Thread

I’m using an iMac and had an application crash (AddressBook/iCal/Safari) that caused me to lose my address book. Which also caused me to rethink my backup strategy.

A fellow who experienced the same data-losing crash said he recovered his data because he backed up using a product named Synk.

Does anyone have any comments as to whether Synk is a good way to go, or are there other backup strategies/software that you find effective?

Thanks for your feedback.

I use TIme Machine (built-in to OS X 10.5) for hourly backups and SuperDuper for nightly backups. I can also recommend CarbonCopyCloner. I haven’t heard of Synk.

My personal preference is to have multiple backup methods: a bootable backup (the nightly done by SuperDuper) so I can immediately boot from it if my internal hard drive goes bad. The Time Machine backup is more for convenience of finding files I deleted but need. I also do a second backup of my iTunes Library on to a separate firewire drive, just in case.

My next step is in the direction of the Drobo, a RAID-like device that will keep redundant copies of your data on multiple hot-swappable drives.

HTH!

I used to use Retrospect back in the OS9 days and that was a fantastic programme. I still have files going back too many years than I like to mention and all are 100% retrievable.

Nowadays on OSX I don’t use it any more. The programme still works fine but unfortunately if you use single sided DVDs (I can’t use the cased double sided ones anymore no matter what I do to try and get the external drive to recognise them) it tends to hiccup every now and then but that’s nothing to do with Retrospect more the fact that you have to handle the DVDs as if you are in a clean room as the slightest (and I do mean slightest) finger print on the surface will mess everything up for you.

I then moved across to simply using Toast with DVDs and spanning the backup information across disks which works fairly well. Each disk set has its own search programme so that helps some way in finding files after you have backed them up. You can then also use a programme such as CD Finder or one of the other many programmes to catalogue all your disks.

I did just the other week start using Time Machine with a Lacie drive but just a couple of days ago had the drive lock up on me. I could read everything on the drive fine but couldn’t write anything to it. Seems when I ran DiskWarrior over it that there were a lot of overlapped files on the drive, thousands to be precise. Not sure if this was to do with Time Machine or not but it does write an awful lot of files to a disk so it could have been fragmentation because of that. I had to then back everything up from my backup 😉 to DVD and then re-format the drive. Not a fun thing to do with a 500GB drive!! :down:

I have looked at all the other backup strategies at one point or another and Synk does seem to be a nice programme in that it knows every time what to backup and gets on with it straight away much like Time Machine does. Other backup programmes have to scan the hard drive first for file differences which depending on the size of your drive could take anywhere up to 40 minutes or more.

At this time though I think that DVDs are the best bet and safest to back up to as long as you handle them with absolute care when first writing them.

Don’t know if any of that helps at all.

Best wishes,

Mark

Another vote for SuperDuper from me. The guy who made it works very hard on regular updates and is very generous with them as well. Plus, he is a fellow EE user. I also have Time Machine hooked up just in case.

I use Time Machine but also back up nightly to Amazon S3 using JungleDisk - but the one thing that I don’t back up yet is my Entourage database as its over 1Gb. I need to think of strategies for that as email is important to back up as well - maybe I need to archive some old mail!

I use Time Machine but also back up nightly to Amazon S3 using JungleDisk - but the one thing that I don’t back up yet is my Entourage database as its over 1Gb. I need to think of strategies for that as email is important to back up as well - maybe I need to archive some old mail!

Or just use Mail instead? I used to use Entourage back in the OS9 days but now I use Mail as it is in my eyes much more powerful and integrates brilliantly with everything else on the computer and you can back up a single e-mail if you want.

Best wishes,

Mark

Thanks all! As usual, lots of useful information 😊

Or just use Mail instead? I used to use Entourage back in the OS9 days but now I use Mail as it is in my eyes much more powerful and integrates brilliantly with everything else on the computer and you can back up a single e-mail if you want.

When I first got system X I tried Mail and it was not as good as Entourage. I have tried mail again each time I upgraded but Entourage still takes the biscuit for me.

I was looking at JungleDisk, have you had a good experience using it?

Seems like Mozy is the most popular, but not quite what I need. I backup to an external drive but should hedge my bets and use an online solution too.

I use Time Machine but also back up nightly to Amazon S3 using JungleDisk - but the one thing that I don’t back up yet is my Entourage database as its over 1Gb. I need to think of strategies for that as email is important to back up as well - maybe I need to archive some old mail!

Time Capsule for hourly/daily/weekly backups and SuperDuper! for monthly backups.

When I first got system X I tried Mail and it was not as good as Entourage. I have tried mail again each time I upgraded but Entourage still takes the biscuit for me.

Hi Simon,

Just wondering in what way Entourage is more powerful then? I moved across some years back now and never looked back. If not just for the fact that Mail looks, feels and works smoother than Entourage I do feel that it has pretty much the same feature set if not more, plus you can get lots of additions such as extra bundles (plugins) for Mail where I don’t think that many exist (if any) for Entourage.

Just wondering though 😊

Best wishes,

Mark

Time Machine for our office works great - my coworker lost his whole address book through a Blackberry sync gone wrong. Time Machine allows for you to go back in time in any Apple program (Mail, Address Book, etc.) to restore old data.

10 out of 10 - no problems so far.

Not much Mac experience but I can second Rertospect for backups.
Get an external drive that is not ‘hot’ all the time and backup your data.
It is a good idea to get some sort of drive imaging software and take a snapshot of your entire drive.
(for windows I highly recommend Acronis)
Ideally look for application that will allow imagining on the partition of your drive and ability to interrupt the boot sequence and perform the restoration (from that second partition or external drive).
All the best!

Dan Benjamin of Hivelogic wrote a seriously good piece on backing up on Mac. It may be overkill for some folks but its a good, plain english overview of the basics.

I do the TimeMachine/SuperDuper combo to a two disk raid.  After loosing a laptop drive and subsequently all of my data 3 times in a row I became pretty religious about the whole backing up thing.  😊

Jamie