What is the best way to backup/mirror data?

S

Sogni

*gone*
But I don't mean RAID (as I'm not sure what exactly happened with my other hard drive).

And I'd like to avoid costly software...

But I need a way to backup data on specific folders on a nightly basis or on command.

I have not yet decided if I want the drive to be on IDE, Firewire or on a totally different computer via Ethernet (Windows or Linux via Samba), so I'd like the ability to do any combination if not all these options available.

Does anyone know of a solution?

Also has anyone tried Iomea's QuickSync? Does it backup to other locations than Zip Drives? Wish I had something faster than Dialup here to test drive it (and others). :p
 
If you have OS X, then you already have the software.

The command is 'ditto'

There is a GUI app for it called Carbon Copy Cloner 1.2 that's available on VersionTracker. CCC copies the whole hard drive, I'm not completely sure if it will let you just copy directories, but it's worth a look.

Be sure to read the man page on it. There are two things to do with this command; make sure you backup resource forks and run the command as root (I'm sure sudo would work fine too).
 
Get Retrospect for nightly backups to a tape medium or consider Synchronize Pro X (qdea.com) for on-demand hard drive file mirroring.
 
the 'ditto' tip is best AND free (as in beer). you can, for example:

sudo ditto -rsrc /Users/yourname /Volumes/Backup/200204XX

It'll ask for a password and then copy your whole home directory to a Backup volume.

I prefer a Firewire drive, because I can take it with me if needed, separate from the computer.

If you want to automate this task, you can use the cron system that's already in the system. If you want to know more about it, ask. But I tend to do it by hand, because my backup needs change from time to time.
 
Ok so far I've tested QuickSync 3 by Iomega and the ditto command as I must say I like them both.

I like the options QuickSync gives me to backup multiple folders (say for example if I don't care to backup everything in my user folder, but I do want everything in my Pictures, Documents, etc.).

I'm going to see if I can get a free upgrade since QuickSync 2 (?) came with my Zip Drive, if not I'll defenatly use ditto.

I'll also look at the others suggested for when I can afford it - I'd like the best backup option, I'm sick of losing my data! :mad:

Now to call Maxtor and get that drive replaced!

Maybe I should get a 3rd drive while I'm at it - can I make the 2nd and 3rd drive into a RAID array only for data/backups without the 1st/system drive?

Thanks!
 
You can, but I personally wouldn't. The flexibility you get from a third drive (firewire) is of more worth to me, personally. I want another 120 GB of those Maxtor stackable firewire drives. Or two 60 GB or something. Flexibility is king for me. But price is, too, thus iomega's solutions aren't worth dirt right now. Too bad...
 
I am unsure of what will be my final configuration of my home office/studio, my studio is still half at home and half at the old new studio (changed office when one of my friends left the company).

Anyway I'm planning for either my Linux box or Win2K/XP to do network file sharing via a secondary drive, and I plan to ultimatly send my backups via the network to one of them (Linux if I figure out SAMBA, if not Win2K/XP).

But I guess having a backup of a backup isn't a bad idea, huh? :)

So I'll leave the 40 Gig Drive a secondary in the Mac (if I can get Maxtor to replace it) and do local backups to it, then back that up to my network file server. So, 2 CRON Jobs for ditto would do it? :D

Speaking of external fire wire drives... Are supposed to be able to boot from them?
This could be a problem with my Maxtor drive - but I had it in an IDE Firewire box and my Mac would NOT boot from it after selecting it as a startup drive.
Even when the Mac booted up - I could not see the drive at all on my desktop or in Finder, I had to power it off and power it back on, and wait a good minute or two after it spun up before it showed up...

And about Iomega, I was looking around their site and apperantly they're about to come out with a bunch of new drives - including external USB and Firewire drives.

http://www.iomega.com/hdd/index.html
(scroll to the bottom of the page, it shows the Peerless drives and two HDDs)
Looks interesting...
 
the peerless drive - up to now - was just plain toooooooooooo expensive. an external firewire drive is much, much better. you can replace the IDE harddrive inside with a bigger one when they appear - no probs. (and you can still sell the old hd or use it in another computer.) the GB price is much lower that way.
 
Yeah, I have not really been too interested in it as it's not as "portable" as it looks. Like I need to transport it around between other computers - and lugging around and having to plug in everything and build it at each location was just not tempting.

If they price their portable FW hard drives right, I might just get one (if I don't get it by someone else, I really want something that uses Firewire and USB2.0, and hopefully is self powered at least under Firewire).

But then again buying a portable hard drive AND an MP3 player (10GB iPod) is very tempting too! :D
But at that point I'm just affraid that it might not have the performance of a regular hard drive. :p
 
Originally posted by fryke

sudo ditto -rsrc /Users/yourname /Volumes/Backup/200204XX
Click to expand...

Ok I've been using this method to backup to a 2nd drive and so far I like it!

Just one question, if you or anyone else knows how... how can I automate this (using CRON or something else)? I want to make it into a Bash script that auto-launches without me around, but since it's a sudo command - it'll wait for me forever to enter the password.

Thanks.
 
Ok. I have a hard drive named Macintosh-HD (original eh?) and I want to back it up to my Kekus drive which is a new replacement drive as my Mac-HD is beginning to fail. The source drive has OS 9 files and a system on it. Should the ditto command be:

sudo ditto -rsrc Macintosh-HD Kekus

I'm not really sure of how to use drive names in Unix.
 
Originally posted by Buckey
Should the ditto command be:
sudo ditto -rsrc Macintosh-HD Kekus
I'm not really sure of how to use drive names in Unix.
Click to expand...

Your primary (system) OS X drive is '/Macintosh-HD' I guess (without the quotes). All other volumes are called '/Volumes/Volumename'. If you have spaces in the names, you have to add quotes. For example:

sudo ditto -rsrc "/some/path/to/source directory/" "/another/to/target directory/"

Hope this helps.
 
Try downloading PsyncX from VersionTracker. It does everything you specified in your first message. It also A) makes bootable copies of your hard drive if you back the entire drive up B) has a scheduler built-in (it uses the cron job ability of your computer and C) it is FREE!!

Note: if you schedule a backup late at night you will need to make sure the computer doesn't go into "deep sleep", but rather into "light sleep". "Light sleep" is where the computer screen and hard drive wind down, but the entire computer doesn't go comatose.

David
 
Yeah, it makes an exact replica of your hard drive (if you want it to). That is one of the reasons I decided to write a GUI for psync. I just really liked it and thought that other people (who don't like command lines) might find it really useful.

David
 
The latter GUI utility is not rsync. It's PsyncX, based on the command line tool psync. Check out the link:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/psyncx/

rsync has worked for me for backing up /etc and /var/mail, but I have had to use ditto for resource fork-dependent files. Now I plan on giving PsyncX a try to meet all of my backup needs.
 
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