rsync vs. chronosync

[maflynn]

I'm looking into setting up a portable external drive that will contain a backup of my documents and images. I plan on backing it up daily/weekly. I see I can use rsync to copy the images over but I stumbled upon chronosync which has more flexibility and power at least in terms of having everything upfront easier to use.

Any opinions on one or the other?

The goal is to use this small hard drive as an offline backup that I'll keep at my office so that if anything happens to my home setup, my data will still be safe.

 

[occamsrazor]

I'd also look at Carbon Copy Cloner and SuperDuper, then see what fits your needs best.
Both of the above can be set to auto-initiate an incremental backup as soon as you plug in the external drive, which is a nice option.

 

[maflynn]

Ah thanks,

I use CCC for imaging my HD to an external, but I never thought to use it for my portable HD, and I didn't know it will do an incremental. My USB portable HD took 2+ hours to clone but only 20 minutes on the second execution.

I still may consider chronosync because it looks like it archives the versions before over-writing them. Kind of like what TM does.

 

[occamsrazor]

You might also want to read this thread:

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/779758/

See my comment #22. I'm still undecided in the CCC vs SuperDuper debate. Both of them seem to work pretty well. Chronosync looks good also, but I like the simplicity of the other two. In backing up, simplicity leads to fewer user-generated screw-ups in my experience.

As for archiving the files, CCC can do this also but it's kind've lost amongst the settings. See "Archive modified and deleted items" option here:

http://www.bombich.com/software/docs/CCCHelp/CCCHelp.html?page=backup

And a good description of the other backup methods:

http://www.bombich.com/software/docs/CCCHelp/CCCHelp.html?page=browse

I'm pretty sure SuperDuper has similar....

 

[qwertypo]

I still may consider chronosync because it looks like it archives the versions before over-writing them. Kind of like what TM does.

CCC will save a copy of any file it replaces also. If you tell it to. When enabled, every backup will create a folder named after the DATE, and will include all directors and files that have been altered.