How to backup my MBP running Tiger OS X?

[jayeskreezy]

I want to backup my MBP and make an exact replica of everything I already have on my MBP and save it just in case my computer crashes.

I'm looking to install leopard pretty soon and my friend said when he first installed leopard it crashed his computer so I want to make sure I have a backup of everything since I have some pretty important documents on my computer and music. Any and all help is appreciated.

 

[kkat69]

I want to backup my MBP and make an exact replica of everything I already have on my MBP and save it just in case my computer crashes.

I'm looking to install leopard pretty soon and my friend said when he first installed leopard it crashed his computer so I want to make sure I have a backup of everything since I have some pretty important documents on my computer and music. Any and all help is appreciated.

SuperDuper! That's the way to go. It costs, but it's well worth the money.

A little perplexed considering your post count and join date that you didn't even consider superduper. I'm a switcher from late last year and I knew about superduper before I even bought my mac.

Otherwise, I would say burn everything you can think of. If I'm doing a fresh, I don't bother with back up utilities. I pretty much grab everything from the documents, pictures, basically most the stuff in my home directory, save my bookmarks and that's pretty much all I need.

Burn it to dvd etc then copy what I need over, label the disk with the date and stick it in a sleeve.

 

[Mr_Brightside_@]

You need a backup hard drive/ USB/ FireWire enclosure (FW preferable because it's bootable) and then a program like Carbon Copy Cloner or Super Duper!
EDIT- beaten to the punch, stupid dead battery.

 

[jayeskreezy]

You need a backup hard drive/ USB/ FireWire enclosure (FW preferable because it's bootable) and then a program like Carbon Copy Cloner or Super Duper!
EDIT- beaten to the punch, stupid dead battery.

Lol. I've never heard of super duper. I thought you were telling me that it's super duper that I'm getting leopard. I had to read it twice. I couldn't understand your excitement....lol Yeah, when I got my MBP almost a year ago (I've been a member longer b/c I used to have a mac mini) I put everything from my pc laptop on my external HD.

CarbonCopyCloner! THat's the one I used for my mini. Thanks!

 

[mahonmeister]

I'm in a similar situation. I have leopard, but my family doesn't. I partitioned the external disk we just bought, and now I'm looking for good backup software for our Mac Mini running Tiger. Super Duper and Carbon Copy Cloner look pretty enticing, especially being able to boot off the external drive.

I did find one free program, iBackup.

Also, here a list of backup software: http://www.pure-mac.com/backup.html

Edit: I gave iBackup a try, but it didn't meet my needs. I did some tests and it didn't seem to properly backup our data when changes were made. It wouldn't delete old files from the target disk when they were no longer present on the source disk. It simply kept adding to them. I couldn't find a way to change this, and the support docs weren't very helpful.

After trying Carbon Copy Cloner, I've decided it is the best solution. It's free and seemed just as capable as SuperDuper! and just as easy to use.

Good luck.