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Is .Mac a good BACKUP software?

N

NJRonbo

macrumors 68040
Original poster
Jan 10, 2007
3,278
1,316
I just bought a Mac Pro today.

The folks at the Apple Store gave me a special $30 off
deal on the .MAC software citing it was great
for backing up my entire system on an external drive or DVD.

Is this reliable software that I can back up my entire
Mac so in the case of hard drive failure or similar I can
do a total restore back to original settings?

....or should I return this software?

PS: Concerning iWeb....

Suppose I don't want to publish my web creation on the
Mac website. Can I create a webpage and transfer it to my
own server of choice? In other words, can it be saved as a
standard .HTML file and then uploaded to the site of my choosing?
 
Backup does just what it says, it will do most of what you want and can be quite precise. You may need quite a few DVD-R discs though. :p

You can upload your iWeb files anywhere you like. Infact the latest version gives a help section about this.

Good luck and .Mac is just fine (as long as you dont pay full price)
 
iWeb can go anywhere!

.Mac is nice if you don't own storage space somewhere else. I have my important docs autobackup at 4am every tuesday morning, and then I have a screen pop up on the first of every month tells me to pop in a DVD-R and do a full back-up.

Duplicative backups are a must!!
 
Tell me....

What is a better piece of software, moderately priced,
that will do a COMPLETE backup/restore of my Mac?

Thanks
 
I've been using Backup version 3.1 for some time, and I like it just fine.

For backup purposes, I own two Firelite, firewire powered drives. My routine is quite simple: A full backup of my home directory, followed by weekly incremental backups. I do this for two months, then start with a fresh full backup. I don't want too many incremental backups.

On occasion, I have done what everyone is guilty of doing: I've deleted files, then wished I had not. The restore feature of Backup works very nicely, and yes, you can restore from an archive without the plan that created it. If you're only restoring a few files, you will have some "unchecking" to do.

Extra cautious: I do periodic full backups of my itunes library alone, to my second Firelite drive. An investment of cash and time there, don't want to lose it.

The Firelite drives now come with Bounceback express backup software. I have not used this software. Anyone with experience care to share it?

NJ, I congratulate you on wanting to have a suitable backup strategy. Too many people don't do this simple, but important chore.
 
FrankBlack said:
NJ, I congratulate you on wanting to have a suitable backup strategy. Too many people don't do this simple, but important chore.
Click to expand...

So true, people get burned over and over again and don't learn. I lost everything :mad: but had a backup (from 4 months before) so I was able to recover some files. Now, it's just a religious habit!

Retrospect offers a solution too, but it's aimed more at businesses. .Mac has 1GB of online storage space - that comes in handy for off-site backups of crucial data.
 
I've used Backup for awhile now, but I'm thinking of changing over to SuperDuper or CarbonCopyCloner. Of course, this may all be rendered moot by Leopard, but we'll see.
 
apfhex said:
Beware of Apple's Backup
Click to expand...

huh. excerpt:

"I have not personally verified Backup 3’s restoration failures, the extent of my evidence is Erik’s and Michael’s writings. Both these guys are Apple-supporting software professionals whose opinions I respect, so when they talk software, I listen.

My bias: the reason I have not personally verified Backup 3’s restoration failures is that I don’t use it. Even though I dislike Retrospect and want to move off it, when Backup 3 shipped I privately laid odds it would be untrustworthy. Hence I followed Erik’s move to Backup 3’s intently, with a mixture of morbid fascination. Would he hit the iceberg I predict lay in wait?"

He rambles for days (while saying nothing) on how bad it is - but hasn't even used it? :eek:

I agree with one facet: it either burns DVD-Rs or stores on the web - or it doesn't. .Mac always has come through for me.
 
gauchogolfer said:
I've used Backup for awhile now, but I'm thinking of changing over to SuperDuper or CarbonCopyCloner. Of course, this may all be rendered moot by Leopard, but we'll see.
Click to expand...

Leopard and Time Machine may render all of this stuff moot. Other than off-site backups (which are important in a worse-case scenario, the built-in backup feature, to an additional drive, is brilliant.
 
I should mention that I have only used Backup version 3.1. I have not used any versions prior to this. So, some of the complaints may have some merit.

I have done regular backups and some restorations with Backup, with no problems. Heck, if you have nothing else, use OS X's built-in archive feature. Make archives of your important stuff, and move them to an external drive. Better than nothing.

Any more information with SuperDuper?
 
I would just buy an external drive and agreeing with frank, just archive it and back it. Leopard suposebly should be good backing up when it comes out.....
 
I've done 3 backups with Backup, 2 of the 3 failed to restore and I lost data. Now I just copy what I want to save onto external hard drives instead. Whatever you decide to use, test it.
 
I was just reading the first issue of "Mac Life" magazine today. This is the "rebirth" if you will, or the mag formerly known as Macaddict. Anyway, the nice folks at Lacie off a free backup application called SilverKeeper.

The link to it

Has any used this, and if so, what were your experiences?
 
apfhex said:
SuperDuper! It's the only perfect bootable backup solution, and it's pretty cheap.
Click to expand...

I recently got an enclosure for my macbook's old hard drive and put in a bigger one. I've been looking for a good backup utility, and have tried carbon copy cloner and SuperDuper! so far.

But when I cloned my new HD on to the old one with SuperDuper! today, something strange happened. The old drive has 2.5 fewer gigabytes of data stored than the new one! Anyone seen this before? So, did the app really create a total clone of the boot drive? :confused:
 
I've been using Backup 3.1 since I got my PowerMac and .Mac back in Oct '05. However, I've decided not to renew my .Mac account because I'm not really using it (1GB is not enough to back up what I want backed up) -- will I still be able to use Backup (to external drive and DVD-R) once .Mac expires?
 
Does anyone here use Silver Keeper? It seems like a good alternative to other backup programs, because its free. Does anyone have any experience with it?
 
Mhaddy said:
I've been using Backup 3.1 since I got my PowerMac and .Mac back in Oct '05. However, I've decided not to renew my .Mac account because I'm not really using it (1GB is not enough to back up what I want backed up) -- will I still be able to use Backup (to external drive and DVD-R) once .Mac expires?
Click to expand...

This prompted me to check mine, my .Mac expired Jan 3 but I just successfully backed up to a CD. So perhaps it will, I wont guarantee it though.
 
I've been cloning two of my laptop hard drives to partitions of an external drive using Carbon Copy Cloner. I've successfully booted both machines from the their respective backup partitions, and everything seems to be in order.
 
Just remember that if you backup to CD/DVD and want to restore, you have to put the last disk in first.

For most uses it should be fine, but I have run into issues with it.
 
aspro said:
This prompted me to check mine, my .Mac expired Jan 3 but I just successfully backed up to a CD. So perhaps it will, I wont guarantee it though.
Click to expand...

I just thought about it a bit more, and using it after unsubscribing to .Mac is possibly not going to work. That is, if your hard drive crashes and you need to reinstall on a new drive Backup will likely think it is on the trial again. That said you could still rip the files out by hand (IIRC it just stores them in a compressed folder.)
 
Blubbert said:
Does anyone here use Silver Keeper? It seems like a good alternative to other backup programs, because its free. Does anyone have any experience with it?
Click to expand...

Yes.

It's not universal, yet.

It does a job and it only backs up files which have changed, which is quite nice.

You can set up multiple groups of backups, but you can only have 1 scheduled time (i.e. if you change the schedule for one it does all the rest as well).

It also has an irritating habit of pushing the dialogue showing your backups to the front of all your windows, rather than just getting out of the way.

It's also got one of the worst icons I have ever seen on a Mac application.

On the positive side, the logs is keeps are very detailed and you can set it to compare the source and destination, without touching any of the files, which is sometimes quite useful.
 
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