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ed-hawco

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Aug 1, 2009
24
3
Montreal, QC
Hi. First off, let me say that I'm not interested in Time Machine, as the vast majority of my files are JPGs (about 20,000) and I don't need to have them "versioned" every time I touch them. I can't even imagine how that would work with Lightroom! The rest of the files are your standard Word and PDF files, lots of text files, some mirrors of a couple of web sites (with their configs, etc.) and whatnot.

Anyway, I've recently switched to Mac (last week) and I'm a semi-noob. I have a Mac Mini with an external MiniStack drive from OWC that I use as my data disk, and a second external drive that I will use as my backup disk.

The MiniStack came with a software bundle that includes Data Backup 3. However, my friends who use Macs all seem to use SuperDuper. I don't know which on I should use.

Anybody here have any insight as to which of those three I should use? Reviews online are all mixed. Data Backup 3 would be the easiest because I have it right here (AFAIK, fully licensed) and a video review made it look pretty easy. I'd have to buy a license for SuperDuper.

Looking for insight: anybody got any that would help me out? Thanks!
 
I've never heard of NovaBackup, but I have SuperDuper.

You can set SD to do a clone of your HD as often as you like, and it will erase the previous version, so you will only have an exact, up-to-date, bootable clone of the HD.
 
Thanks for the info. To clarify, I'm not interested in cloning so much as simply backing up data files. (I also have Carbon Copy Cloner)

Basically, I want to do a backup of all the data files, then every few days do a check where it backs up anything that has changed (don't need to replicate the whole system every time). Both SD and DB3 do that. I just wish I knew which did it better!
 
Ok, I could be totally wrong, but doesn't TM do incremental backups also?

At first, I could understand why the OP wanted just a clone of his machine, so he's not backing up every photo he alters every time. I can imagine that would get to be a pretty large backup...although it may be necessary to be fully protected from anything.

Since it wants incremental, what's wrong with TM? Maybe I'm missing something. I just use TM and as far as I know, it has everything I need if something were to happen to my system.
 
Thanks for the info. To clarify, I'm not interested in cloning so much as simply backing up data files. (I also have Carbon Copy Cloner)

Basically, I want to do a backup of all the data files, then every few days do a check where it backs up anything that has changed (don't need to replicate the whole system every time). Both SD and DB3 do that. I just wish I knew which did it better!

Apple Backup 3 does this. You get it for "free" with MobileMe.
 
There's plenty of software to spend your money on that will do what the OP wants. But it seems as though Time Machine would do the trick.

mt
 
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