backup software advice PLEASE!

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I am trying to figure out a convenient and reliable backup situation of my multitude of data that exists on my external drives.

I will be purchasing a large drive to use SuperDuper to backup my macbook pro. Does SuperDuper create backups of external drives? If not, what software would you recommend that would backup my external drive to another external drive?

thanks!
 
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I use Backup - it works fine for me. Used it with Tiger also and now with Leopard.
 
M

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I use SuperDuper! and have used it for over a year and it's the best there is.

I can't test this for you but I would imagine you can pick, through the drop-down menu, the hard drive to be copied and the drive that will receive the backup.

Why not directly ask Dave Narnian, SupperDuper!'s developer (he's a pleasure to deal with), to be extra sure ? Or post this question over in the SuperDuper! users forum?
 

cwa107


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I totally agree with MHC, SuperDuper is the best of the bunch for my purposes (now that it works with Leopard, especially).

Just for giggles, I tried to do exactly what you're describing - backup one external drive to another, and it seems to work (of course, I didn't run through the entire process, but I was able to select an external as the source and another as the destination).
 
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I'm with my learned colleagues on this one Superduper is great for making a back-up bootable. I love Time machine also
 
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Agree with the others here. I'm a registered SuperDuper user myself.
 
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One more for SD. Make sure you register the free download as it is so much quicker using Smart Backup.
 
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Does SuperDuper create backups of external drives?

Yes it does. I save all my work on an external Lacie 280GB HDD (which I upload to Mozy as I go along). I also have a 1TB WD which has 3 partitions. I use one partition to backup the Lacie using SuperDuper which will serve as a quick restore if.. Mozy is only an insurance policy.
 
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I like to be different. I would argue that external hard drives are so big, so fast and so inexpensive these days that you don't need any special purpose backup software. Here is what I do:

I get an external hard drive. To back up, I plug it in, turn it on and then create a new folder in its root called todays_date_backup. Then I simply use Finder (or PathFinder in my case) to drag my home folder into my newly created backup folder. This copies ALL of my personal data. It does not create a full blown image of my current disk, but I tend to view the system setup as transient. It is my personal stuff (music, photos, files, etc.) that I want to keep.

To make this really useful, I use a system of two hard drives, which I rotate between work and home. Each time I do a backup, I take the hard drive with the fresh backup to work and exchange it with the one there. That way, I always have two full backups at two different locations. Hence, even if some terrible disaster should befall my house (tornado, flood, fire, whatever), I still have a full backup "off site".

Note that no incremental backup software is involved or needed. Hard drives are so big and so fast these days that this works great and it is so simple. It has always been my philosophy that in order to be done regularly, backing up must be easy. Apple clearly agrees with me - I think that this is the whole premise behind Time Machine.

A final thought. If you do decide on the SuperDuper route, which makes a 100% clone of your complete hard drive, Mac OS X config and all, you should also check out Carbon Copy Cloner, which I like better. It does the same thing, but the GUI is just "nicer" IMHO.
 
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time machine is so easy to use. Plug in a mac formatted hard drive, and let it do its thing. Thats all it takes.
 
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Mac57 said:
It has always been my philosophy that in order to be done regularly, backing up must be easy.

Your solution sounds just as viable as the others mentioned here, but lacks the automation I need in order for backups to be done regularly. If I have to do it myself, I know I'd miss a few days.

But that should be fairly easy to automate using Automator...
 
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Using time machine not only does backups monthly and weekly, but also hourly! And I don't notice any kind of lag while it's backing up. It's amazing.
 

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