We had a near miss on one of our computers (fixed with Drive Genius, highly recommended) and realised we had no real backup system in place so decided to buy a 250GB Lacie drive mainly for that purpose.
Drive Genius has a duplicate function which looks to be fairly similar to Carbon Copy Cloner although can’t seem to schedule it. I’m not entirely sure that I want to go the route of making complete copies of our computers. I just don’t really see the point. I would probably prefer to backup only certain important user files and that would also free up some of that 250GB drive. We need to backup a G5 with a 160GB drive and a Powerbook with a 40GB drive, so making clones would take up 200GB leaving only about 33GB of usable free space for extra files (my wife is a musician and a voracious user of hard disk space)
I’ve looked at Carbon Copy Cloner, Super Duper! and ChronoSync. Super Duper! is ahead at the moment, mostly based on the enthused users I’ve found (I’m easily led I’m interested in what others are using on OS X, free or paid, and I’m really only looking for apps with decent GUIs and that can be scheduled. No command lines please!
I’ll be another enthused user of SuperDuper! for you. Incredibly lame name but I can’t argue with how well the application works. I have given up on Carbon Copy Cloner which though free is hit or miss in terms of reliability (not something you want to deal with in a backup solution). I have yet to have a real problem with SuperDuper! and the author is great at giving useful support.
Jamie, thanks. I’ve noted that Super Duper has scheduling slated for the next release. It is definitely my frontrunner at the moment.
LJ, I’m not scared of command line. I just like shiny things. Cronnix could be useful for me though. Thanks. Are you saying that Super Duper plain screwed up your backup?
I don’t know what screwed it up, to be honest. SuperDuper *seemed* to be doing a great job, but when push came to shove and my hdd failed - there weren’t nothing on the external hdd. :(
Retrospect from Dantz is a popular commercial product. We use it in the office to set scheduled backups of our main 200 gb server with 5 partions to a backup server and it works fine. That only problem is that I haven’t figured out how to copy just certain, specific folders rather than the entire drive. But that would require time to read the manual.
The hard drive in my PowerBook completely failed last week!
I love this laptop, but hate the magnetic latch. The PB occasionally pops open in my computer bag when it’s supposed to be sleeping, and I’m sure the drive has been bumped around a little. Apple replaced the drive under the Apple Protection Plan (very fast turn-around time & definitely worth the $350), but that left me with a PowerBook drive in factory default condition.
Luckily, I had a recent SuperDuper! backup on an external FW drive, and was able to restore my drive. It’s been 3 days and everything works perfectly.
I’ve tried Carbon Copy Clone, Synchronize Pro!, but never with this much success.
I’ve had excellent success with SuperDuper! on Mac OS X Server. SD does a good job of duplicating the entire hard drive to an external Firewire drive.
That said, I don’t run SD everyday (no scheduler… yet), so, during the week I have a combination of Navicat and Chronosync working to backup the DB and backup the EE files.
Navicat has an excellent scheduler (cron) which backs up the EE database at a specific time. Then, Chronosync (also a scheduler) copies the EE files and database files to another hard drive.
SuperDuper! - excellent, though every now and again it has a problem copying busy databases.
Chronosync - never had a problem copying, syncing files.
Navicat - earlier versions would get ‘stuck’ once a month exporting a MySQL DB; excellent in the past year.
From what I have gotten from the guys at AFP514 (An OS X server site) backing up the database and email services while they are running on OS X Server is not the best idea and can result in corrupted backups. Their recommendation to me was to turn of mail (you need a backup mail server in your MX records so you don’t lose emails) backup the drive turn mail back on and then do a mysql backup using the mysql command meant for the purpose. That is probably what navigate uses. Anyway, just thought I would mention that since you mentioned SD having issues with the database from time to time. I’ve been working on a bash script that will automate that process for me a bit. But at the moment I’ve just been making backups of the database and important files.
A good automated and comprehensive backup solution is something OS X Server is missing.
From what I have gotten from the guys at AFP514 (An OS X server site) backing up the database and email services while they are running on OS X Server is not the best idea and can result in corrupted backups. Their recommendation to me was to turn of mail (you need a backup mail server in your MX records so you don’t lose emails) backup the drive turn mail back on and then do a mysql backup using the mysql command meant for the purpose. That is probably what navigate uses. Anyway, just thought I would mention that since you mentioned SD having issues with the database from time to time. I’ve been working on a bash script that will automate that process for me a bit. But at the moment I’ve just been making backups of the database and important files.
A good automated and comprehensive backup solution is something OS X Server is missing.
Jamie
That’s exactly the case, and confirmed by the developers at Shirt-Pocket (SuperDuper!). I’ve not had issues with email backup corruption (many domains, few accounts, little traffic), but there’s been a few times when SuperDuper! ‘hung’ on MySQL, so I went to the Navicat backup process. That’s never failed and is very fast. Now, my weekly clones are done manually and I stop everything except mail. SD backup clones are 2-3 minutes, so even stopping mail wouldn’t hurt much.
I’m running dual OS X servers and could easily set up MX records for both machines, though I’m not certain how that functions.
Assuming the first MS record is mymail.mydomain.com, can I set up the second server as mymail2.mydomain.com and always be assured that mail gets through?
OS X server rocks for those of us who are not command line literate and comfortable with Linux (though I find I’m getting more done via CLI than I’d like). A good ‘backup’ solution is needed, for sure.
I’m not sure how you would do it with a dual server setup. I’m running off of a Mac Mini so I’m a little bit more low key then your setup.
For my mail backups I found the easiest way to deal with that was a backup mail service. I’m usingZoneEdit I think it was 10 dollars a year for the service. Basically you just make another MX record pointing to the backup mail serveer in your DNS records and give it a bigger number (which makes it lower priority). That way when mail services are down emails will be automatically delivered to the server given in the lower priority record. ZoneEdit periodically sends any emails it received back to your real mail server whenever it has any to send.
If my backup script ever ends up being something that others might find useful I’ll let you know about it.
OK, this is what I’ve decided on and will implement over the weekend. I’ve upgraded to OS 10.4 (long overdue) I’ve bought SuperDuper! (cheap at $19.95), partitioned the 250GB into 140GB for the G5 and 40GB for the Powerbook (and the rest for my photos) and will clone each computer onto the respective partition. At the moment SuperDuper! can’t clone volumes over networks so I will be cloning the Powerbook onto a disk image which can then be updated once its mounted, like any other volume. The mounted disk image can also be used to restore once started up from the OS X DVD, as usual. I don’t have any active databases or mail server running and intend to run the backups overnight so data corruption due to running databases or mail shouldn’t be an issue for me.
I’m really impressed by the SuperDuper! interface and by the manual which is thorough and easy to comprehend. Both the interface and the manual explain every step in detail.
RonnieMac, it was actually an article on Mac360 that steered me toward SuperDuper! Thanks. The article did mention the lack of scheduling but that is coming soon in the next release (2.0, a free update) and in any case, SuperDuper! is Applescriptable so I think it shouldn’t be too difficult to setup a scheduled backup anyway, whilst waiting for 2.0.
Another feature of SuperDuper! I’d really like to try is the Safety Clone. This basically makes a bootable copy of your system on a partition or external hard drive and you always boot from that copy and make system updates to the copy. Any time you are happy with your system, you can update the original system and continue booting from the copy. If you ever have a problem, you can boot from the clean, reliable, original system. I think its a great feature and one that I would use if only I had more room on my Powerbook (or another LaCie D2 for myself.)
So, presuming nothing goes wrong with this setup, I think I’m all set. Thanks for you input folks.
I’m really impressed by the SuperDuper! interface and by the manual which is thorough and easy to comprehend. Both the interface and the manual explain every step in detail.
The developers seem responsive and responsible (like the folks at pM/EE) and have made a point of NOT rushing the 2.0 version. The scheduling component MUST be right. It’d be great if they had scripts that would suspend Mail and MySQL during a part of the clone.
Tim Griffiths - 26 August 2005 03:52 AM
RonnieMac, it was actually an article on Mac360 that steered me toward SuperDuper! Thanks. The article did mention the lack of scheduling but that is coming soon in the next release (2.0, a free update) and in any case, SuperDuper! is Applescriptable so I think it shouldn’t be too difficult to setup a scheduled backup anyway, whilst waiting for 2.0.
Thanks. As you can tell, we’re biased towards things that work well. Looking forward to that 2.0 version. BTW - just set up a Mac mini as a reserve server. It’s not fast, but works very well.
Tim Griffiths - 26 August 2005 03:52 AM
Another feature of SuperDuper! I’d really like to try is the Safety Clone. This basically makes a bootable copy of your system on a partition or external hard drive and you always boot from that copy and make system updates to the copy. Any time you are happy with your system, you can update the original system and continue booting from the copy. If you ever have a problem, you can boot from the clean, reliable, original system. I think its a great feature and one that I would use if only I had more room on my Powerbook (or another LaCie D2 for myself.)
You will love the Safety Clone. We’re running OS X Server and Apple put out a faulty upgrade back in March/April which hosed mail and other services for a week until the ‘fix.’ Until we figured out what was going on and could jury-rig a temp fix, we were running the site on a SmartDisk Firelite external Firewire drive. The buggah saved our bacon (though it was plenty warm when we booted back to the main server).
I’m interested in what others are using on OS X, free or paid, and I’m really only looking for apps with decent GUIs and that can be scheduled. No command lines please!
