What do people use for backup software?

alligator · October 14, 2003 12:18PM

I don't have .Mac, and don't plan on buying it since I can't justify the yearly cost. I need to backup my new G5 information, and I'm not sure what software to use. All of the Mac magazines I've ready talk about some "dance" software, but I can't remember the whole name.

Any suggestions?

luca · October 14, 2003 1:00PM

Well, the one you're thinking of is probably Retrospect by Dantz. But I've heard the OS X version is no good (I haven't used it though so don't take my word for it).

I got a free piece of software from LaCie called SilverKeeper. It's not the greatest thing, a bit kludgy sometimes, but it's free and pretty easy to use, and because it checks your data for changes, you don't have to spend a ton of time copying everything over to an external hard drive.

Oh yeah, what are you planning to back up to? You didn't mention if you wanted to use CDs, DVDs, a second hard drive (internal or external), or some type of removable media.

voxapps · October 14, 2003 1:28PM

If you're backing up to a second hard drive, check out the shareware Carbon Copy Cloner. It can create a bootable clone of your primary drive and can do sync updates (copying only files that have changed after the initial cloning operation).

My experience with CCC has been mixed: it seems to work well but can be fussy with certain FireWire drives (can freeze during the backup and cause directory weirdness on the clone drive). When it works, it works very well, and the price is right.

alligator · October 14, 2003 2:03PM

I'll probably back up to CD or DVD for off site storage. I do have two hard drives, but I use the second hard drive for video editing.

madmax559 · October 14, 2003 2:55PM

tar cvzpf

ghost_user_name · October 14, 2003 4:16PM

I've been using Retrospect on an OS X Server, and it runs great. They even shipped a linux client as well, so now all of my machine get backed up over the network to my AIT Drive.

kickaha · October 14, 2003 5:24PM

Lo, did they eliminate the extra $400 Server tax, or did they fail to catch a clue?

kcmac · October 15, 2003 8:48AM

I use Tri-Backup. Very simple. Very flexible. Frequent updates. Early OS X developer.

pensieve · October 15, 2003 8:58AM

Backup. It's simple and it makes the .mac price worth it. Think about it: if you're going to pay $50 for software that does the same thing, you get all the .mac extras for $50. And you get incentives for signing up with .mac, reducing your cost considerably. Is .mac worth $100? Maybe not to some. Is it worth ~$30? I think so. :shrugs:

staphbaby · October 15, 2003 9:10AM

I'm running Retrospect Workgroup at work...

The Mac clients are doing just fine; the Windows clients, however, have just disappeared from Retrospect's visible network for no apparent reason (no software changes anywhere to produce this effect, so I'm rather puzzled ? haven't had time to sort it out yet).

I have heard tho' that it does have a tendency to occasionally corrupt backup sets (which are saved as one enormous file) so that they can't be used, although I haven't experienced this yet myself (thank Christ), so redundancy would probably be a good idea. I'm not convinced that their Mac support is as good as it once was either... And it's slooooowwwwwwwww

On the plus side, it supports backup to just about every medium and device imaginable, with some exceptions.

I'm inclined to think that rsync'ing the more critical files as well might be a good idea...

jbl · October 15, 2003 11:20AM

Quote:

Originally posted by penseive

Backup. It's simple and it makes the .mac price worth it. Think about it: if you're going to pay $50 for software that does the same thing, you get all the .mac extras for $50. And you get incentives for signing up with .mac, reducing your cost considerably. Is .mac worth $100? Maybe not to some. Is it worth ~$30? I think so. :shrugs:

~$30 is assuming you only want to back up 100 MB of files. My iPhoto album alone is 13 GB. That would cost you a lot on iDisk. The only thing I have found that is fast enough to make backing up my entire hard disk feasible is Retrospect. It worked for me the one time I had a hard disk fail (okay, I dropped it so "fail" is sort of a euphemism). The only problem was that a bunch of the folders had their creation dates reset.

pensieve · October 15, 2003 12:06PM

Quote:

Originally posted by JBL

~$30 is assuming you only want to back up 100 MB of files. My iPhoto album alone is 13 GB.

That's if you want to backup to your iDisk. Backup v2 has facilities for backing up to other drives as well as using third party burners.

leonis · October 15, 2003 12:11PM

The only app I use for backup is:

FINDER (just drag and drop between drives)

ghost_user_name · October 15, 2003 12:56PM

There are two kinds of hard drives: Those that have failed, and those that will fail.

ghost_user_name · October 15, 2003 1:13PM

There are two kinds of CD and DVD recordable media: Those that are unreadable and those that will be unreadable in under two years.

jbl · October 15, 2003 5:05PM

Quote:

Originally posted by penseive

That's if you want to backup to your iDisk. Backup v2 has facilities for backing up to other drives as well as using third party burners.

Sorry, I see what you were saying. Is that version out of beta yet? I have been reluctant to use a beta back up program.

What do people use for backup software?

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