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Good backup program?

chmorley

chmorley

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jan 2, 2002
602
2
Denver, CO
I have a friend who just switched on Sunday due to a combination of my incessant complaints about the Windows machines I support and the switcher campaign. Although we had some hassles with his HP all-in-one not being compatible with 10.2.2 (and 10.2.1 losing the ability to drag and drop on his 17-inch iMac), he seems to be quite satisfied. If HP can get on the ball, I think he'll never look back.

The one thing he needs that he is missing is a backup program that will schedule nightly backups to an external storage source. I know that Backup will do scheduled backups to an iDisk. However, I want to know if there is another backup application that will do scheduled backups to a USB drive (like one that can be carried on a keychain). He is pretty jazzed on these things, and wants to buy a couple. I think he intends to have one with good storage capacity that just stays plugged in to one of his USB ports.

So what's out there? What's good?

Is there any way to write an Applescript that will make Backup do this?

Thanks in Advance,
Chris
 
Silverkeeper, from Lacie is good. It lets you choose when and how often to backup. I dont know if you can buy it, or if it even lets you backup to non-Lacie devices. Check it out.


/edit: Silverkeeper is freeware. It is also supposed to work with almost any drive with an IDE, ATAPI, SCSI, USB, or Firewire interface.silverkeeper
 
Originally posted by chmorley
Bummer. So can Backup be scripted to do this?
Click to expand...

Backup (i assume you mean the .mac one) can be scheduled, but it doesn't back up to hard drives (except for the .mac server, obviously).

your friend can back up to optical media using Backup.

there're a million backup programs out there. except for the scheduling, Silverkeeper does what i need it to.

also check out Carbon Copy Cloner, which uses the unix command ditto so it can be used to back up system files. (most other programs use the os copy command, which doesn't properly copy sticky bits, file permissions, and such, but instead uses the permissions of the owner of the copy process).
 
I really do appreciate the help, but man I wish people would read the first post.

These are the questions...(drumroll):

Can Backup be scripted to backup nightly to a USB drive?

What is another OS X app that can do this?

Chris
 
you could probably write a simple applescript command to do this. the scheduling part may be difficult though. I never got that much into applescript. it is really fun once you get into it though. I had fun making self destruct buttons at school and putting them on the desktop. {tell application "finder" to shut down"}. people push and their computer just shuts down. its so much fun.

iJon
 
i think both of your questions have been answered. Can Backup be scripted to backup to media? No. Other OS X apps? Try seaching for them, that's a good first step... www.download.com
www.versiontracker.com

I have used Carbon Copy Cloner in the past, with great success. it's how i moved all my data between drives when partitioning. It's really nothing more than a really complex applescript, and i think it actually uses applescript for scheduling. Try it out.

:)
pnw
 
Originally posted by paulwhannel
i think both of your questions have been answered. Can Backup be scripted to backup to media? No. Other OS X apps? Try seaching for them, that's a good first step...
Click to expand...
Thanks, Paul. Not being a moron, I obviously tried searching first, but came up with insufficient information. Hoping for an informed opinion, I figured I would post here. Still hoping there is an informed person about to run across this thread...

The scripting thing actually hasn't been answered at all--some say yes, others say maybe--you're the only one who has said 'no'. Backup has built-in preferences that allow it to schedule backups to an iDisk, but this isn't scripting. I am hoping there is an Applescript genius out there who might know how to do this.

Any help is appreciated.

Thanks,
Chris
 
Backup Toolkit

For anyone that comes across this thread, FWB's Backup Toolkit looks like a good solution. It has automation and can back up to any drive that mounts on your desktop. You can also download a 30-day trial versio. Here is their home page.

If anyone else knows of a good backup program or the answer to the scripting question, please let me know.

Thanks,
Chris
 
Originally posted by chmorley
Can Backup be scripted to backup nightly to a USB drive?

What is another OS X app that can do this?
Click to expand...

1. Backup (apple's software) only backs up to .mac or optical media. So, no it can not be scripted to back up to a usb drive.

2. Take a look at carbon copy cloner (www.bombich.com)

He has great info on his site. I don't have one of the usb keychains to try out, but when I launched the app a second ago, it gave me the option to clone to a mounted disk image. If it can do that, I would assume it can write to a usb drive. It also has a schedule section to say when to do the backups.

I think this answers your questions

neilt
 
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