disk image backup for Mac?? which software?

Hi,

Background: I was considering getting Retrospect Express (or Retrospect) for my Macbook (OS X v10.4.10, Intel) to perform disk image based backup to my external disk drive (a MyBook 500GB) connected via firewire.

Q1 - Does Retrospect Express (or Retrospect) offer a disk image feature, so that all of my hard disk is backed up, such that if I lost my whole disk drive and installed a new one I could set this new disk up with one "recover disk" command? That is I'm asking if Retrospect can be used like "Ghost" can be used on a windows platform, where it takes an image?

Q2 - What's the most popular approach or software that Mac users use for this?

My Requirement - The requirement I'm trying to solve is that if my Macbook HDD fails bad, I can buy a new one and recover the whole disk image in one hit from my backup on my external disk drive (MyBook)

What I've noted with Retrospect - I did try to do a backup using Retrospect Express, however it hit an issue and said that backup sets could only be up to 2GB in size, hence wouldn't allow me to image my current MacBook disk which is sitting at about 60 GB usage.

Thanks
Greg

 

Do any of these also perhaps allow you then to schedule incremental backups on top of this? i.e. therefore getting both the concept of (a) disk image clone/image for restore and (b) incremental file backup [i.e. to pull file as it was last Monday say]?

Tks Greg

 

"MyBook is not a Macintosh-formatted disk" ???

PS

Actually downloaded Superduper to try...

Got a "MyBook is not a Macintosh-formatted disk" - My Book is formatted as Windows_FAT_32, which cannot properly host HFS+ files along with all their attributes, resources and ownership. To use My Book with SuperDuper!, use Disk Utility to erase it, selecting "Mac OS Extended" or "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)" as the format.

Q1 - Should I make this change in format? Is it worth it for Superduper as backup?

Q2 - Will it mean I can't use my MyBook (Western Digital external HDD) on Windows as well as Mac after this if I go to a Mac HDD format?

Q3 - Which is recommended out of "Mac OS Extended" or "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)"?

Thanks