Needing online and just general back-up recommendations

Hi,
I have two iMacs and a MacBook Pro. I am an avid photographer, and recently made a horrible mistake and probably lost tons of photos...

I would love to hear your recommendations for:
1. General back up advice
2. Specific online back up recommendations

Thanks so very much!

I use Picasa on my Mac and backup all my photos online to Picasaweb, it's easy to use, accessible on pretty much any platform without bespoke software and provides an online backup to compliment my local, physical backup.

I have a friend the swears by Carbonite for online backups

I have several external drives beside me:

1. A Time Machine drive
2. A clone backup drive
3. A "media" drive
4. A backup to the "media" drive

I've never liked Picasa and Google is ... well, another topic for another day. You might want to look into Flickr Pro.

I'm with chas on this.

Time Machine (TM) is the simplest to set up and, after the first copy, backs up hourly and so on, totally in the background. Easy to retrieve individual files or folders; there to provide a complete restore on to a new Mac or new IHD.

Like chas, I have a clone backup drive (in my case using SuperDuper!, but there are others). The great advantage of these is that they create a bootable drive.

You can copy your iPhoto and Aperture databases to a EHD very easily (you can do the same for iTunes & iMovies if you want).

In addition, Aperture has its own backup system which they call a Vault and this is created, again, on a EHD.

The problem with on-line backup systems (and some offer excellent facilities) is that even with ultrafast broadband, it can take forever and a day to upload. If, like me your photos amount to 90GB or more and if, like me in the UK, your broadband is on the slow side - forget it.

I think these replies cover your questions. Need more detail, just ask.

Message for all computer users - Backup is essential and the more there is of it and the more varied in type, the better.

Ian

The problem with on-line backup systems (and some offer excellent facilities) is that even with ultrafast broadband, it can take forever and a day to upload. If, like me your photos amount to 90GB or more and if, like me in the UK, your broadband is on the slow side - forget it.

Click to expand...

True it does take a long time - I've uploaded > 130GB with the initial upload of nearly 100gb.

But once that initial upload is done the incremental backup as you go along is now problem.

A minor inconvenience for an off-site backup