[X-Newbies] Rating backup software.

[Randy B.Singer]

Brian Durant said:

>As I recently experienced a catastrophic hard disc failure, I have
>become very conscious about backing up my system. The question is -
>which software is best? At this time, I have Intego's Personal Backup
>X4 and was wondering if there was anyone on list that provide some
>feedback on what they thought of the software. How does Personal
>Backup X4 rate for example, compared to SuperDuper?


I highly recommend this e-book:

Take Control of Mac OS X Backups
by Joe Kissell

PDF format, 138 pages, 860K download
Price: US$10 (Free 34-page sample available)

http://www.tidbits.com/takecontrol/backup-macosx.html

This e-book compares all of the Mac OS X backup programs.  Basically I 
think that you will find that Personal Backup X is quite a bit more 
full-featured than SuperDuper.  In particular, it allows both cloning and 
archiving, while SuperDuper only allows cloning.

Richard Ramsowr said:

>OS X "Panther" (10.3) & "Tiger" (10.4) both offer
>basic built-in backup solutions. Apple calls there
>solution "Backup". And it doesn't cost you a dime!

If I'm not mistaken, "Backup" is an Apple program that isn't exactly 
free.  You can download the program for free, but you have to pay to join 
.Mac to use Backup:
http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/apple/backup.html

However, there is a free cloning feature built into recent versions of OS 
X.  The Restore tab in Apple's Disk Utility (OS X 10.3 and 10.4, but not 
10.2) works almost exactly like Carbon Copy Cloner.  It makes an exact 
bootable clone of your disk.  The only options are to erase, or to leave 
alone the data on the destination disk, and to do a checksum integrity 
test of the data being copied.  
However, this feature does not offer syncronization of files, to update 
your clone, and it is significantly slower than using CCC or SuperDuper.

Randy B. Singer

Co-Author of:
The Macintosh Bible (4th, 5th and 6th editions)

OS X Routine Maintenance
http://www.macattorney.com/ts.html