Hi! After my most recent drive problems, I want to buy some backup software. I'm thinking of just mirroring a set of RAID'ed drives. But I also want software. Ideally, it has a process that runs in the background that remembers to run. I usually forget to run the manual start ones. Any suggestions? How do you backup your critical data?
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Any good automatic backup software?
- Thread starter GovornorPhatt
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If you have .Mac of course there's Backup... sooo... if whatever backup software you want to buy costs more than .Mac (or close to .Mac's price) you might consider it.
Duff-Man says....it is not the most versatile, but Lacie's Silverkeeper has some basic scheduling features...it's certainly not a "high-end" backup program by any means....but it is free....oh yeah!
i agree with duff man, i have used silverkeeper and it works well. though i mostly do manual back ups. though b/c i do use the program i know it has schedualing capabilities. ive also used retrospect in the past, but that was with system 9, i dont know if retrospect has software for os X (though they must by now. . .the last time i checked was when OS X first came out :-/ )
Well, how convienent--I was just coming to ask this very question. SilverKeeper looks interesting, but I've got slightly more strict requirements, so maybe there are other options as well?
Basically, my set-up is this: Office with some Macs and a Wintel (W2K3 Server) server. Most data is stored directly on the server, but Eudora uses a bunch of slashes in its filenames, which the Windows server doesn't like, and I'd also like to keep bookmarks (and address book) backed up. The office folks shouldn't have to think about keeping stuff safe.
So, what I want is: Something that will automatically take the home folder (or endire /Users folder), make a disk image or other archive of it, and automatically dump it on a mounted server volume on a regular basis, without requiring user interaction or anybody having to type admin passwords.
.Mac isn't a preferred option, anything that just copies directories won't work (again, unacceptable characters in filenames, so tools like Synk are out), anything that can't save to a server volume is out, and anything that requires user interaction of any sort is a big no.
Suggestions, anybody? Price isn't an issue, so maybe Retrospect would do what I want? CCC is close, but automation and authentication is proving a bit tricky.
Basically, my set-up is this: Office with some Macs and a Wintel (W2K3 Server) server. Most data is stored directly on the server, but Eudora uses a bunch of slashes in its filenames, which the Windows server doesn't like, and I'd also like to keep bookmarks (and address book) backed up. The office folks shouldn't have to think about keeping stuff safe.
So, what I want is: Something that will automatically take the home folder (or endire /Users folder), make a disk image or other archive of it, and automatically dump it on a mounted server volume on a regular basis, without requiring user interaction or anybody having to type admin passwords.
.Mac isn't a preferred option, anything that just copies directories won't work (again, unacceptable characters in filenames, so tools like Synk are out), anything that can't save to a server volume is out, and anything that requires user interaction of any sort is a big no.
Suggestions, anybody? Price isn't an issue, so maybe Retrospect would do what I want? CCC is close, but automation and authentication is proving a bit tricky.
if you read into it, you can write your own backup script. I have a bash script that tar's up all my documents, then tar's up my iTunes, then tar's up my iPhoto .. so on .. so on .. then mounts a smb volume to my win2003 server and copies the tar files over (nice 1gbps network) 
This script is added as a cron job and runs once a week on a sunday at 3am (when im likely in bed!) and the computer is set to wakeup at 2:45am so the job can run... works very effectively and can be used to copy to a tape or external hard disk.
This script is added as a cron job and runs once a week on a sunday at 3am (when im likely in bed!) and the computer is set to wakeup at 2:45am so the job can run... works very effectively and can be used to copy to a tape or external hard disk.
Certainly a good suggestion, and it'd work.garybUK said:
...but, an option of last resort for me--aside from not wanting to have to work out the details myself, having easily maintainable "boxed" solutions are useful when somebody else has to work on the system, instead of having to figure out my custom shell script.
garybUK said:if you read into it, you can write your own backup script. I have a bash script that tar's up all my documents, then tar's up my iTunes, then tar's up my iPhoto .. so on .. so on .. then mounts a smb volume to my win2003 server and copies the tar files over (nice 1gbps network)
This script is added as a cron job and runs once a week on a sunday at 3am (when im likely in bed!) and the computer is set to wakeup at 2:45am so the job can run... works very effectively and can be used to copy to a tape or external hard disk.
Are you willing to share the script? Sounds very cool, indeed.
GovornorPhatt said:
You can try Carbon Copy Cloner. It has the ability to create a cron script that will back everything up for you.
A pay-for-solution is Retrospect Express.
