I’ve been using Apple’s .Mac Backup since it came out, and although it is a tad slow, it has been usable. Until recently. Now, it’s insisting on spitting out disks halfway through the burn, suggesting there’s something wrong. I can burn disks just fine using Toast or the Finder, so the drive and media are OK. .Mac Backup does take a LONG time to back stuff up (especially to CD or DVD) – there is the initial “how big is the backup” scan stage, followed by the “OK – really backing up now. let’s list all of the files” scan stage. Followed by the “OK – I’ve got the file list, let’s start copying them over to the disk image” stage, followed by “OK – files are copied. I’m actually going to burn a backup now” stage. Followed (finally, if it gets this far) by the “Let’s verify the backup” stage. Takes for freaking ever. When it works at all.
So, I’m looking for options. I had been using a hand-rolled script in Terminal to copy a set of files over (ala rsync) to the disk image for the blank CD or DVD. That works, but I’d rather not have to maintain a script by hand.
What do people use? Do I have to shell out for Retrospect or something similar? Carbon Copy Cloner seems to want to just clone entire drives, so that’s out… Anything else useful and reliable (and hopefully cheap/free)?
{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
I have an old Blue and White G3, which acts as a server and my backup location. I have a few scripts that cron runs on a periodic basis to rsync the contents of my laptop to my G3. One script backs up my documents folder hourly. Backing up to a hard drive, in this manner, is pretty low maintainence. Using it to write to removable media is likely more cumbersome. I’ve used the .Mac backup program and have found it lacking, as well.
Yeah – I’d been using an rsync run via cron to keep things synced to my external firewire drive (which walked away and is now presumed dead – I’d love to have it back, whoever took it…)
I have a need to keep backups on less volatile media like CD or DVD. Hard drives go bad, and when they do, you’re hooped.
I’m working on an rsync script that I can call easily to copy a bunch of stuff over to a blank DVD. Less pretty than a shiny GUI, but it should work well. Trying the first backup with it now…
I have always found CD and DVD to be totally unreliable. While a hard drive can go bad, if you do have your data on 2 hard drives (the hard drive on the machine you are using, and the hard drive that is the back up), the chances of both of them blowing is pretty small.
True – CDs can be flakey occasionally (if you get a bad batch of media, for instance). I’ve never had problems, but even if a CD or DVD went south on me, I’ve got a stack of disks, one burned every week. So the worst case scenario of a disk going bad might make me go back to the stack to pick up last week’s disk…
Also, all critical files are already in a few locations (my laptop, my desktop, and on a server) so I’ve got hot backups ready for many things. I still like the comfort of knowing I’ve got a (so far) reliable, offline, portable and sharable backup of everything I would need to add to a fresh OSX install to be up and running quickly in case Something Bad happened to my main systems.
Try Carbon Copy Cloner (http://www.bombich.com/software/ccc.html). It’s basically a nice Cocoa GUI grafted on top of the Unix psync utility. Reasonably fast, very intuitive, and very reliable.
Plus, it’s free.
Oops. Just read the bottom of your post. I’m pretty certain that CCC will do specific folders rather than entire drives now, though I haven’t played with it in a while.
I am somewhat sure Michael is correct that CCC can do selected content.
For a while on our server I used SilverKeeper or whatever the utility is that came with my LaCie external FW drives. It worked reliably except I could never get it to run automatically by a schedule.
I must say Retrospect is awfully reliable. We have a version running on our internal office Workgroup server for its own backups, as well as doing remote backups of my working file contents, my bosses PC, and our XServe.
I avoid keeping my data/working files on my computer and carry them on an external FW drive (mainly because I shuttle them between my laptop at work and an iBook at home), but after some server hoo-hah a few weeks ago, it makes a lot of sense to keep the OS separate volumes form your data. The OS and the Apps can be backed up with CCC, and a backup strategy on a data volume keeps you covered.
I have also been looking for a solution.
Both Carbon Copy Cloner and SuperDuper! are designed to copy an entire disk – although you can exclude folders at the root of the disk. So you can use them to back up /Users but not a subfolder. Both excellent as far as they go. For creating disk images for system restores and lab set ups, they rock.
I tried a product called BRU in 2003, it was still a little rough around the edges but had the advantage of supporting different backup media including various tape drives. Your post reminds me I should try it again.
For individual files and folders I still rely on rsync scripts.