[Ti] Please describe how you do backups?

[Dennis Fazio]

--On April 5, 2005 08:42:25 PM -0500 Robert Nicholson <robert at elastica.com> 
wrote:

> How do you folks do backups?
>
> Is Retrospect worth the money? I know it's network broadcasting doesn't
> work properly.

Your backup solution depends upon how much data you're willing to lose when 
your equipment fails or gets lost/stolen: 1 hour, 1 day, 1 week, 1 month, etc.

If your stuff is at all of any value, use a professional backup program 
(Retrospect is popular, Tri-Backup is equivalent and saves files in Finder 
format. I think there are a couple of others also). They are pretty cheap 
($50 or so) and give you lots of flexibility for a variety of backups. You 
will want to back up different kinds of data on different schedules. The 
cloning backups are nice and simple, but you get no history of your files if 
you want to go back 3 weeks and recover something you accidentally deleted 
but didn't realize so until last night.

You will want to create a bootable backup of OS X to recover from problematic 
system updates. You only need to do that occasionally unless you add 
applications every day.

You will want to do frequent incremental backups of your home directory and 
keep about 3-6 months worth of backups if you create new documents/mp3/photos 
each day or two. That can be done without using too much disk space if you 
filter out backups of cache files and disk images. If you don't empty the 
trash until after the periodic incremental backup, you have a nice "undelete" 
capability.

Firewire disk is best because of effective cost and speed.
If you have vast quantities of video and image data, tape will be necessary
You will want to create DVD backups of your important documents/music/photos 
and put them in a safe deposit box or other safe off-site place to prevent 
loss from a catastrophic disaster or loss of your system AND backup disk 
(backup disks can be accidentally erased too). Once every month or two should 
be good for most people who are very careful with their backup disks.

There are some who have much more stringent backup needs (i.e. if your 
business' operation or existence depended upon your data), but the above 
strategy should be a pretty good tradeoff of effort vs. safety for most home 
users.

-- 
Dennis Fazio
dfz at mac.com