MS integrates backup into Vista, Apple to follow?

[Diatribe]

Vista will have an integrated backup solution making it easy for everyone to backup their data.
In order to keep the distance to MS Apple would need to do the same, bundling Backup with OS X. I think it would be necessarry not only because of MS but because I think every OS should come with a backup solution.
The only problem then would be there would be one reason less to buy .mac...

 

[adk]

Apple definitely needs to include backup standard. I use CCC, but it seems like the average user isn't going to want a bootable clone. One intriguing idea I've seen actually comes from dell. They call it Dell Data Safe, but basically consumers can uprgrade to a system with two Hard Drives connected in RAID. (I'm not too familiar with raid, so forgive me if that sounds odd). This seems like a good concept to keep the average idiot from losing the last 5 years of family photos.

 

[bousozoku]

Funny thing is, with UNIX tools, backup is already available, but you have to know how to use so many things to get it done. It's been so long, I don't even remember how to span volumes with cpio.

Apple could put a GUI shell and coordinate using the various commands to make it all work smoothly.

 

[grapes911]

Windows XP already has a nice backup utility. You have to configure it (it takes two minutes), but it works well. All you do it select the file(s)/folder(s) to backup and where to backup to. Then you set when to backup. Works every time. I can't imagine it getting any easier, but I guess it is possible.

 

[Nermal]

One intriguing idea I've seen actually comes from dell. They call it Dell Data Safe, but basically consumers can uprgrade to a system with two Hard Drives connected in RAID. (I'm not too familiar with raid, so forgive me if that sounds odd).

Mirroring two drives in a RAID would guard against data corruption - if one drive fails, then the other will still contain all the data. However, it won't guard against mistakes. If you accidentally delete a file, that file will be deleted from both drives (after all, they're mirrored). It'd be interesting to learn the specifics of what Dell's doing.

 

[kainjow]

rsync works well.

Something like this should do the job:

rsync -arv src1 src2 destination

 

[adk]

Mirroring two drives in a RAID would guard against data corruption - if one drive fails, then the other will still contain all the data. However, it won't guard against mistakes. If you accidentally delete a file, that file will be deleted from both drives (after all, they're mirrored). It'd be interesting to learn the specifics of what Dell's doing.

I'm pretty sure it's just RAID mirroring. They try to put it into layman's terms by calling the second drive the "hidden drive." I think they're basically just trying to protect people from losing everything in a hard drive failure. I'm not sure if HDDs crash a lot more than average in dell's but my mom's 6 month old Dell Notebook just lost its hard drive a few hours ago.

 

[thedude110]

Windows XP already has a nice backup utility. You have to configure it (it takes two minutes), but it works well. All you do it select the file(s)/folder(s) to backup and where to backup to. Then you set when to backup. Works every time. I can't imagine it getting any easier, but I guess it is possible.

I agree, but back in my Help Desking days veryfew of the students who would bring their machines to my office even knew about the feature. If the configuring can be minimized even further (or removed altogether), it will probably make a big difference for the average end user.

Of course, if the machine throws its hard drive and you're backing up to another partition on that hard drive, tough for you anyway!