Can a mac backup to an XP server?

wienerdogwienerdog
Posted:
in Genius Bar edited January 2014
I'm thinking of setting up an XP file server to backup my G5 my Windoze box. From what I can tell, general file backups with such a configuration are no problem. But I'm wondering if I can use a program such as Retrospect to create an actual mirror of my G5 boot drive on a server running XP?



thanks in advance

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 8
    mr. hmr. h Posts: 4,870member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by wienerdog

    I'm thinking of setting up an XP file server to backup my G5 my Windoze box. From what I can tell, general file backups with such a configuration are no problem. But I'm wondering if I can use a program such as Retrospect to create an actual mirror of my G5 boot drive on a server running XP?



    thanks in advance



    If you use NTFS on the Windows box, you can create a sparseimage on it that can grow to any size you need. You can then create an image of your G5 on that sparseimage using carbon copy cloner. This is how I backup my PowerBook.



    Here is the procedure:



    Set up your WinXP box with NTFS file system and windows sharing enabled.



    Connect to the Win XP box from your G5 using SMB



    Open "disk utility", found in /applications/utilities/, and go to "images" in the menubar. Then select New -> Blank Image?. In the dialogue that appears, select a destination on the Win XP box to store the sparseimage, choose a size that matches your G5's storage capacity (the size of the actual file that is created will be small at first, and will grow as things are copied to the image), and in the format drop down menu, choose "sparseimage".



    When the new sparseimage is created, OS X will mount it.



    Now run Carbon Copy Cloner, and choose the mounted image as the destination.



    The first clone will take a long time, but if you install the extra synchronisation stuff (read the CCC read me), subsequent clones should be quicker (but will still take a while).
  • Reply 2 of 8
    wienerdogwienerdog Posts: 35member
    Thanks Mr H.,



    Sounds like exactly the type of information I'm looking for



    I have a old G4 Sawtooth kicking around and was going to use it for the server, but I can only cram a maximum of 2 drives into it. I can get 8 drives in the Windoze tower. That's an awful lot of backing up...



    Any suggestions on what an old G4 box might be useful for?
  • Reply 3 of 8
    mr. hmr. h Posts: 4,870member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by wienerdog

    Any suggestions on what an old G4 box might be useful for?



    Being sold on eBay?
  • Reply 4 of 8
    MarvinMarvin Posts: 15,320moderator
    I wouldn't use a sparse image. They are prone to corruption.



    I just use an external firewire HD (you can get a 250GB for about £100 these days) and use SuperDuper to clone my internal drive to it.



    You can't do this with a Windows filesystem because it might screw with resource forks.



    Then you just use the program to update changed files. The advantage this has is that if your internal fails for some reason, you can actually boot from the external drive. You couldn't do that from a disk image.



    So I'd say sell the G4 and with some of the money, buy a good external HD. Of course, you could always just put a big HD in the G4 and use that for backing up.
  • Reply 5 of 8
    mr. hmr. h Posts: 4,870member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Marvin

    I wouldn't use a sparse image. They are prone to corruption.



    I use them all the time and they've never corrupted on me.
  • Reply 6 of 8
    MarvinMarvin Posts: 15,320moderator
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Mr. H

    I use them all the time and they've never corrupted on me.



    They are ok if you don't keep them mounted a lot and have a stable system. But if you have the image mounted and need to force restart, that's when corruption can happen. Most users notice this sort of thing when their user account stops working and it turns out they used home folder encryption, which uses a sparse image.



    I used a sparse image to test if it was a viable alternative to a fixed size image and it worked ok for about 2 weeks and I even managed to recover the free space a few times but I had a crash or hangup that I couldn't be bothered waiting for and I restarted the system. When I tried to open the image, it said the image was corrupt.



    For me they are too volatile to depend on especially for system backups but experience may vary. Usually your opinion on these things change the second it happens to you .
  • Reply 7 of 8
    gene cleangene clean Posts: 3,481member
    You can use unencrypted sparseimages though. That's the same as fixed images, the only difference being that sparseimages can grow if the need arises, and the fixed images can not.
  • Reply 8 of 8
    drboardrboar Posts: 477member
    With the aid of a IDE card you can get 4 HDs in your Sawooth and then you can break the 128 GB limit of the IDE 66 that you have on the Sawtooth. So 2 TB no problem



    I recently switched from tapes to harddisk for the retrospect backup of 60 computers. The small AIT 35 tapes cost twise as much as HD space and it is PITA if you have to recreate someones files and they are scattered across many tapes.
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