there are 2 types of people when it comes to data loss.

[macgig]

1. those people who have lost data, and

2. those that will.

Backups are important. A bootable backup makes restoring your mac a much quicker easier process....

in this day and age of super large hard drives, and big files/programs, backing up to cd or dvd no longer works that well (and it certainly is not a convenient way to backup).

I have learned once again the hard way.... an external drive that is bootable is the best option.

When I installed leopard a few weeks ago, and things ran poorly, I formatted the HD and went back to tiger. Then I spent a week copying things from cd/dvd back to the hard drive... And I realized that I missed backing up some purchased music and audiobooks.

You need to backup and do it often.

I finally bought an external hard drive, and I backup at least once a week... sometimes more.

lesson learned.

 

[Dysfunction]

I agree, backups are EXTREMELY important. Their use can not be stressed enough.

Personally, I rsync to a linux box, that spools to tape Really the best way, but sadly not really available to most users. Time machine is a great idea, but I still don't like how it's implemented.

 

[lifeafter2am]

I do both a Time Machine backup and rsync to my BSD box. My research data is far too important to lose.

@Mike: I have $ , but can easily escalate!

 

[cwa107]

I agree - but I'd go one step further. If you have a home network with multiple computers, you'd do well to consider purchasing a "Network Attached Storage" device, also known as a NAS. A NAS is a small box containing one or more hard drives that acts as a small server.

In my case, I use a D-Link DNS-323, which is a dual-drive capable NAS. I have it configured in a mirrored setup, which means that the drives are identical copies of each other. This is self-maintaining, so that everything stored on the NAS is fully redundant - meaning that if one drive fails, I still have my data.

I use this for storing the important stuff that I would never want to lose - family photos, music, digital video (camcorder stuff), software I've purchased online that doesn't have physical media (all too common these days) - and associated keys, and of course any financial information or other important documents.

The nice thing is that this is available to all of the computers on my network, PC or Mac. I even have it set up with my consolidated iTunes libraries (my wife and mine) and it shows up as a Shared iTunes library on both machines.

It's a little steep at $170 for the box and about $50 apiece for the two 250GB drives I have in it, but well worth the peace of mind. I also do regular full backups on both my laptops (MBP and a Dell that my wife uses) to a 300GB Firewire external drive, using SuperDuper on the MBP and Acronis TrueImage on the Dell. This ensures that if I ever lose a hard drive in one of them (very common with notebook hard drives that are subjected to the stresses of constant movement), I can recover easily without having to reinstall everything.

Definitely something to think about, and a great topic. All computer users should give this some serious thought and develop a backup strategy. Nothing hurts worse than losing invaluable family photos - and it happens all the time.

 

[Zeke_D]

I like my DNS-323 so much, I have a spare with no drives in case the one in use ever dies.

I agree - but I'd go one step further. If you have a home network with multiple computers, you'd do well to consider purchasing a "Network Attached Storage" device, also known as a NAS. A NAS is a small box containing one or more hard drives that acts as a small server.

In my case, I use a D-Link DNS-323, which is a dual-drive capable NAS. I have it configured in a mirrored setup, which means that the drives are identical copies of each other. This is self-maintaining, so that everything stored on the NAS is fully redundant - meaning that if one drive fails, I still have my data.

I use this for storing the important stuff that I would never want to lose - family photos, music, digital video (camcorder stuff), software I've purchased online that doesn't have physical media (all too common these days) - and associated keys, and of course any financial information or other important documents.

The nice thing is that this is available to all of the computers on my network, PC or Mac. I even have it set up with my consolidated iTunes libraries (my wife and mine) and it shows up as a Shared iTunes library on both machines.

It's a little steep at $170 for the box and about $50 apiece for the two 250GB drives I have in it, but well worth the peace of mind. I also do regular full backups on both my laptops (MBP and a Dell that my wife uses) to a 300GB Firewire external drive, using SuperDuper on the MBP and Acronis TrueImage on the Dell. This ensures that if I ever lose a hard drive in one of them (very common with notebook hard drives that are subjected to the stresses of constant movement), I can recover easily without having to reinstall everything.

Definitely something to think about, and a great topic. All computer users should give this some serious thought and develop a backup strategy. Nothing hurts worse than losing invaluable family photos - and it happens all the time.