Backing Up My MacBook Pro

I've used connected for years on my windows machines but I want to try something new with my MacBook Pro. I've heard that Apple's backup service is good. Are there any other Mac backup services I should check out?

My needs are:

- I back up a lot of data - at least 30-40 gigs
- I need scheduled backup - once a day at night works fine for me
- I need easy retrieval - both online and via CD
- Simple UI - I like to customize what gets backed up
- Doesn't mess up/slow down my computer

Thanks for your suggestions in advance.

Comments

[John C. Welch]

Um...30-40GB *per day*? Are you doing daily full backups?

[Ask Bjørn Hansen]

I'm not sure backing up 30-40 gigs is compatible with storing it off-site online (or on DVD). Of course it depends on how much data is changing.

It's not perfect, but I like using SuperDuper! to mirror my MacBook Pro to a firewire drive (or two). A variation is to mirror to disk images on the firewire drive. Another variation is to split up your large FW drive into multiple "MacBook disk" sized partitions to have room for multiple backups.

- ask

[Giordano]

I´m using Carbonite, but I´m still ambivalent about it... it´s really convenient, and backs up the entire content of my PC while I´m not working. On the other side, it took about 1 month to get a full backup, and it appears to slow down the PC sometimes... and, after all, I still didn´t have (fortunately) the need to recover anything from backup. Someone else is using it and tried how well the backup works?

[Michael Sitarzewski]

Simple UI: http://www.mac.com/1/solutions/backup.html

I use it to backup my 25GB to another computer in the house weekly, then have a nightly backup for my preferences, bookmarks, etc. to my .mac account.

[Lance Weatherby]

My needs are pretty similar to yours and I have been looking for the perfect solution for awhile.

As you most likely know, Carbonite does not currently have a Mac client. I tried it on a PC and when they wanted a credit card before the data set was uploaded I bailed.

I have taken to a kluged solution. I use .Mac backup for daily backup of my current file set (the folder that changes daily), Synk http://www.decimus.net/synk/ to back up the vast majority to my home LAN, and box.net to throw files online that I think I might need.

Does not solve all your problems but it works for me. If you find the total solution you should invest in it!

[Michael J.]

I think SuperDuper is the reigning king of mirror backups right now. You're not going to get 30-40GB off of CDs so give that up. Here's a good link on the intricacies of mac backup:

http://blog.plasticsfuture.org/2006/03/05/the-state-of-backup-and-cloning-tools-under-mac-os-x/

And here's the same guy with recommendations:

http://blog.plasticsfuture.org/2006/04/23/mac-backup-software-harmful/

If you read those two (in-depth) articles you should be all set.

[John Zeratsky]

I haven't figured out the online piece of it yet (though I am backing up certain important files to my Amazon S3 account), but for daily local backups I use Deja Vu [1] with a Lacie external firewire drive. Deja Vu is nice -- it runs as a System Preferences pane and lets you set up different schedules for daily, weekly and monthly backups.

[1]: http://propagandaprod.com/

[Geof F. Morris]

I will echo all the SuperDuper!-to-local-FireWire drive love. I have a nightly backup that runs like a champ.

As for online services: you could always use .Mac's Backup for the most important files, but I think you'll pay a premium for that kind of filespace.

[Shivering Timbers]

I have several macs in my household, and over time we've developed a nearly bulletproof and completely transparent backup/sharing scheme.

1) We run FolderShare on all our machines (www.foldershare.com). This is a free service which transparently syncronizes files across the network--any network--any time two or more machines are running at once. We use this to keep shared files (for example, our family iPhoto library, which 5,000+ photos) syncronized across all our computers.

As a bonus, if any one of those computers goes T/U, there are three other copies of the shared files on other computers.

I highly recommend Foldershare. It is simple to set up, runs transparently in the background, and has never caused us any problems. It also works under Windows, so you can share files cross-platform.

2) We bought a cheap external hard drive for our iMac, and set it up as a RAID mirror of the internal hard drive. As long as the external drive is plugged in, the Mac will effectively be backing itself up on a continual basis.

I posted step-by-step instructions for setting up the RAID here: http://www.frozennorth.org/C2011481421/E20060221212020/

This isn't as quick or easy as setting up Foldershare, but the end result Just Works, at least for a desktop machine. Laptops are more of a nuisance, since you'd have to plug in the external drive periodically to update the RAID mirror.

Between the two, we have pretty much eliminated the possibility of losing important data in a hardware failure. Plus we get the convenience of having important files available on multiple machines even when they're not online, thanks to the magic of Foldershare.

[Wayne Slavin]

Fred, Have you seen Backupright yet? We have a Mac OS X version (Windows & Linux too). I am using the OS X version on my plain old Alum. Powerbook (no Macbook yet), it runs automatically every night and even reminds me via email when I’ve missed a backup. I used to try backup to DVD once in a while, but at 2x and with this much stuff to backup I quickly forgot about that plan.

Based on your needs I think the only thing we do not offer is the ability to retrieve your data on CD. We only currently restore data via the client and the web.

You can signup for a free 30 day trial (no cc needed) and try it out.

http://www.backupright.com/

Also, if you want to see some screencasts of the software in action take a look at http://www.backupright.com/tutorials/

[Lance]

I use Apple's Backup app, available with a .mac subscription. Since I'm pretty mobile, I have a daily backup job that archives my critical home subdirectories (~/Documents, ~/proj, ~/finance, ~/GTD, etc) daily to iDisk. It's great because the job runs as needed and it only requires me to have internet access to iDisk, so I can be anywhere when it kicks off. I also use portable home directories so whenever I'm logged into my home lan it sync's my ~/ with the server as well.

On my mac mini os x server, I do full backups of /Users to dvd, and /Media from one external drive to another.

[ted]

I just recently wrote my Mac backup solution: http://tedserbinski.com/2006/06/08/backup_your_mac_the_smart_way

I'm *very* happy with it and it's super easy and fast. SuperDuper! is a superb program and the LaCie drive is great. No mo worries about lost data :-)

You might also want to look at Strongspace but I don't think they are going to have enough space for ya. Hope that helps!

[Jim Parsons]

I use Carbon Copy Cloner and just copy the entire 80GB disk on my MacBook Pro to 100GB notebook drive in a firewire enclosure every couple of days. I also back up periodically to another drive array. Synching the MacBook Pro to the old 12inch PowerBook will likely require SilverKeeper from LaCie or one of the products mention in these comment posts. Oh and I also back up my Mail.app email folder to a 60GB video iPod -- just to be safe.

[David Friend]

I'm from Carbonite. Responding to Bjorn's comment above regarding Carbonite. If it took a month to complete the initial backup, that would indicate that he is storing about 60GB of data because upload speeds on DSL and Cable tend to be about 2GB a day. That's not a Carbonite limitation -- it's the DSL or Cable service. Anyway, what I've found is that once the initial backup is done, your backup stays current because the daily increments are typically pretty small. It just runs quietly in the background keeping your backup up to date.

Carbonite should never slow down your CPU or your browsing -- the PC client is designed to "go to sleep" when the mouse or keyboard are touched. Check the Windows task manager to confirm that. It runs at very low priority.

[Dave!]

I use ChronoSync to back up my Mac. Basically, I sync the contents with my file server on the LAN. Instant backup. It works very well, I never think about it... just connect to the LAN and it's done. Very nice.

[Mark]

While SuperDuper is a great option, for that much data I'd still recommend the granddaddy of backup on the Mac, Retrospect, now owned by EMC. Although its interface isn't the cleanest, it provides a lot of flexiblity, scheduling, choices of full or incremental, and most importantly, restores with confidence.

[Thomas B. Pedersen]

Apple's Backup application is really nice and simple. I've set up different backup schedules for different kinds of data:

- Music (weekly to external disk)
- Personal projects (every other day to external disk)
- Personal data and settings to (daily to .Mac)
- Work stuff (weekly to the company's network drive)

Although Backup doesn't give you much flexibility when it comes to wildcard filtering out all the stuff you don't want to back up (such as temporary files and Spotlight files) it does an excellent job of REMINDING me to take a backup. My backups are slightly larger and slower than with, say, Personal Backup, but I've noticed that I am much more up-to-date with Backup than with any other method I've tried before. All due to simplicity.

The ability to back up certain files to your .Mac account is invaluable too, since you will be able to access them from anywhere.

[Giordano]

@David Friend: no, I backup up about 20 GB and it took a month, going back and forth and sometimes stopping. I have to say that this seems to have been resolved with the latest update. And, yes, the slowdown of my computer can be due to any of the myriad of applications I´m running...

Anyway, I´m satisfied with the service. One question: can I access individual files and/or directories in my backup, and restore them, or I have to restore a full backup?

Cheers,
Giordano

[Adam Kalsey]

I'm using a combination of rsync and some symlink tricks with GNU cp to keep my Mac backed up to a NAS device in the house. I've got a snapshot of my home directory every 4 hours, once per day, and then every week for 4 weeks. If I ever need to recover a file, I just find the appropriate version in my backup tree and copy it over.

Fred, if you want the shell script I use for this, email me.

Remote storage isn't so automated, however. Music is just synced to the family's iPods, and recovery would consist of copying the files from the iPod back to a disk (hopefully if there's a fire, at least one iPod wouldn't be at the house), and important files are manually copied to a remote FTP server. Pictures are the one thing that isn't remotely backed up.

I've told my wife that if she ever needs to evacuate the house quickly and she has time, grab the little silver box off my desk, rip out the wires, and take it with her.

[scott partee]

I use SuperDuper! to copy things to various Firewire drives.

One cool thing about Macs is you can do a bootable backup (clone) of your hard drive and that cloned drive can literally be *your* computer if you boot it from just about *any* Mac.

Not sure how it works with Intel Macs in the picture now, but it worked for G4 Macs for sure because I did it a few times.

I've heard horror stories about .Mac and Apple's backup, but never got it to successfully run (I have over 250 GB of data to backup) so I don't have any "real world" experience with it. I remember reading, however, that there exist many issues with restoring files with Apple's Backup.

The plasticfuture articles above do a good job of covering the options.

I don't recommend a RAID mirror configuration, as one commentor above suggested. The problem with RAID style mirroring is that if corrupt data gets written to one device (or something gets accidentally erased), it is instantly synched to the other disk. This is bad.

All said, I say "keep it simple" and mirror to a firewire drive once per day using SuperDuper!

What would you do for when you're travelling, however?

That, I don't know.

[Marc James]

SuperDuper! to firewire drive works PERFECTLY! Highly recommended, Fred.

[Devin Thorpe]

Mozy.com is working on a Mac app, but for PC's it is awesome.

ddt

[Luke Archer]

Here is the service we use and are very happy with...but part of our delight is that the network we are backing up is connected directly to an oc3 backbone. http://www.exavault.com

The service is $25 a month for 50 gigs.

[ellipsis]

How paranoid are you? I am a 3 copy person.
I use Superduper to copy to a small portable drive that I carry separate from my briefcase (protects against drive crashes and laptop theft).
I use Foldersync on my private music and photo folders to a remote computer in another house (protects against fire and theft).
For my business files I foldersync between my desk computer, the laptop and the other house copy.
But what about the file you accidentally deleted last week? Syncs will not help there. So I also use Apples Backup to take nightly backups of business and email files.

[Scott Lawton]

Despite all the wonderful things people say about SuperDuper, I don't see how it helps with (to quote the above comment) "what about the file you accidentally deleted last week?". Just as important for me: what about the previous version of the file that you overwrote last week?

SuperDuper does a great job of cloning a drive, but unless you have infinite FireWire space, I don't see how it's practical for daily backups (given the above 2 cases).

What I'd really like (and I think many others would find quite useful) is a clone of the current state PLUS convenient access to every deleted or superceeded file (perhaps in a parallel folder structure, with dated subfolders as required).

Any leads?