Backing Up to an External HD and Retrieving

[semonalmoritz]

Can anyone please explain to me the smartest, most efficient way to back up to an external hd and then when I need to or choose to erase/zero out my G5 how do I most effectively and efficiently restore my G5 hd from my back up?

Some say just drop and drag your house folder into the external hd. Does that cover everything? What about restoring the clean hd?

I now have two users on my G5 and my iBook. The admin acct. for play and everything else and a second user which I created for a business I'm starting.

I have two .Mac accts., one for each user. I know I can use iDisk, but that's slow and space is not cheap. I prefer to learn to properly use my external.

Any help is greatly appreciated. Thank you!

Semonalmoritz

 

[edesignuk]

You can't go wrong with SuperDuper! Great backup app. It will clone your internal drive to your external. Then if you want to revert to your last backup from the external, you can just boot from the external, run SuperDuper and clone from it back to your internal.

 

[skybolt]

This may be a silly question, but if one wipes/does a clean install to correct problems on their computer, would not cloning back from an external just bring back the problems one is trying to resolve? Seems that if you cloned back, all the issues would be within the clone, and then brought back to the computer. Or am I missing something here?

 

[Blue Velvet]

This may be a silly question, but if one wipes/does a clean install to correct problems on their computer, would not cloning back from an external just bring back the problems one is trying to resolve? Seems that if you cloned back, all the issues would be within the clone, and then brought back to the computer. Or am I missing something here?

But if you do need to do a restore or retrieve a file, then surely you would do so immediately after realising something wasn't working correctly? Not going and backing-up the broken installation... that seems common sense to me.

Edit: Many back-up programs do incremental back-ups so you can roll back to an earlier state... I think the full paid-for version of SuperDuper! lets you do this, although I'm not 100% certain.

 

[semonalmoritz]

I hear you

Skybolt,

Thanks for responding. I'm what's referred to as a newbie at MacRumors, but I suspect the first response to my post was (althought it said it was from a moderator) seemingly a sales pitch for a product and did not really answer my questions. It seem almost like a computer generated ad in response to key words in posts perhaps about backups and restores.

On your point of cloning. I think in some cases what you're saying may be true, but in others, such as mine, the problem was within the OS and or it's behavior w/the hardware. The reason I zeroed out my HD and reinstalled the OS is that in the process of backing up I moved somethings around in my HD library. Moved them to places they should not have been moved to and according to Apple some applications and things related to OS have support files throughout the system/HD. So it messed up my computer and it was behaving very strangely. I didn't have a problem w/my files and other data I backed up, only the system problems I created so I erased the HD, reinstalled the OS and retrieved and installed my files and data from my external. Wow. So much typing. Someone should invent a device where you can talk into it and the person on the other end can hear you.

Semonalmoritz

This may be a silly question, but if one wipes/does a clean install to correct problems on their computer, would not cloning back from an external just bring back the problems one is trying to resolve? Seems that if you cloned back, all the issues would be within the clone, and then brought back to the computer. Or am I missing something here?

 

[Applespider]

Thanks for responding. I'm what's referred to as a newbie at MacRumors, but I suspect the first response to my post was (althought it said it was from a moderator) seemingly a sales pitch for a product and did not really answer my questions. It seem almost like a computer generated ad in response to key words in posts perhaps about backups and restores.

Nope, that really was a mod giving you some advice. Which I'll second.

Superduper is a great little application. It's $20 shareware (if you want the incremental backups) or you can use it for free for full vanilla backups. Either way it's a bargain.

Here's what I do with my external drive. I have it partitioned (using Disk Utility); one the size of my HD and the rest of working from iMovie from. I used to have two partitions that were HD sized so I could keep 2 backups but decided I was getting overly paranoid.

I use Superduper to 'clone' my hard drive to the external one. This means it's a perfect bootable copy. I can tell my Powerbook to boot up from my external drive if I have to. Should something go wrong with my Powerbook, I have two options. Either restore the clone back to my system or do a clean install and use Tiger's Migration Assistant to pull my files back across from my external drive.

If I did what you did, then I have the option of mounting the external drive and dragging over my Pics/Music/Movies/Docs folders if I want to. They're sitting in the 'clone' just like they're sitting on my HD.

 

[YS2003]

I have not yet checked up this software this thread is covering. But, is this able to retrieve particular files or application files to the internal Mac HD? I am thinking about upgrading my 15" PB from Panther to Tiger as I heard 10.4.3 is nearing its GM status. I have bunch of applications on 15" PB and I don't want to go through all the installation CDs/DVDs again. But, at the same time, I don't want to retrieve all the data back after OS upgrade as I am sure I have some applications I don't care fo bring back to 15" PB after OS upgrade.

I am more interested in the applications themselves as my documents files can be easily manipulated by easy copying procedure.

 

[risc]

This may be a silly question, but if one wipes/does a clean install to correct problems on their computer, would not cloning back from an external just bring back the problems one is trying to resolve? Seems that if you cloned back, all the issues would be within the clone, and then brought back to the computer. Or am I missing something here?

I'd assume you'd create a backup of a working install. Then if you break the one you are using you could just go back to the working install.

Also here is another vote for SuperDuper!

 

[Coheebuzz]

SuperDuper looks good, but how about an app that will backup only the directories i specify and only when certain files have been changed?

I have a second 160GB drive which i use to store all my work, and what i did until now is hook up my external every couple of weeks and copy the whole drive. From the startup drive the only things i need is my music and photos, everything else is not important. Is there any way that i can have it automatically backup only the changed files, in folders i specify, lets say at the end of each day??

I 've heard about apple's Backup app that comes with .Mac, has anyone tried that?

 

[jeremy.king]

SuperDuper looks good, but how about an app that will backup only the directories i specify and only when certain files have been changed?

I have a second 160GB drive which i use to store all my work, and what i did until now is hook up my external every couple of weeks and copy the whole drive. From the startup drive the only things i need is my music and photos, everything else is not important. Is there any way that i can have it automatically backup only the changed files, in folders i specify, lets say at the end of each day??

I 've heard about apple's Backup app that comes with .Mac, has anyone tried that?

You basically need any backup application. Backup (haven't used) will work if you have .Mac. Otherwise you could use Retrospect - which does what you need. I'm sure there are others...

 

[jeremy.king]

...

Thanks for responding. I'm what's referred to as a newbie at MacRumors, but I suspect the first response to my post was (althought it said it was from a moderator) seemingly a sales pitch for a product and did not really answer my questions. It seem almost like a computer generated ad in response to key words in posts perhaps about backups and restores.
...

Nice

Consider yourself lucky that hundreds didn't respond telling you to search the forums since this topic is discussed almost daily.

CarbonCopyCloner is another cloning program - http://www.bombich.com/software/ccc.html - Donationware

Then use the Migration assistant to restore after you reinstall.

 

[Coheebuzz]

You basically need any backup application. Backup (haven't used) will work if you have .Mac. Otherwise you could use Retrospect - which does what you need. I'm sure there are others...

Thanks kingjr3, i remember using an app under OS 9 many many years ago that did what i need now but i couldn't remember the name or anything, but it looks like retrospect is what i need.

 

[onetwoxu]

isn't there a migration app / wizard thing built into os x now? that might be an option.