Backup Devices

[Tsubame]

So I have a new iMac (with 1TB HD) coming in within the next couple days. I want to finally buckle down and do backup right this time, what's the best backup system I can buy? I was thinking about just getting a 1TB MyBook or Time Capsule drive and setting up Time Machine on it.

Is that ideal, or is there a better system to use?

 

[Blackjack07]

As told in many other topics, Carbon Copy cloner is a free app, and clones your HD fully.

Time machine is also a good choice. I have my time machine backups regularly, and I do a Carbon Copy cloner backup when I installed a new bunch of apps.

B07

 

[dacreativeguy]

As told in many other topics, Carbon Copy cloner is a free app, and clones your HD fully.

Time machine is also a good choice. I have my time machine backups regularly, and I do a Carbon Copy cloner backup when I installed a new bunch of apps.

B07

I got the WD mybook studio 2TB drive for $230 on Amazon a few months ago. Works great. Be careful re: the 1TB WD my books. I read reviews on amazon and newegg that said the older firmware caused problems with Macs.

TM is all you really need. I've restored several machines after dead hard drives and it is really simple. I cloned my install DVD to the backup drive so it has everything I need to restore if I need to. No frantic searching for the DVD.

 

[Bye Bye Baby]

TC is a great option with TM, in my own experience.

I also us a drobo to clone my HD and as a media server attached to a mini. It is set for redundancy for my iTunes collection.

 

[Insulin Junkie]

I got the WD mybook studio 2TB drive for $230 on Amazon a few months ago. Works great. Be careful re: the 1TB WD my books. I read reviews on amazon and newegg that said the older firmware caused problems with Macs.

Really? Maybe I was one of the lucky ones... I have a 1TB MyBook and it works great with every mac I've plugged it into so far. If anything happened to it, I'd get the same one again - big fan of the device.

 

[Dimwhit]

So I have a new iMac (with 1TB HD) coming in within the next couple days. I want to finally buckle down and do backup right this time, what's the best backup system I can buy? I was thinking about just getting a 1TB MyBook or Time Capsule drive and setting up Time Machine on it.

Is that ideal, or is there a better system to use?

If you really want to go all out, get a 1.5 or 2TB external hard drive. I don't know about CCC, but SuperDuper will clone your hard drive, and it will work on a Time Machine partition. So you can have a clone AND Time Machine backup on the same hard drive. With 1.5 or 2TB of space, you'll have plenty of back up for a long time. But if you do both, don't have Time Machine back up Applications, System Files, etc. since the cloning will take care of those.

 

[upinflames900]

I've used Seagate and Western Digital drives of 1TB and 750GB respectively and both brands have worked very well for me. Make sure you partition the drive before you set up Time Machine though if you want to use it with anything else. Btw, time machine makes it really easy to restore your computer from the external drive. You can select restore from Time Machine back up during the installation of Leopord, which is great if you ever have a failure (been there done that). Also great for people who forget to backup their files.

 

[biochemcompsci]

I've been using the OWC RAID enclosure, running in RAID 1 (mirrored) mode:
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other World Computing/MEFW936AL2/

With two 1TB Western Digital Raid Enhanced drives:
http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.asp?driveid=503&language=en

This is a great backup system, incredible speed (FW800, SATA) and tremendously fail-safe (data exists on three drives, internal hard drive and mirrored RAID drives).

The total system will cost about $400, but you asked for the best, not the cheapest (you get what you pay for).

 

[Tsubame]

Thanks everyone, I'll probably go with a copy and TM machine backup on a 2 TB drive, as my computer's drive is 1 TB so just a 1 TB drive may be a problem. Cost really isn't a huge factor, as I'd lose much more money by losing my data and photography than I would by spending some extra on redundancy.

Thanks for the advice, I appreciate it.