[X Newbies] Saving Mail and Other Program Data

[Alex]

On Thursday, Apr 22, 2004, at 02:28 Canada/Eastern, Anne Keller-Smith 
wrote:

> [...] I am using a Maxtor external drive but Dantz Retrospect takes 
> too long to back up the entire hard drive every couple days.
> 2-3 hours.

(1) Sounds like a USB 1.1 drive, aka "ye olde slow-as-molasses". USB 1 
wasn't really designed for this. USB 2 or FireWire's the thing.

(2) Make sure you're doing a "normal" (i.e., incremental), rather than 
a "recycle" backup. The latter is only required at longer intervals 
(e.g., monthly). At any rate, Retrospect should warn you when it's a 
good idea to recycle the backup set.

> [...] I do an entire hard drive backup only every other month or after 
> a new program install[...]

(3) Backing up an entire drive on a daily basis is not necessary, but 
every other month is a little too little. My rule of thumb: Back up 
your User folder daily; back up your entire drive weekly.

(4) Script it, or make a Run document and launch it when you leave your 
workstation for the night. Since you're backing up to a hard drive, 
user interaction is not required, and you don't have to be there while 
Retrospect does its thing.

f