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How do you backup data on your mac?
- Thread starter yOyOYoo
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Personally I just drag and drop to an external Firewire hard drive every so often. When not in use the drive is powered down and stored away from my PowerBook.
Used to burn everything to CDs, but as especially my iTunes library grew this took too long, so I aquired a DVD-R and now I manually burn my entire home folder onto one DVD, and my iTunes library onto as many DVDs as it takes. Last time I was up to 7 DVDs with music, so I might be in the marked for an exernal HD for music backup purposes if it grows much larger... 
Haven't found any (free) backup programs, which could help automate the process, that I would trust with my data, yet...
Haven't found any (free) backup programs, which could help automate the process, that I would trust with my data, yet...
I back things up onto an external FW drive every couple of weeks (or more if I've suddenly acquired lots of files I think are important).
The multiple DVD route seemed like it would get to be more and more of a pain.
Mitthrawnuruodo, doesn't Backup on .mac allow you to back up to DVD easily? I use SuperDuper to create a bootable clone which is free for simple backups.
The multiple DVD route seemed like it would get to be more and more of a pain.
Mitthrawnuruodo, doesn't Backup on .mac allow you to back up to DVD easily? I use SuperDuper to create a bootable clone which is free for simple backups.
Well, next backup (which is imminenet) will probably take 10 DVDs, one for my home folder + 9 for music, so it's quite near my threshold for buying an external HD, but as the DVD burner is a free loaner and a 160-200 GB HD with enclosure would set me back about NOK 1300-1500 (≈ £110-125), which I don't have at the moment, I'll indure some pain...Applespider said:
Backup probably would allow this, but I don't have a .Mac membership, and will not pay that much just for Backup. I tested out .Mac and rejected it a long time ago, and at the time I didn't have have a DVD burner to test it with... Hmmm... maybe a 'new' .Mac trail membership could let me test it out...
I do a complete bootable backup every now and then, but honestly, I need to come up with a better system.
I've just been too lazy to program Retrospect to do some automatic things that I should be doing.
My only saving grace is that I back up my images to CD as soon as I am done a shoot, and keep my articles on my iPod and my iBook.
I've just been too lazy to program Retrospect to do some automatic things that I should be doing.
My only saving grace is that I back up my images to CD as soon as I am done a shoot, and keep my articles on my iPod and my iBook.
I use carbon copy cloner to make a bootable copy of my powerbook on an external firewiredisk. I quite like it.
Just have to be aware that the external disk should be partitioned appropriately, since everything is erased on the target disk when you run the program.
A
Just have to be aware that the external disk should be partitioned appropriately, since everything is erased on the target disk when you run the program.
A
i have an external firewire disk with a minimal system.
i copy the system with all relevant applications as disk image with CCC to this hd. that allows me to quickly reload the system onto my pb if desaster strikes.
i back up the data via silverkeeper onto the external hd.
usually it takes much longer to reload the system thasn to reload the data.
andi
i copy the system with all relevant applications as disk image with CCC to this hd. that allows me to quickly reload the system onto my pb if desaster strikes.
i back up the data via silverkeeper onto the external hd.
usually it takes much longer to reload the system thasn to reload the data.
andi
I just did a backup a few hours ago.
I just drag all the folders in my home dir (except downloads) to a DVD. It all fits with about 100M free. I typically don't back up my iTunes dir, if my HD ever dies I will just re-rip all my CDs. I do backup the 10 or so songs I have bought from iTMS.
I just drag all the folders in my home dir (except downloads) to a DVD. It all fits with about 100M free. I typically don't back up my iTunes dir, if my HD ever dies I will just re-rip all my CDs. I do backup the 10 or so songs I have bought from iTMS.
andiwm2003 said:
I do this and ZI think it is one of the better ways of backing up. I backup the home directory with all my data once a week using SilverKeep (which can be automated), I keep 4 sets that recycle at the beginning of the month. Then once a month (or so, definitely before any system updated) I use Carbon Copy Cloner to clone the entire HD.
I use an external FW drive with two partitions, one the size of the internal HD for the cloning, the other for normal backups.
I plan to get a second FW drive to mirror the first and to keep away in a safe place for safe keeping.
i used to back up any frequently changed data, like my home folder, to my iPod, but then it got to full of songs. right now i do full bootable system backups to an external firewire drive, but not as frequently as i should. i use LaCie's program SilverKeeper which is a great free software for simple automations of backup. Chose folders to back up, chose destination and go. it also has simple scheduling. its simple, clean and works very well. (AND ITS FREE!!!)
For me, I use 2 Firewire HD's. 1 is kept at home, the other at a trusted location away from home. I log on as root and copy all the required files and folder to a dated folder on the HD. I then take this HD away and swap it with the one at the trusted location. The process is repeated at suitable time intervals. The benefits: HD backups are fast; I have dated snapshots on each hard disk so that I have a chance of finding files that may have become corrupted or deleted over time; If everything is stolen from home or destroyed by some other means then I still have a backup I can recover from. Do I use any backup software - No. A few lines of unix script have speeded things up though.
Am I paranoid - Yes. Have I ever lost data - almost, my Vaio laptop was destroyed by a cup of tea. The HD was recovered but it made me better at doing backups. If possible test your backups. With an external HD, this is possible since you can create a partition and install MacOSX on it. Boot into this second OSX and try and recover your data from the backups. Then see what is missing / doesn't work.
Am I paranoid - Yes. Have I ever lost data - almost, my Vaio laptop was destroyed by a cup of tea. The HD was recovered but it made me better at doing backups. If possible test your backups. With an external HD, this is possible since you can create a partition and install MacOSX on it. Boot into this second OSX and try and recover your data from the backups. Then see what is missing / doesn't work.
I manually back-up onto DVDs, although my home folder runs at about 80GB, I normally only backup the most essential files. I've thought about backing up onto spare HDs, but they aren't a good solution for long-term storage, and seems like a waste just having a hard drive lying around.
External FW Drive and Retrospect
I bought an external FireWire drive case and an IDE drive to put in it ($125 for case and IDE drive) and Retrospect (about $95). I spent five minutes scripting Retrospect to back up my mac's crucial files (I don't back up apps that can be easily reinstalled), and my wife's Mac across the network using one of the included Retrospect clients. The system backs up our two macs every night to a Retrospect backup file on the external drive.
Because we use CDs to archive files and we therefore don't depend on Retrospect for archiving, I can trash the backup file every few months when it gets too big and start a new one.
It's not perfect, hard drives being hard drives, but I figure it's a whole lot better than nothing.
I bought an external FireWire drive case and an IDE drive to put in it ($125 for case and IDE drive) and Retrospect (about $95). I spent five minutes scripting Retrospect to back up my mac's crucial files (I don't back up apps that can be easily reinstalled), and my wife's Mac across the network using one of the included Retrospect clients. The system backs up our two macs every night to a Retrospect backup file on the external drive.
Because we use CDs to archive files and we therefore don't depend on Retrospect for archiving, I can trash the backup file every few months when it gets too big and start a new one.
It's not perfect, hard drives being hard drives, but I figure it's a whole lot better than nothing.
I use the BACKUP software that came with my .Mac subscription, backing up to an external LaCie drive. I run it every weekend, together with a Cocktail "Pilot" run through afterwards.
Vanilla
Vanilla