how do you guys back up your stuff on osx

ringo747

ringo747

ringo747

Soldato
Joined
1 Feb 2006
Posts
8,188
just got myself a mybook pro 250gb disk to use with the Macbook Pro. Do you guys just back up your essential files or can you do a full system backup which you could restore at a later date if required? I have bootcamp installed too so im not sure if that makes things more messy or not.

Any recommended apps out there to help me organise my backups?
 
As per a recommendation on here I bought Superduper and I use that to do a full system backup once a week which I can boot from if required.
 
thanks for that. Is that something similar to acronis true image for windows? Takes a full system image and saves it to a different disk? Are there any built in utilities in osx for full backups?
 
You can make an image of your hard disk using DiskUtility. I'm not sure if that makes it bootable though. From what I make out it doesn't, yet SuperDuper can be scheduled and will make it bootable on your other disk. Its very very handy if your HDD fails as you can still use your mac until you sort out a replacement. Thankfully this hasn't happened to me yet though :)

If your feeling very adventurous you could try using a dd command in the terminal to copy the entire disk onto your mybook, then somehow mac it bootabe (not sure how). Then make it a cronjob.

I have the same setup as you except iMac with the 250GB MyBook Pro. SuperDuper does a brilliant job and also checks all the permissions etc after it backs-up.

edit - I know nothing about Acronis truimage, so I can't comment on its comparability.
 
sounds good - will deffo give it a blast and see how i get on. When i had to repartition my mybook pro it gave me an option to format to make it compatible with os9 as a bootable drive but it didnt mention osx so i unticked it. Thanks for your help.
 
You should also give Carbon Copy Cloner a try as well, tried it a couple of times on my dads iMac G5 and it seems to work well enough

with my iBook I just backup individual files and folders as my external drive is smaller then the drive in my laptop.
 
Last edited:
SuperDuper is what i use with my MacBook :) It's very easy to use, and seems to work well. I even tried booting from the mirror and it worked fine :D
 
how long does it take you guys to do a full disk backup? Im currently backing up my 100gb mac osx partition (another 10gb is windows) and the effective copy speed is 3.8Mb/s I'm using a firewire external disk and I kind of expeected things to go a little faster! Maybe its just taking longer as it is the first full backup I have done.
 
FirebarUK said:
Over Firewire 800 I get around 20MB/s.
Click to expand...

was it the same backing up for the first time? I take it you use the smart backup now so that it just syncs the internal hd with the external? It's a nice little app.
 
I need to sort out my backups really. I might start taking quaterly/monthly/weekly one's onto my USB HDD. So with that i'd do it so there are 3 partitions on the HDD and i'd backup to each one as needed... so update the quarterly one each quarter, the monthly each month, and the weekly each week. It shouldn't take to long to do after the first lot anyway with the Smart setting.

BTW, i get a stunning speed of 5mb/sec on my USB2 HDD :D
 
only other thing i was wondering about is my bootcamp partition. how can i back this up and how could i restore it again along with a mac partition?
 
just a quick question for any super duper users. I have a 250gb mybook pro drive that i use for backing up with super duper. I have just been using the erase and copy settings. Is it possible to have the Macbook HD backup to and erase a folder within the external drive or will it erase all the external drive and then begin the copy. At the moment only 40gb is used and i want to use other parts of the disk for backups from other machines. Any ideas what I should do?
 
thanx for the link, however, I was referring more to osx backups rather than my bootcamp partition. Crearing a bootable image of my Mac HD takes up only about 40gb. I want to use the rest of the disk for separate file storage of stuff off other machines.
 
you can create osx partition image files with disk utility ( i am doing it just now on my mac ) you have to boot from the CD and do it there :). its compresses the files for you too. so you can burn them to at hard drive or dvd ( i think ), or network storage. thumbs up
 
do any of you kids know if you can boot from USB with the intel macs?

i remember it used to just be firewire when they were PPC?

just thinking about making a bootable had drive back up with superduper ( god is that bad name ) but my only firewire drive is in the sever.... have a handy we usb drive that would be ideal for the job tho!
 
Cogent said:
do any of you kids know if you can boot from USB with the intel macs?

i remember it used to just be firewire when they were PPC?

just thinking about making a bootable had drive back up with superduper ( god is that bad name ) but my only firewire drive is in the sever.... have a handy we usb drive that would be ideal for the job tho!
Click to expand...

I don't think you can, atleast mine is not bootable when looking in the sys preferences -> Startup Disk - I am pretty sure it is firewire only
 
Cogent said:
do any of you kids know if you can boot from USB with the intel macs?

i remember it used to just be firewire when they were PPC?

just thinking about making a bootable had drive back up with superduper ( god is that bad name ) but my only firewire drive is in the sever.... have a handy we usb drive that would be ideal for the job tho!
Click to expand...

Yes you can boot from USB. My external USB HDD boots fine on my MacBook :)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom