Backup software?

Ok, I'm still fiddling around with my new mac, and now have come accross a new obstacle... I'm trying to figure out how to backup my mac... I already have a formatted external drive, so now all i need is a good program to do it. I am trying out silverkeepr, but not sure if it's what i want (friendly, easy to use/restore, cheap/free)... any ideas from mac users? What do you use/how do you backup your files/system/etc.

One last question, I have two users on ym mac, me and my wife, and in wondows i could always access her files from my desktop, and on the mac I can't. Her folders have a little red no-access sign, how can i make it so that we can access each other's folders through our respective desktops? thanks for any help!

I've heard lots of good things about SuperDuper

There really is no need for backup software if you have an external hard drive. All of your files are in your Documents, Pictures, Music, Library and maybe a few others in your home folder. To backup, just create a new folder on your external hard drive, perhaps named something like "todays-date-Backup", open that folder in a finder window and drag the folders you want to back up from your home directory to the backup folder. Done. This is what I do, and it works like a champ. This does not backup your OS X system itself, but it does back up all of your personal data. That is good enough for me.

So, need software? It is called Finder and you have it already.

The advantage of backup software is that you can do incremental backups. Copying the entire lot every time is a pain, especially if you back up over a network. I personally use an rsync daemon on my desktop machine (which has a LOT of hard disk space). I have a 25GB User directory at the moment - I don't want to copy the entire of that lot every time!!

Re your question about you and your wife accessing each others file, this is possible with just a little Terminal command line magic.

Open a Terminal window. Change to the Users directory via:

cd /Users

For this example lets assume that your ID is "husband" and her ID is "wife". The following magic commands will achieve what you want:

sudo chmod -R o+rw husband
sudo chmod -R o+rw wife

What you are doing is telling OS X to add read/write permissions (the "+rw" in the above) to other users than the owner (thats the "o" in the above) for the folders "husband" and "wife", and to recursively descend through each, applying this operation to ALL files contained within (thats the "-R" in the above).

That will do it!

It does have the side effect that pretty much any account on the Mac can now access the files in accounts "husband" and "wife". This also reduces the security of your files a wee bit if your Mac were to be hacked into, but given the low likelihood of that event, this is probably safe.

If you are worried about the above, and feeling adventurous, you can restrict the add of rw priveledges to just other users in the same group, by changing the "o+rw" in the above to "g+rw". I didn't suggest this as a first effort simply in case for some obscure reason, you and your wife are not in the same user group. You may wish to try this form of the command first, and then only do the original form I gave if this form doesn't work. It depends on how security worried you are.