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Best way to back-up your mac?

Dal123

Dal123

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Oct 23, 2008
903
0
England
I haven't really had to worry about backing-up my mac; however now I'm starting to run my own company with legal contracts and all previous letters sent out, dates etc. are extremely important.
I know they do a cube thing that does it wirelessly but I think that's about £500; I want to spend as little as possible.:confused:
 
Thanks for your recommendation TeeJay, do you need a Time Machine? I only have on old powerbook G4 which is PowerPC.
 
All you need is an extra drive to backup to. I have a 1tb external drive that i got from best buy for $120. Time Machine machine can be used with this drive as well.
 
I prefer a bit of redundant backup. I have two external firewire HDs, one for time machine and the other for a SuperDuper clone. I have both drives partitioned since they are bigger than my iMac's HD and I use the rest of the space for storage of odds and ends.
You can never have too much backup.
 
If you're backing up company records, you probably want at least TWO backups:
- One where your computer is located (i.e., the "office"), close-at-hand, and...
- An "offsite backup" (backup drive located somewhere OTHER THAN where the computer is located)

This protects you in case the computer/backup is stolen, the office burns down, etc.

For a simple yet cost-effective backup, I'd choose something like this:
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias=aps&field-keywords=usb+sata+dock&x=0&y=0
(note: various items shown)

....and combine it with one or two "bare" SATA drives of your choice.

Then, use either CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper to "clone" your hard drive to the backup drives.

Find a small pouch in which to carry the "offsite" backup, and carry it to your offsite location.

You might "rotate" the onsite/offsite backups, as well.
 
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Great advice Fish; much appreciated. What are them 'docks' for? I think I get you can add your external hard-drive to it, but what does it really do, I'm probably missing something here, but I need to connect the hard-drive anyway, is it not a waste of money to buy one of these? As I need to plug it in anyway?:confused:
Will super duper work on osx 10.4.11
 
you have a powerbook? have an external drive at your office and another one at home.....you can take the powerbook home and back it up while you're there
 
Dal123 said:
Great advice Fish; much appreciated. What are them 'docks' for? I think I get you can add your external hard-drive to it, but what does it really do, I'm probably missing something here, but I need to connect the hard-drive anyway, is it not a waste of money to buy one of these? As I need to plug it in anyway?:confused:
Will super duper work on osx 10.4.11
Click to expand...
The dock is instead of buying an external hard drive. An external hard drive is just a 'normal' hard drive fixed inside a fancy enclosure. A HDD dock is instead where you put a normal internal drive outside the machine connected up via USB or FireWire.
 
Time machine is perfect and safe. Any hard drive will work as long as you use Disk Utility to format it to HFS+.
I just this baby
 
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I have a portable drive at my work which has my personal backup using Super Duper. I feel it is a must to have an off-site backup. At home I have a Time Capsule with time Machine backup- but that failed to backup after 2 weeks.....and I just haven't gone to the trouble to erase it and start over. I have to say I was not happy with Time Machine in that it lasted 2 weeks before it went bad. While it worked it was great. Although I am careful at what I delete I think I would rarely use it to restore a file and would rely on my Super Duper in case of HD failure, fire or theft.
 
I bought a 1.5 TB firewire external drive that I partitioned into 2 bootable drives 500 GB and 1 TB. The 500 GB I use Carbon Copy Cloner to basically copy my entire system once a week. Then I use Time Machine and do daily backups. The CCC is manual and the TM is automatic once a day.
 
I use a LaCie. 1 Tb, pretty cheap. It makes a little bit of noise when starting up, but it's barely noticeable after a while. Definitely worth the investment.
 
Anything critical should be backed up offsite as well... it won't matter how many backup drives you have on location if there's a fire in your office or somebody breaks in and steals them.
 
Thanks for your input people :D. I'm quite out of date with things here, wasn't aware of docks etc and how the software actually works.
I'm very dim on this :eek:; what I'm hoping is that I can just hook up external hard-drive, then back it up as I continue working. Does time machine cost subscription? Briefly researching time-machine looks exactly what I want; to be able to restore my mac exactly as it was, I guess the software just sorts everything out for you without you having to do anything???
I would like to upgrade my old mac but it's the best thing I've ever bought and just starting to learn how to use the software properly and software costs a lot more than a new mac and I don't think my old software would work on a new one and don't really want to spend loads and not be able to use new software properly.
:confused::eek: Should I use super duper of time machine? Sorry for late reply just got back from holiday :p:cool:
 
Dal123 said:
I bought this one http://www.sainsburys.co.uk/sol/shop/technology/computing/113829851_western_digital_1tb_mybook2_studio_edition_external_hard_drive.html?hnav=4294960198
Now I just thought, 1 TB is huge, will never use all of that! Can I create a seperate drive and store all my photo's, then have another drive and create that for time machine and back-ups of my computer exactly how it is?:confused:
Click to expand...

Yeah, you can partition it with Disk Utility to give TM e.g. 500GB and for everything else 500GB
 
Hellhammer said:
Yeah, you can partition it with Disk Utility to give TM e.g. 500GB and for everything else 500GB
Click to expand...

:D Thanks Hellhammer :), this is gonna work brilliant now. Should've asked this first; once I have created seperate drives (not sure if partitioned is correct term here :confused:) after a while say I wasn't happy with it, could I wipe it clean and re-create/ partition :p the drive again, say 250 MB, and 750MB. Or however I fancied.
In short can creating seperate drives be undone?
I think it can, but I have made mistakes like this before and want to be sure before I break it lol :eek:.
Thanks ;)
 
Dal123 said:
:D Thanks Hellhammer :), this is gonna work brilliant now. Should've asked this first; once I have created seperate drives (not sure if partitioned is correct term here :confused:) after a while say I wasn't happy with it, could I wipe it clean and re-create/ partition :p the drive again, say 250 MB, and 750MB. Or however I fancied.
In short can creating seperate drives be undone?
I think it can, but I have made mistakes like this before and want to be sure before I break it lol :eek:.
Thanks ;)
Click to expand...

Yeah, you can either make it back to a single drive or edit the size of current partitions so if you now have 500GB + 500GB, you can make the other one 250GB and add the rest to the other one.

To make it back to a single one, just select your HD (NOT partition) and click partition tab and then just select other partition and click "-". Then drag the other partition full sizer and click execute
 
Hellhammer said:
Yeah, you can either make it back to a single drive or edit the size of current partitions so if you now have 500GB + 500GB, you can make the other one 250GB and add the rest to the other one.

To make it back to a single one, just select your HD (NOT partition) and click partition tab and then just select other partition and click "-". Then drag the other partition full sizer and click execute
Click to expand...

Cheers mate :):D;)
 
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