How do you perform a BACKUP?

[jaeshellz]

I know its a stupid question but my G4 powerbook started acting up last night so today i bought a 200gb external drive from Maxtor in order to backup my powerbook and use it for storage.

Bottom line, how the hell do i do a back up? is it just drag and drop into the new hard drive?

Thanx for your feedback, guys.

 

[pdpfilms]

I know its a stupid question but my G4 powerbook started acting up last night so today i bought a 200gb external drive from Maxtor in order to backup my powerbook and use it for storage.

Bottom line, how the hell do i do a back up? is it just drag and drop into the new hard drive?

Thanx for your feedback, guys.

.Mac has a great util called Backup that lets you perform automated backups... it's pretty neat.

 

[Nermal]

Bottom line, how the hell do i do a back up? is it just drag and drop into the new hard drive?

That's the simplest way. You can get tools which will allow you to schedule automatic backups too.

 

[erickkoch]

Go to http://www.versiontracker.com

There are utilities such as Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper. They have a variety of features. I keep it simple with SuperDuper, the unregistered version works fine for me.

 

[jaeshellz]

Yeah i know about that .mac thing, but u have to pay for it.

I just bought an external drive, so i want to backup on that.
Can some1 tell me how to perform a backup...

 

[mad jew]

Copy across your Home folder to the external drive. That's usually enough. Of course, it varies person-to-person though.

 

[wattage]

I used Carbon Copy Cloner b/c of advice from this community,,,,and love it. It creates a 'bootable' copy of your hard drive. The only caveat I found is to partition part of your HD to the same size of your computer (if possible), and use that partition for solely backup purposes.

If you do it this way, that partition will have four folders (I believe, maybe three though). Don't try to organize those into a single folder, or it will not boot off it. Just leave the four (or three) folder as they are and trust it.

 

[edesignuk]

Look here.

 

[jaeshellz]

Ok, i think i have another problem...

The Maxtor external drive i have is just usb 2.0.... no firewire. Is this gonna be a problem? I have read that u could only reboot if it's firewire? Is this true and can u explain? Can i get a wire that has a usb end and firewire end?

 

[wattage]

Ok, i think i have another problem...

The Maxtor external drive i have is just usb 2.0.... no firewire. Is this gonna be a problem? I have read that u could only reboot if it's firewire? Is this true and can u explain? Can i get a wire that has a usb end and firewire end?

No, I think only firewire will boot.

 

[neocell]

Ok, i think i have another problem...

The Maxtor external drive i have is just usb 2.0.... no firewire. Is this gonna be a problem? I have read that u could only reboot if it's firewire? Is this true and can u explain? Can i get a wire that has a usb end and firewire end?

You won't be able to boot with it, at least not on a PPC mac, but you can still clone it back to your computer's HD so it's not the end of the world, you'd just have to boot using a CD if your computer's HD crashed. Bottom line, partition your external to include an appropriate backup size, use SuperDuper to clone your computer's HD to the external partition (remember each time you back up it will erase the previous backup, thus make the partition so you'll only erase the partition and not the whole drive). Unfortunately there's no USB to Firewire adapter, at least none that I know of

 

[Eidorian]

I keep my major folders on my desktop. I just fire up my external drive, drag, and drop over to it.

 

[jaeshellz]

Hmm... okay so basically i only need the firewire port if i didn't have the reboot cd that came with the computer? Cause i have both the cd that came wit my g4 pb and the cd of Tiger 10.4 when i purchased it.

So should i jsut stick wit this usb maxtor or should i really try to get the firewire version? I got this usb version at best buy for $150 (its 200gb) so it was a good deal.

 

[bodeh6]

Hmm... okay so basically i only need the firewire port if i didn't have the reboot cd that came with the computer? Cause i have both the cd that came wit my g4 pb and the cd of Tiger 10.4 when i purchased it.

So should i jsut stick wit this usb maxtor or should i really try to get the firewire version? I got this usb version at best buy for $150 (its 200gb) so it was a good deal.

If you can, I would try and get the FireWire version because when back up and working with lots of data, FireWire is simply a lot faster then USB 2.0 even though specs suggest otherwise (400Mbits/s FW vs 480Mbits/s USB 2.0).

 

[Macky-Mac]

Hmm... okay so basically i only need the firewire port if i didn't have the reboot cd that came with the computer? Cause i have both the cd that came wit my g4 pb and the cd of Tiger 10.4 when i purchased it.

So should i jsut stick wit this usb maxtor or should i really try to get the firewire version? I got this usb version at best buy for $150 (its 200gb) so it was a good deal.

if all you want to do is back up your files so you're sure you wont lose them if something goes wrong with the internal drive, then you can simply drop and drag them to the external usb drive and be done with it

 

[Eidorian]

I have a USB 2.0 drive instead of a FireWire one. I bought it off of Chrispy on this board. It was a great deal and I love it even if I can't boot off of it or use FireWire's great drive speeds. I saw this Best Buy deal too. If all that you want to do is backup using it then the drive is fine.

 

[jaeshellz]

Oh ok, whewww! So basically the only reason to get a Firewire version was if you lost ur reboot cd, then u could just reboot from the external drive. But if u have the cd, and have the external drive, it doesn't matter if u have usb or firewire, correct? Because I don't plan on losing my reinstall cd or anything.


btw, apple told me to do a clean uninstall and install again. AFter i perform this, what do i do next to get my backup up and running?

 

[wattage]

Migration Assistant is found under Applications>Utilities.

Or you can drag and drop.

 

[neocell]

Oh ok, whewww! So basically the only reason to get a Firewire version was if you lost ur reboot cd, then u could just reboot from the external drive. But if u have the cd, and have the external drive, it doesn't matter if u have usb or firewire, correct? Because I don't plan on losing my reinstall cd or anything.


btw, apple told me to do a clean uninstall and install again. AFter i perform this, what do i do next to get my backup up and running?

Just use SuperDuper to clone your backup copy from the external drive back to your computer's HD

 

[danny_w]

I personally think that a firewire external drive is worth it, because you never know what need you will have in the future. I'll give an example:

I bought my son an iMac (250GB) and a firewire external hdd (300GB) to take to college with him. I partitioned the external hdd into a 250GB partition for cloning and a 50GB partition as a Photoshop scratch disk. When he came home for winter break, he synced his external hdd and brought it with him. While he was here he could run off the external hdd using a Mac at home, and still get his work done (he does a web comic and had some school work to do). When he got back to college he simply synced back the other way, and he was back in business. The work that he did at home would not have been possible with a USB drive, plus the firewire drive is much faster in real life (less cpu overhead).