How to auto-backup email folder?

[RedTomato]

Hiya,

I'm trying to find a backup system that will work for us. There's about 4 of us, all on iBooks, on a wireless network.

What I really need is something that will regularly automatically backup email, documents and desktop.

The most critical thing is to auto backup the email folder structure in Mail.app - we use email heavily for our projects and have hundreds of email folders, and restoring after a recent dropped laptop was a pain.

Currently I'm looking at some combination of SuperDuper and the Buffalo LinkStation 500GB. I'm ready to purchase both today, as we can't wait till Leopard comes out, but thought I'd check with you first.

The Buffalo has gigabit networking, and hopefully will work with Time Machine when Leopard finally comes out.

Suggestions/ comments?

 

[rob finch]

I used this - http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/30601&vid=358243. It makes a scheduled backup of Mail's folder structure to any mounted drive or network share. I've not had cause to try and use the backup as yet, but it seems to do the job just fine.

 

[Super Macho Man]

I don't understand, is the email distributed across the different iBooks, or are all of them logging into a central email server and viewing the same email? IMAP or POP?

SuperDuper will clone a drive to another drive, that's not a problem. What you want to be careful of though is that you don't overwrite a good backup with a bad one - i.e. if you delete a file now, clone, and in the future realize you needed it, SD won't protect you. Best to make several tiers of backups if you can afford it, like daily, weekly, monthly for example.

Another thing that occurs to me is that if it were me personally, I wouldn't want to back everything up onto one 500GB drive, because if it fails, the potential data loss is greater. I'd rather have 2 250GB drives or even 4 120GB drives. The chances of a drive failure would be multiplied by 2 or 4 overall, but the impact would be less severe. I don't know how much data you are dealing with, but maybe it's something to consider.

 

[RedTomato]

I don't understand, is the email distributed across the different iBooks, or are all of them logging into a central email server and viewing the same email? IMAP or POP?

Thanks for raising that point. The email is distributed across the different iBooks, yes. The point here is that I need to preserve not just the email itself that someone has received, but also how they've classified it, which of their many project folders they've put it into.

SuperDuper will clone a drive to another drive, that's not a problem. What you want to be careful of though is that you don't overwrite a good backup with a bad one - i.e. if you delete a file now, clone, and in the future realize you needed it, SD won't protect you. Best to make several tiers of backups if you can afford it, like daily, weekly, monthly for example.

Can SuperDuper do that?

Another thing that occurs to me is that if it were me personally, I wouldn't want to back everything up onto one 500GB drive, because if it fails, the potential data loss is greater. I'd rather have 2 250GB drives or even 4 120GB drives. The chances of a drive failure would be multiplied by 2 or 4 overall, but the impact would be less severe. I don't know how much data you are dealing with, but maybe it's something to consider.

I'll probably backup the 500GB drive itself onto a portable drive maybe once a month. I used to run a raid5, and frankly it's too much hassle for this particular use.

I'd be happy with a twin mirrored drive setup, but for something with the same space and functions as the Buffalo Linkstation, it seems to be more than double the cost. I'd still have to backup to a portable anyway cos of the risk of theft and the general wisdom of having an off-site storage.

 

[Super Macho Man]

Can SuperDuper do that?

Yes - you can create scheduled items in SuperDuper that do different things at different times.

I think your strategy is good and that you've got the right idea...