Which backup software for iMac ?? Help Please?

Damsel needs Help !! - Which Backup Software should I use?

I have an iMac and a Mac Book Pro.

iMac is a 2Tbyte machine and I have 2 X 4 Tbyte Western Digital Drives and a 2 TByte Apple Time Capsule.

I have photos mainly on iMac and music on Disk A External and some other files .

Which is the best software for selecting specific folders and doing incremental backups.

I have seen Carbon Copy and Super Duper

Would value your input on how to set up a schedule so that I never have to worry that my drives are backed up.

( I also have a MacBook Pro, and use this in the field and then copy to my iMac when I return home)

Thanks. I posted this 2 days ago under operating system and got ZERO replies, which surprised me ! - hopefully her I may get some assistance.

Thanks in advance

debs

I use Super Duper and back up weekly or when needed (if I've added some stuff to my Mac, etc) and store this away from my Mac, and also have a hard drive permanently plugged in for an ongoing Time Machine back up.

I feel secure that with both in place I'm covered.

Registered version SD for me also. Can then do a weekly backup using Smart Backup in three or four minutes and external is bootable.

Thank you, I will look at this.

Do you do a total back up or back up 'data' folders only and then incrementally. It is just that as I have so many drives hanging off, this might be difficult. I might try and do a backup of my iMac in total, and then back up the external drives to other external drives if that makes sense!

Trouble with shooting in RAW and not being ruthless enough to delete photos !!!

Thanks for your advice nicky and harry

debs

I do a total back up via Super Duper - the registerd version means you can do this incrementally though and gives the benefit of a bootable clone of your mac's hard drive.

Your best strategy may be to have your time capsule attached to your mac permanently to facilitate hourly back ups, and then use one of your other external hard drives to back up your macbook and the third solely for your raw files and processed images from whatever source.

That way you'll always have multiple copies of your work.

Hi Debs

Sorry your first posting did not yield a response. Plenty now!

I also use SuperDuper!. Advantages mentioned above.
However, I see that as a weekly back up and you may want something more often than that. Your Time Capsule or Time Machine option gives you hourly back ups and allows you to restore individual files or folders (whatever) which you may have inadvertently deleted.

In addition, the following links tell you how to back up things like iTunes, iPhoto, iMovie etc to an EHD (I refer to the database libraries).

If you use Aperture for your photo editing, you can back up using the in-application Vault and you can also copy the Aperture Library.aplibrary directly to an EHD.

You can do the same for iMovies Projects and iMovie Events.

There are endless options available in addition to the tried & tested TC or TM plus SuperDuper!.

Links below.

Ian

Ask the iTunes Guy: Work with iTunes libraries | Macworld
iTunes for Mac: Moving your iTunes Media folder
iMovie ’08: Storing or moving your video library to an external hard disk
Relocate your iMovie projects | Video | Creative Notes | Macworld
iPhoto: How to move the Library folder to a new location

Thanks everyone, thats great advice. Much appreciated.