What way should I go to do Backups?

ok I'm thinking about which way to go to backup my stuff on my iMac.

I have quite a few photos and graphics, most of them are from my camera and some are graphics I use on some of my forums and other places.

I have pages and spreadsheet files.

I have 59 songs in iTunes.


Most of this stuff is on a dvd. i had backed up everything from my old desktop to a DVD which I then put on my iMac. Some photo's and all my music is not on the DVD. I want to backup everything I have and redo the backup every so often.

I have plenty of blank DVD's. I'm also thinking of buying a 500GB Hard drive and connecting it to my iMac via USB and just drag and drop stuff from my iMac to HD OR I use Time Machine.

Time Machine
I have 'no idea' how to use Time Machine and I wouldn't want to get into a situation where something isn't going right and I have no idea what to do or what the instructions are asking me to do.

I have heard that the first backup using TM, takes hours!! If this is correct, why does it take hours? and how long will the second backup take?

I've also heard that TM slows down the iMac, does this mean if TM is backing up for the first time, I shouldn't do anything on the iMac till it's finished?

and for the second backup, TM runs in the background and can cause the iMac to slow down?


Which way would be the best and easy way to backup things I have on my iMac?

Thanks and any help is appreciated.

I have more questions on TM but if I decide to go that way, i will ask them.

Well, I can tell you my experience with Time machine. I have a MBP. I have an external hard drive I plug in when I am home, and it is set up with time machine. You have to make sure the drive is formatted in a mac format (NFS+) so time machine can read/write to it correctly. So when I first had time machine back up my computer it did take hours...not sure why its such a slow process...but its writing everything on my hard drive onto the external hard drive. But after that initial backup, the backups go very quickly. I don't even notice it run. Once an hour it backups all your files, in case changes are made. It saves hourly backups for 24 hours, daily backups for a month, and weekly backups until the external hard drive is full...then it begins to write over the oldest stuff.

It is such an awesome, user friendly system. Say I delete something I didn't want to delete....I click on time machine, and it opens up allllll my backed up data....I can scroll back in time if I need to, or even back just a few hours. Navigating is so simple...it just looks like your finder and you can navigate through all of your stuff like it never got deleted...and then renew it.

I even have a smaller, more portable external HD to hold all my music and picture files and time machine backs that up onto my time machine external hard drive.

In my opinion it is well worth getting time machine...and its super easy to use (considering I bought my first mac ever about a month and a half ago)

Hope that helps a bit

SuperDuper!

I use both Time Machine and SuperDuper on external drives. You can NEVER have enough backups!

Thanks getuptogetdown for your reply

Having the hard drive formatted in mac format (NFS+) was something I didn't know, so that's good to know.

Was setting up TM easy like a simple step by step guide?

When you did the first backup, did you just leave the Mac to do the work, then use the MBP after it had finished?

I see you have 2.5GHz and 4GB RAM, compared to my iMac which is 2.4GHz with 2GB RAM, so I wonder if the less RAM, I will notice the speed descrease, if any.


Does the backup hard drive give you an Alert letting you know it's going to start backing up over the oldest backups? This would be kinda good to know incase, there is something I want forever.

It saves hourly backups for 24 hours, daily backups for a month, and weekly backups until the external hard drive is full...then it begins to write over the oldest stuff.

Click to expand...

Eric559 or Bluegrass, can you explain to me a bit about SuperDuper and how it backups and anything, that help me.

thanks and I'm waiting to hear from other people too so I get more imput but kinda heading towards Time Machine.

Time Machine is too easy. You turn it on, pick your external drive and it does the rest. Not really anything else for you to do. And start your first backup when you go to bed. By morning it should be done.

SuperDuper creates a bootable backup.

If your internal hard drive fails:

With TM, you would have to get your drive replaced and then restore your data from the TM backup before you will have use of your computer.

With SD!, if you can't get out and replace the drive - until the weekend maybe - no problem - you would simply reboot your computer, holding down the option key, select the external drive your backup is on and continue working (or playing) as if nothing had happened.

An external drive is much easier than using DVDs. And they are dirt cheap to buy lately. I would go ahead and buy an external drive (which you'll use regardless of what software you choose).

Then try Time Machine (it's included w/ Leopard) before buying any other software. If you don't like it, just delete the file it creates and try something else.

Rather than worrying about all the details before trying it once, just open the TM application, select the external drive, and click the start button. It's that simple. Once you try it, most of your questions will be answered. If you find that it doesn't suit you, there's no harm done-just turn it off.

Also, the initial backup can be a little slow if connecting wirelessly to the drive via Time Capsule or Airport Extreme. But, since you're connecting directly to the drive via USB, it shouldn't be an issue.

KiwiJenn,

I say go ahead and give Time Machine a try. It's almost too easy to use. ;D Just make sure you format your external drive first. Unplug and then plug your external it into your iMac again and let TM do its thing. The specs on your iMac are better then mine so yours will handle your backup with no problem. I have thousands of songs on iTunes as well as thousands of photos with iPhoto. If you don't like it you can always disable TM. I would suggest Superduper! as an alternate if you don't like TM.

My backup strategy isn't perfect yet but getting there. I do weekly Super Duper bootable backups onto an external drive. I run Time Machine but only have it set to back up two weeks' worth of files so that will catch anything created & deleted in between my weekly backups. Eventually, I will have an off-site backup of my Home folder, as well. That will pretty well cover me.

KiwiJenn,

I keep 2 small backup hard drives on my kitchen table, next to my Macbook. One is to update my stuff using Time Machine, the other uses SuperDuper (I update every day or two, it's so easy). I use both to make sure I've got a good recovery option if I have a problem...

Using small backup devices is really neat, too - they don't need separate power supplies (uses the USB cable forpower). One is a 160GB WD Passport and the other is a 120GB 2.5 inch hard drive inside a BYTECC enclosure (bought them separately). I use the same USB cable for them both - neat!

Whatever way you go, it's easy. I had trouble with Time Machine at first, but all you have to remember is to use System Preferences to open TM for backup and use the TM icon in the dock for recovery.

Noel

JohnTheMacGeek said:

I run Time Machine but only have it set to back up two weeks' worth of files so that will catch anything created & deleted in between my weekly backups.

Click to expand...

How do you set Time Machine to only backup two weeks of files?

i don't think you can. its standard the way it backs stuff up

Thank you everyone for your feedback, this is great. I think I will go ahead and try Time Machine and see how it goes.

Good to know the HD is only connected via USB and don't need power cable as well.

The idea of two small hard drives is a nice idea too, I need to think about that or just going with a 500GB hard drive.

Thanks

check out iBackup and maybe get one of these: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822154150

I made a typo. I left out a key word in that sentence. I plan on having Time Machine hold only 2 weeks of data. But I need another drive before I can implement that idea. Now that you questioned it, I looked and discovered you can't set it like that. I assumed it could be set like that. So now I'm going to start doing incremental daily backups with Super Duper. Time Machine seems to need more features like being able to control when it backs up and how far back it goes. Until it does, I'm sticking with Super Duper.

im going to start sing Time Machine on my MBP i have a 250 external hdd and ive used timemachine on it a few time but its a pain in the *** plugging it in and then waiting the only things i plug into my MBP are my ipod and the power cable and the odd usb pen drive to take things to work with or backup the important bits
just need to get money sorted and buy a time capsule

woah the hard drive I was going to get isn't there anymore they can order it and it's price has gone back to normal a bit more than I had thought too. Now I wish I had bought the My Book Extreme 500GB HD for NZ$158 and it's now way more.

I was told with the stuff I have on my Mac, I mostly likey have like 4GB worth heheh so maybe a 500GB HD is a bit extreme. The cheaper one is a iomega 360GB hard drive, would that be a decent HD to get? or should I stick with a 500GB hardrive?

The bigger hard drives also have to use a power cord as well as USB. I had a look at the USB only hard drives and the max is 160GB (mainly for laptops they said) but they still recommend the bigger hard drives for desktops.

I then confused myself and asked about Time Capsule and was told it's a hard drive and wireless connection, but I don't need it as I have 1 iMac.

I'm going to check out DickSmith and Noel Leeming and anywhere else on there hard drive prices, then go get one

Most larger hard drives all use power cords. And 500 gigs is a LOT....I have 250 and that is waaayyyyy more than enough to even back up a secondary HD as well as my internal drive. If you want portability at all, go with a portable drive. I got a Western digital passport for around $110 for 250 gigs and it's more than enough, real small, and no power source needed

Does a preformatted HD need to be in NFS+ or Fats32?

I found a 500GB 3.5" External Mobile HD (navigator) today and it's formatted in fats32 but the lady can format it to NFS+ if needed.

She also told me that once I backup my Mac HD onto the external HD, I should be able to plug it into a Windows PC or any Mac and moves files across eg a photo to the pc.

Basically I just want to use the HD as a backup.

This past weekend I went out and bought myself an AirPort Extreme 802.11n Base Station. The main reason is I bought a Hauppauge MediaMVP for my bedroom (which connects to my main SageTV Server in the livingroom), and I need to connect it via my wireless router. I also bought a couple AirPort Expresses which let me extend my wireless network and act as an Ethernet bridge (which I have the MVP plugged into).

As a bonus, I did some Google searching and realized that I could plug my existing 500gb external drive into the AEBS instead of directly into my MB and still use it for Time Machine backups. This means one less thing connected to my MB, and I can continue to backup even if I'm sitting outside on the deck having a drink!! I can even access the external drive via the AEBS from any Windows machine.

Every day that goes by, I learn something new and incredibly cool about my MB. I absolutely love it!!