I have just been reading about people's problems with the OSX 10.4.3 update here:

http://forums.appletalk.com.au/index.php?s...opic=13498&st=0

So, who does a regular backup of their Mac (and who doesn't) and what software and hardware do you use.

When I bought my first Mac in 1997 I got a Zip drive with it. There was some Dantz software with it which I think was called DiskFit Direct or something. I thought I might as well try it out and it worked well enough. In fact it saved my arse a number of times!

When the size of my backups started to out grow 100MB Zip disks I checked the Dantz site and found I was able to upgrade to Retrospect Express quite cheaply. So I did and at the same time bought my first CD burner. Now I am using Retrospect Desktop (which is really overkill for my needs but Express is only bundled with other products now) to external hard drive and DVDs.

So, I feel safe. Do you?

As many & varied ways as I can . backups of important things to optical disk (mostly photos & edits), a whole HD backup excluding the OS/Apps across the network, some of those optical disks offsite at my parent's & sister's place, and soon to be an external HD for an entire drive backup, for a quick OS restore if I need it. After being burned with backup solutions that require a particular app to restore, I go purely for backups that can be read/restored using nothing more than the default OS install. That can take a little more effort - but pays off in the long term.

I'm too paranoid, but I've also lost more than a decade's worth of stuff before, so I'll live happily like this - it's not THAT much effort for what it gives.

If I were to minimise it down to just one type, it'd be regular sets of DVD burns onsite & offsite.

I just run a clone of my boot drive and important stuff on my server as well

Clone saved my ass about 1 week ago!

nope....i don't...i take risks every day....and this is one.....but i should probably start backing up somehow....i only have a cd burner and a 4gb iPod, so i don't see how it could all fit....

Before you read this, I'll admit I'm involved in selling the product, but to be fair I won't plug the company I work for, just the product itself. I'm just putting this info here so people in need can consider it. If you just do a straight Finder copy to backup your stuff, well and good. If you think you need something better, read on. If anyone likes the sound of Retrospect they can get it from an AppleCentre or online, just like other Mac stuff.

Probably the three major features of Retrospect are compatibility, customisation and what EMC Dantz call Progressive Backup.

Compatibility - Retrospect works with CD & DVD burners, removable media (Jaz, Zip, MO), hard disks (internal & external), SANs, iPods, USB flash drives, tape drives & libraries...you name it. CD/DVD and tape drives and tape drives generally need to be specifically supported to work properly, and Dantz have an excellent database on their webs ite where you can search on compatibility. Anything else that mounts in the Finder and can be used as a normal read/write device without requiring special drivers will also work. Retrospect also supports devices connected over the network or through FireWire or Fibre switches (ie: Xserve RAID).

Customisation - basically you can set up any combination (and any number of combinations) of source, destination, file selectors, options and schedules to perform your backups.
Example 1: Backup at 12 midnight Mon-Fri to an external hard disk, only adding new and changed files from the 'Users' folder. Ignore cache files.
Example 2: Backup iTunes music library to DVD once a week, only adding new and changed files. Backup everything else to hard drive once a day.
Example 3: Backup from all machines on the network to Xserve RAID. One RAID 0 set for backup Mon-Fri, another RAID 0 set for backup on the weekend. Erase and restart daily backup each Monday. Identify same files across every machine on the network, and don't backup more than one copy. If the network is already under heavy use, defer the backup until later.

Progressive Backups - Retrospect doesn't just give you a backup of what is on your hard disk, right now. A progressive backup gradually adds new and changed files to the backup, taking a 'snapshot' of your hard drive each time. If you want a long Word document from a week ago before you made a lot of incorrect changes to your only copy, you can restore the file from that point in time. Obviously if You just make a straight copy of files yourself, you will only ever have the latest version of it. If your backups grow large (Retrospect can keep track of 1 Petabyte of data per Backup Set!) - and you want to restore a video file and all you know is what it was called, Retrospect will find it in the Catalog, ask you for the right Tape/DVD/hard drive, and restore it. You don't have to keep track of it, and backups are only ever a one-step process. Retrospect will also recognise the same files on the computer and even across multiple machines on the network, so if 50 employees all have the same 50MB PowerPoint presentation, only one copy wil be backed up.

So there you have it. An obvious plug, but I'm familiar with the product and I think it deserves it.

is there any imaging software that'll span across multiple DVDs ?

Retrospect will do that, too. If you performed a backup of a single large file (like a DVD disc image or video file), it would span across as many CDs/DVDs as it would take to fit. Then if you did a restore, it would restore it off all the discs as one file again. Voila.

Backup 3 seems to.

always, after 3 board replacements i don't trust any computers anymore. macs or pc.

i use retrospect express which came with my maxtor drive

I use DejaVu (http://propagandaprod.com/dejavu.html) which seems to do the job quite well. I it doing periodic backups to a remote machine at the office, no glitches at all. I am not sure how it would handle spanning a backup across DVD's though, since I have never tried, but you can get a 30 day trial version from their site iirc.

I am in the market for a powerbook/ibook so my question is... Is there a way I can just click a button and have my hard disk image it's self to an external drive. Then if the drive in my powerbook/ibook dies I can just restore the last image to the new disk after it's replaced? It's never that easy though... Is it?

Yay my first post

Carbon Copy Cloner (just Google it) will make a bootable backup copy of your hard drive to an external one. You could probably format the external one and make two partitions, one for the system backup, and another for just files and folders to be backed up. It's pretty easy to configure and has always worked great for me.

I have a very mobile PowerBook with an 80Gb HDD (65Gb full) and a SuperDrive. Every month I backup my Photos from iPhoto, my music from iTunes, and my Documents and downloaded apps to DVD.

At the moment this is about 14 DVD-RW's, which is relatively pain free. However I realise an external drive would be better, but I am waiting 'til I get home (eventually) to save having to lug it around.

DVD's work out fine anyway for very little cost, and it allows me to make a 2nd backup copy of important stuff and keep it off-site away from the first backup.

I have two tier back up strategy.

My mac has 3 internal drives and one external. Once a week or prior any major upgrade I would clone my entire boot drive to external HD using either SuperDuper or Carbon Cloner.

On a daily basis I have set DeJavu to back up my home folder to another internal drive.

Cheers
Andy

Toast 7 does it
It will even create self extracting archives.