Backup software

I was just wondering what you guys typically use to backup files from your Mac onto an external hard drive. My HD is 160gb but it seems to be filling up faster than I anticipated. I have a 250gb external drive that I'd like to basically hold my itunes library and other digital media.

What's the best way to do this? I'd rather not have all of my music on my computer just because it takes up so much hard drive space, but I'd like to be able to browse around my itunes library from my computer etc.

Any tips or suggestions for doing this are greatly appreciated!

I prefer SuperDuper for backing up my files.

If your external HDD is accessible through Finder, You can copy all the Music into the XHDD and set the path in iTunes.

Preferences > Advanced > iTunes Music folder location

Definitely SuperDuper!


<Off topic>

Hiya novicew! Good to see you!

</Off topic>

I have always done backups the "cheap and cheerful" way. It is even easier with Macs than it was on my PC. No extra software needed!

I have 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've heard of super duper, but it looks like the only option with that is to do a complete image copy of your hard drive onto the external one. i'd like to be able to specify which files and folders are backed up.

and yea, i do agree that you can simply use the finder to make backups but if there's a utility out there to make it even more painless i/we might as well take advantage of it!

And you can even have your own incremental backup system built using Spotlight. Just create a smart search folder with "Everything that has changed today" and use automator to copy it to your external HDD....