What I use for backup
12/08/08 20:32 Filed in: Software
Some folks who read my recent BitDepth column on backup asked about the software that I use and suggest.
All things being equal, I like free and I like cheap.
Most backup software on the Mac uses command line applications like PSync and Ditto. Years ago, I bought Deja Vu, which I first discovered as an added value software add-on for Toast, Roxio's optical media burning software.
It has an elegant setup, allowing the user to set a folder as the source and another as the destination.
You can add as many instances of source and destination as you wish. It's possible to set the software to do neat stuff like backup to a network drive (mounting it automatically when it's ready), but I've settled for simply setting multiple backup points that all get reconciled with a single click.
You can do pretty much the same thing with iBackup, free software that quite capably is made available with basic backup profiles that you can customise or create a new profile from scratch.
If you're using Leopard, you have backup software built in, Apple's Time Machine, which only requires that you have a backup disc available as a destination. Once Time Machine has a destination drive, it takes over, first performing a full backup of your entire hard drive and then incrementally adding to it at regular intervals.
It hasn't worked out all that well for me, though.
I have large data sets that change quite regularly, huge image folders that get edited before they are ready for backup and Time Machine is an all or nothing system. You either backup the whole Mac or painstakingly set specific files, folders or volumes (if your startup disk is partitioned) for exclusion. With data turnover like mine, I’ll need to have a volume for Time Machine that’s at least four times the size of my startup volume.
I'm still thinking through how to make the best use of Time Machine, because the ability to restore from a Time Machine backup when reinstalling Mac OS X would have been really handy during my last effort to restore my work file after the drive failed.
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