. (It's 22 GB total :) ). Those are the essential files that I would really hate to lose in case of a hard drive failure; I actually have 117 GB of god-knows-what used up on my iMac.

Ideas? Most of the external hard drives i see out there are way too expensive/large.

p.s. I don't have a superdrive
 
ero87 said:
hi friends,

So after reading many horror stories here on MR, I've decided to implement some sort of file backup system for my iMac G5. What do you guys think is the best method for me: I have about 17 GB of music, 3 GB of photos, 1 GB of movie projects, and 1 GB of documents, though all of these are slowly growing. (It's 22 GB total :) ). Those are the essential files that I would really hate to lose in case of a hard drive failure; I actually have 117 GB of god-knows-what used up on my iMac.

Ideas? Most of the external hard drives i see out there are way too expensive/large.

p.s. I don't have a superdrive
Click to expand...
If you have .Mac, the Apple backup software is actually pretty easy to use. Use it on my wife's computer and it works well for her.

For a in-expensive backup target, you can get a USB-IDE case and put in a 160GB hard drive. The whole thing should cost < $90.00
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817145125
 
Your backup solution has to be as quick and painless as possible, or else you won't do it, or at least not for long. Human nature. ;) Therefore you should probably get some kind of external hard drive. It doesn't have to be expensive.

--Eric
 
get an external hard drive (some of the moderately-sized LaCies are even going for under $100 some places) and backup your stuff there. the most basic backup is copying and pasting your home folder to the drive which should take you less than two seconds and then a few tens of minutes to copy.

you can also use programs like Apple's Backup (available to .Mac members only) or SuperDuper! but i think these programs make more of a backup than necessary.

don't forget to back up your Safari/web browser bookmarks. a lot of people i know forget to do this.
 
iW00t said:
For your needs DVD backups is actually very viable. That is only like 6 DVDs worth of data.
Click to expand...

True, but he doesn't have a superdrive!

I agree that an external HD is your best option by far. I have a 160GB Western Digital Firewire MyBook drive, which works great for me. I use SuperDuper! as a backup program, and have paid for the full version for ease of use, although the restricted version works fine and would be ok for your needs I think.

shawsinio
 
yeah, but i don't have a superdrive...

p.s. who cares about Safari Bookmarks?!? I remember the address of CNN.com and MLB.com, it won't be a crisis if i lose those...
 
If you go with the DVD's I would suggest using re-writable and rotate a few sets of them. That'll keep the cost down on using just the writables from now till forever. And with a rotation set you have the option of going back to an older set if the latest has any corruption or hiccups.
 
As you have no superdrive, an external is you only way of backup really. Short of getting a .mac account I suppose, although I'm not sure how much data you can actually backup on there...

shawsinio
 
i haven't used superduper, but have used Synk quite a lot for backing up to external harddrives and synching to multiple computers over the network and it's great (and fast): http://decimus.net/

for the original poster i'd recommend the most basic synk and an external harddrive (bigger the better if you're doing multimedia-video work as that stuff can add up fast). but as people have said, you should be able to get an external firewire or usb2 drive for around $100.
 
I use a LaCie triple interface drive, 120 GB, that serves as a back-up option for all three of my Macs. I bought it at the ATL Lenox Apple Store for ... like $130? Something like that. I think that's a fair price for preventing drama the next time my laptop HD takes a p00p.
 
pianoman said:
get an external hard drive (some of the moderately-sized LaCies are even going for under $100 some places) and backup your stuff there. the most basic backup is copying and pasting your home folder to the drive which should take you less than two seconds and then a few tens of minutes to copy.

you can also use programs like Apple's Backup (available to .Mac members only) or SuperDuper! but i think these programs make more of a backup than necessary.
Click to expand...

Or you can boot of your install disc, run Disk Utility and under the restore pane set your iMac as the source and external HD as the destination. This is what I do when I preform a backup.
 
ero87 said:
So after reading many horror stories here on MR, I've decided to implement some sort of file backup system for my iMac G5. [...] Ideas?
Click to expand...
Get a backup app, a bigass external drive, and some discipline. :)

I have a 300GB external drive (firewire) and do complete, bootable backups of my PowerBook on a nightly basis. I use SuperDuper!, which lets me schedule backups and does "smart updates" once you get your first full backup done.

Why a bootable backup? If your system fails, you can boot off the firewire drive, on a temporary basis, and be in the exact same working environment that you've been in. Your prefs, apps, email, and everything will be exactly how you had it when you last did a backup.

Get a big honkin' drive, because TimeMachine is coming soon and it's going to be a bit hog.

EDIT: If you can afford it, get two drives and rotate them. Even better, take one drive to your mom's house or something on the weekends and swap it on a weekly basis, to give you an off-site backup in the event that the house burns down or something.
 
ero87 said:
p.s. who cares about Safari Bookmarks?!? I remember the address of CNN.com and MLB.com, it won't be a crisis if i lose those...
Click to expand...

a lot of people i know (most in the business world, as opposed to the home user world or the student world) don't have time or don't want to take the effort to rebuild their bookmarks folder. that's just one more thing they like not worrying about if their system fails. they have more than two bookmarks, though. if it's not of use to you, don't do it. i think it's useful because it only takes a few clicks to save the file and then if you need to do a backup, you don't have to go to each website and click "add bookmark" for each one.
 
pianoman said:
a lot of people i know (most in the business world, as opposed to the home user world or the student world) don't have time or don't want to take the effort to rebuild their bookmarks folder. that's just one more thing they like not worrying about if their system fails. they have more than two bookmarks, though. if it's not of use to you, don't do it. i think it's useful because it only takes a few clicks to save the file and then if you need to do a backup, you don't have to go to each website and click "add bookmark" for each one.
Click to expand...

good points :( sorry for being negative.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back