Which Backup Software

F

faxfan2002

Registered
Hi,

After a recent case of my external drive crashing I would like to back it up on regular basis to DVD, ideally with incremental changes (I realise I will have to feed in several disks to begin with). I'm looking at a (upto) 230GB of data. Is there a good freeware / shareware / commercial product anyone can recommend?

Thanks.
 
Thanks Zammy

I missed the update and can confirm your info to faxfan2002. I'm using silverkeeper with my external HD and I'm very pleased with it.
 
230 GB of data to DVDs? Even with incremental backups that would be impractical. I used to use Dantz Retrospect but now use Chronosync. I back up to an external hd and burn a dvd containing important documents once a week. Not foolproof but the best I can do.
 
I know this isnt a perfect solution, but how about external HD and Carbon Copy Cloner. So if your machine goes down, you can bring it right back up again.

Maybe not the best for keeping updated, but if you dont mind a week difference or so...depends what you do with your machine really.
 
INMHO your backup strategy depends on the value you place on the data and how fast it changes. For myself, it would cost more to replace the data on my computer than the computer itself.

I use Dantz Retrospect to back up to 2 external drives (one connected to the computer, the other stored at a different location). Retrospect automatically performs an incremental backup during each night and I swap the drives every week. No mess, no fuss, no need to remember to do anything except swap the drives.

This way if the computer hard disk fails I lose up to 24 hours of data. If the house burns down I lose up to a week. Restoring from a backup would take a few hours. Recovering from losing all my data without a backup couldn't be done!

I bought a copy of TidBITs "Take control of Mac OS X backups", a $10 eBook in PDF format that covers all aspects of backing up a Mac and I recommend it.

www.tidbits.com

I think.
 
BorneoBound's strategy is exactly what I used to do... until I found that Retrospect does NOT work in Tiger.

Here's a posting of mine from another thread:

I "had" been a Retrospect user for at least 10 years... until last week.

Since upgrading to Tiger, and then paying for the upgrade to Retrospect 6, I have been unable to complete a backup. I backup to a separate FW drive.

I consistently got full out crashes some part of the way into a "Duplicate." (I duplicate the entire drive to a folder on the backup.) I tried all manner of suggestions from the Dantz website: have no other drives attached, have no other apps running, only duplicate docs, it must be bad memory, Apple screwed up with FW, etc.

Of course, I'd already used my ONE tech support incident with Dantz... and it would be $70 to even talk to them about what clearly seemed their problem.

Also, there were reports that the Retrospect AutoRun files were causing people's machines to slow down. I'd definitely been having slowdown problems and recently removed the Retrospect files... no problems/slowdowns since... though I wouldn't be able to swear that Retrospect was causing the problems at this point.

All that said... I tried SuperDuper. What a gem! Gee... it was able to copy over 110 GB of data to my firewire drive... without blaming Apple, Memory or making me go through a gauntlett of "try this or thats."

SuperDuper only costs $19.95... and when I had a tech problem I got a response back right away. (My bad... I should read ALL the instructions... avoid skimming.)

BTW... you don't have to use the entire disk for a backup... or even a partition. You can create a Disk Image on the backup drive... and SuperDuper will backup to that image. Instructions on their website.
 
Yeah, an external HD is the way to go for backups, I just use SilverKeeper for its straightforwardness. I have another program that does "evolutive" backups (saving successive versions of files as they are changed between backups), but I don't even use it. It's Data Backup from the Data Safety Suite by Prosoft, iirc.

But I just use SilverKeeper to update my backup of the user folder each month, it's simple and fast.

I also used CCC (Carbon Copy Cloner) to make a system file backup on the same drive so I could boot from it in an emergency. That's something you only need to do once, more or less.
 
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