What is a good back up program?

I have an external drive to back up to. What is the best program to use?

I do not want to use a program that will destroy the data I currently have on the drive.

For selected data backup (i.e. choose what you want to backup) - iBackup

For cloning (for later restoration in case of hdd failure or whatever) - SuperDuper

I use Tri-Backup which does it all.. and so far I really like it

Currious about any backup options that will back up the entire computer to multiple dvds? Any information on this?

I tried a few and settled on ChronoSync, as it gives you the option of a full back up or sync.

carbon copy cloner
-chris

Murlyn said:

I use Tri-Backup which does it all.. and so far I really like it

Click to expand...

Ooh, haven't seen that one before!

PowerBookG4 said:

Currious about any backup options that will back up the entire computer to multiple dvds? Any information on this?

Click to expand...

I haven't found one yet, although I really wish they'd make one. Ghost is a staple for me in the Windows world.

PowerBookG4: I think zou can use carbon-copy-cloner to make DMG's of maximum 4.7 GB size and then put it in a burn folder.

I'd make a little script for this or use automator.


But I like Backitymac. There's also DejaVu that I got when buying Stuffit Deluxe. It can make regular backups to a HD, a CD or DVD from any specified folder. I do a backup of my Home Folder every fornight automatically at night to my Lacie 250GB.

I love Superduper!

Tests have shown it is one of the few backup programs that really copy everything, no matter how obscure or difficult correctly...

CCC is also really good.

I use SuperDuper. I liked it enough to pay for it. Now it will do a differential backup instead of cloning the entire disk each time (goes much faster). I played with booting from the external drive and it worked like a charm. Sure beats having to fool around with GHOST from my Windows days. Although, I have to admit that GHOST was sweet. I much prefer to restore an image than to rebuild from scratch. But, being able to boot from an external disk is so nice.

Yeah, that's one of the reason I maintain a full bootable backup: If my harddrive does go out on me, I can continue being productive (i.e. posting of mac-forums) until I can put a new one in.


Edit:

This comparison chart might help:
http://blog.plasticsfuture.org/2006/04/23/mac-backup-software-harmful/

Hey great url there! Tri-Backup is partially reccommend while superduper is definitely reccommend so Im going to take a look at them and see what I think

Well, I think the scenarios he's testing are fairly obscure and wouldn't affect most users, but it's good to know that it's reliable!

I personally just went with it because I liked the UI and appreciate that it doesn't get in my stuff... (Deja vu kind of bothered me in that respect with its system preference panel, menu bar icon etc etc...)

Plus the developer (Dave Nanian) answers all support emails personally, which I always appreciate.