Best way to backup your hard drive?

Many people have different preferences as to how they back up their files. Some ways include using iDisk or another online website to save your files. Also people use external hard drives or other devices to store thier information.

It seems to be a common occurrence that when you bring you're Mac into an Apple store to have it looked at they tell you they will have to keep it at least overnight to be repaired. Then when you return to the store to pick up your Mac they tell you everything has been fixed "oh and by the way your hard drive was erased and everything has been erased".

So with most people wanting to avoid this disaster what is your favorite or in your opinion the best way to back-up your precious information stored on your Mac.

Firewire hdd's FTW!

I use a program called Deja Vu, it just makes a clone of my hard drive onto an external. I can boot off this drive if anything goes wrong and if I need to restore I don't need to reinstall the OS, I just copy the entire thing over.

Well, my 2 cents...

I have always done backups the "cheap and cheerful" way. It is even easier with Macs than it was on my PC.

I use an external hard drive. To back up, I plug it in, turn it on and then create a new folder in its root called todays_date_backup. Then I simply use Finder (or PathFinder in my case) to drag my home folder into my newly created backup folder. This copies ALL of my personal data. It does not create a full blown image of my current disk, but I tend to view the system setup as transient. It is my personal stuff (music, photos, files, etc.) that I want to keep.

To make this really useful, I use a system of two hard drives, which I rotate between work and home. Each time I do a backup, I take the hard drive with the fresh backup to work and exchange it with the one there. That way, I always have two full backups at two different locations. Hence, even if some terrible disaster should befall my house (tornado, flood, fire, whatever), I still have a full backup "off site".

Note that no incremental backup software is involved or needed. Hard drives are so big and so fast these days that this works great and it is so simple. It has always been my philosophy that in order to be done regularly, backing up must be easy. Apple clearly agrees with me - I think that this is the whole premise behind Time Machine (... a FAR more elegant solution than what I do of course!).

i currently use an external HD - but only for my uni work (photos). i guess i should really back up all my stuff...is it possible to literally drag the entire "macintosh HD" and "data disk" drives into an external??

There's a program called CarbonCopyCloner that's supposed to be good. I haven't tried because for some reason my external drive didn't show up when I tried to use it. But many people use it and like. One way it's better than manual backup is that it's an identical image of your entire hard drive only checks and backs up changes instead of the entire drive every time. And since it's a free app, it's at least worth a look. I think I found it on www.pure-mac.com.

External Hard Drive and SuperDuper

Another vote for SuperDuper! here too. It is the best in its class according to this comparison test.

Another vote for SuperDuper.

I upgraded my MacBook hard drive a little while ago and used super duper to transfer the files to the new hard drive which I'd popped into a USB enclosure. Made sure it was bootable and just switched it out.

An absolutely painless experience.

I use Super Duper too

Superduper! rocks... in a very data-protectory way. But you get the idea.

Superduper! and an external Firewire harddrive partitioned as part backup part media harddrive. I plan to invest in a larger Raid drive at some point to have a dedicated backup drive.

I also backup some essentials to a free moxy account and to my .Mac account.

P.S. The exclamation point in "Superduper!" is important!