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

Best backup, time machine?

teknikal90

teknikal90

macrumors 68040
Original poster
Jan 28, 2008
3,434
2,203
Vancouver, BC
i have one computer, a macbook pro running leopard 10.5.2.
i have all my school files, itunes library...very very important stuff that i can't lose.
i bring my laptop to school everyday.
which leads me to think...if i lose this laptop, im in a big spot of bother
i was thinking of getting an external hard drive, and backing up my files using timemachine...is this a good solution?
note that if i lose my laptop, i would have to borrow my sister's laptop, which is a windows.woould i be able to access the files in time machine?

what is my best option?

thanks
 
Since you have no secondary mac to use with the time machine, i think a more convenient solution would be to either get an external drive to back up to, or use an online automated backup service like http://mozy.com/

Depending on the size of your itunes library, it could take several days to do your initial backup to mozy though, so that's something to consider. With mozy if you ever need to recover your data, you can download it from your account, or have them send it to you on a dvd for a small fee.
 
ASFx said:
Since you have no secondary mac to use with the time machine, i think a more convenient solution would be to either get an external drive to back up to, or use an online automated backup service like http://mozy.com/

Depending on the size of your itunes library, it could take several days to do your initial backup to mozy though, so that's something to consider. With mozy if you ever need to recover your data, you can download it from your account, or have them send it to you on a dvd for a small fee.
Click to expand...

this looks pretty good. probably cheaper than buying hard rives... have you tried it? is the quality of the recovered files any good?
 
Yup im a member of mozy and have backed up over 60GB of data to it so far with no issues. Itunes library, photos, documents, etc. I've used it a few times to recover files i've deleted and needed later, and it worked perfectly.

You only get 2Gb on the free account, but unlimited space on the paid account, which is very cheap. I paid for 2 years of unlimited storage and it was only like $105 i think. It gets discounted even more if you pay for 2 years instead of the 1 year or monthly plan.
 
ASFx said:
Yup im a member of mozy and have backed up over 60GB of data to it so far with no issues. Itunes library, photos, documents, etc. I've used it a few times to recover files i've deleted and needed later, and it worked perfectly.

You only get 2Gb on the free account, but unlimited space on the paid account, which is very cheap. I paid for 2 years of unlimited storage and it was only like $105 i think. It gets discounted even more if you pay for 2 years instead of the 1 year or monthly plan.
Click to expand...

Is it truley unlimited? I just bought a 1TB drive that is really 2 500gb drives and I was going to mirror them to backup all my DVD's I have ripped.

Would this service let me back up upwards of 400gb of DVD's?
 
im from australia and the broadband infrastructure here is very expensive yet incapable to say the least, so uploading 30gb of data for me wont be a feasible option.
i think the core question im asking here is, if i back up time machine, would a separate windows laptop be able to access the files on it?
another question, i understand that Mac os x cant write ntfs. and the only format that both windows and mac can read/write is fat32....which limits HDD space to only 32GB.correct me if im wrong.
is there not a way i can backup my files, on an external HDD, that is also accessible by windows?
 
your windows laptop wouldnt be able to access the time machine files...what i would do in your situation is buy a 500GB or 1TB drive and partition it.. split the drive and copy all your music and 'important stuff' on one half then run time machine on the other half

i think you can do this :confused:
 
DeuceDeuce said:
Is it truley unlimited? I just bought a 1TB drive that is really 2 500gb drives and I was going to mirror them to backup all my DVD's I have ripped.

Would this service let me back up upwards of 400gb of DVD's?
Click to expand...

They say it's truly unlimited. I had no problems with 60Gb so far. I havent read anything about people having storage problems. I think you should be ok backing up 400GB but it would just take a few weeks for your initial backup depending on your upload speed.
 
i think i will do that partitioning idea.
can anyone confirm if this is possible?
i have a 200gb macbook.30gb used.how much disk space would i need for timemachine..
 
Trainguy, Im lost! I tried backing up to a flash 4gb. It failed and said it needed like 60gb. If my computer is only 4gb how could it need 60gb. Can someone give me astep by step? Or do i need to buy a external hard drive?
 
usfscaptain14 said:
Trainguy, Im lost! I tried backing up to a flash 4gb. It failed and said it needed like 60gb. If my computer is only 4gb how could it need 60gb. Can someone give me astep by step? Or do i need to buy a external hard drive?
Click to expand...

I think you have mixed up RAM and your Hard Drive storage space. Mac OS X can't run on 4gb of hard drive space. If you click Macintosh HD then cmd-I, or right click get info. It will show how large your Hard Drive is.
 
usfscaptain14 said:
ok, it say 185.99 capacity-135.3 available. So now what?
Click to expand...

So what that is saying is 51gb have been used. So thats how much data you currently have. You will need an external hard drive which can store atleast that much. You will want one the same size or bigger then your internal drive. So atleast 190gb.
 
if i buy a 250gb external hard drive...
can i partition 200gb as my time machine partition, and have 50gb formated as fat32 that i can use to backup my files that my widnows pc can access also?
 
ok one last question and this is out of interest...how come in boot camp we can only make a fat32 partition with max size of 32gb?
and with external hdd and can make a fat32 partition with 50gb?
 
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