[X4U] back-up software

[John Kiss]

On Dec 19, 2005, at 11:00 AM, Jan Melichar wrote:

> I wonder what back up strategies people have. I don't mean data but  
> system and applications. I ask partly because I don't know how it  
> is that the system accumulates problems.
>

I'm just an average user but was worried about backing up my  
thousands of photos and other personal stuff. I used Apple's Backup  
in the past but found it excruciatingly slow and it didn't back up  
any applications nor any installer apps. Within the last few months I  
settled on SuperDuper! and have been very happy since.

My backup strategy is this: I bought an external firewire drive that  
I located in the basement below where the computer sits. Ran a  
firewire cable through the wall. Partitioned the drive into 2  
partitions: one partition big enough to back up my main drive on the  
computer and the second partition to handle odds and ends type of  
backups. I run SuperDuper! automatically every day to completely  
backup my main drive AND to make it bootable. It creates a clone on  
the external so that if anything goes south on my main drive, I  
simply boot off of my external. A daily backup takes about 12 minutes  
covering about 124G.

I also have scripts that I run manually whenever I update specific  
files such as Quicken or other financial data. These backups take  
about 3-4 minutes and backup the specific files to a sparse disk  
image on my second partition. I used Automator/Applescript to develop  
these scripts which run as Finder plug-ins. With a little help from  
the Shirt-Pocket folks everything is running perfectly and for the  
first time in many years I have total peace of mind.

In my case, if my system does develop problems, then my daily backup  
will simply copy that problem to my backup drive. SuperDuper! though  
has other modes (Sandbox?) that I think can prevent this type of  
problem. I just haven't had time to explore that feature.