"Back Ups" - with or without?

[dpwally]

I have a question, and since I'm not really knowledgeable in this area I'm hoping someone can help. Or at least give me a little advice. I recently bought an eternal drive to do backups on my iMac. Now, I know there has been numerous discussions about what software is the best to make backups with and I don't want to revisit that. My question is, do you need to use backup software at all. Couldn't you just drag and drop everything onto the image of the external hard drive. Or, is there something flawed in using that process. I just don't know. But, I'm sure someone out there can help me on this one.

Thanks
Dpwally

 

[72930]

If you use software like SuperDuper, you can boot off the drive.

 

[sushi]

You don't have to use software to backup your files.

It all depends on what you want to backup or the type of backup that you want to complete.

For example, if you only want to back up your files, and they are all in your Documents folder you could copy that folder onto your external HD.

In more mission critical situations, you may to clone your HD so that you can just switch to the backup should the primary fail.

Again, it really depends on your needs and desires as to what you want to back up.

Personally for two of my computers, I do clone backups on a regular basis that way I can hit the ground running if things go south on me. YNMV.

As for software, you can use Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper to clone your drive to an external from which you can boot from if the need arises.