backing up a Mac

Whats the best free software to use to back up a customers Mac, and restore after i upgrade it, will be back up to a USB hard drive.
Thanks

What version of Mac OS? Time Machine? I like SuperDuper as well, but it isn't free.

SCR12 said:

Whats the best free software to use to back up a customers Mac, and restore after i upgrade it, will be back up to a USB hard drive. Thanks

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Use either SuperDuper (shareware) or Carbon Copy Cloner (donation ware). Of the two, I personally prefer and use Carbon Copy Cloner. Both applications will create a bootable clone of your internal drive to an external USB or Firewire drive.

SuperDuper

Carbon Copy Cloner

Regards.

the free version of superduper will clone the drive and allow you to move from one drive to another etc, it just won't do incrementals.

mdfuller said:

What version of Mac OS? Time Machine? I like SuperDuper as well, but it isn't free.

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You can use SuperDuper for the initial backup, then use Time Machine to keep it up to date.
I don't think Time Machine will do a bare metal recovery. It seems to focus on user data and changes - but I don't think it will create a bootable HD.
SuperDuper will get a new HD spinning (or new machine) and back to a certain point in time (E.G.: 11/10/09) then Time Machine will let you bring it up to the point of failure.

You can also look at "CrashPlan", "Connected", "Mozy" and "Live Backup" for "Continuous Data Protection" (CDP) software.

CrashPlan is free (and pretty cool (Code 42 Software, Inc.)) and works on Mac, PC & Linux - all you need is some excess HD space on a NAS or network share.

Where are the files kept on a Mac

ummm what files?

Dysfunction said:

ummm what files?

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sorry, where are the documents stored on Mac

/Users/<username>/Documents

by default