Comments on: Mac OS X Tiger Backups: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

By: zach

zach — Mon, 08 May 2006 16:35:37 +0000

Regarding the RAID comment by Thom Rosario: RAID mirroring is not an adequate backup solution. It will keep you running even if one drive should fail. BUT if you mess up your database with some buggy code, accidentally delete something, or just happen to get h4xx0r3d, then it affects both drives in the RAID — sayonara data!

By: Digital501

Digital501 — Sat, 11 Mar 2006 15:59:40 +0000

I’ve had good luck using the Disk Utility to clone my hard drive. http://www.digital501.com/2006021110/mac-backup-osx/ It seems to be the most reliable way to get a clone of my drive. I’m looking into using Automator or some type of script to run it automatically.

By: Roy

Roy — Thu, 02 Feb 2006 10:36:27 +0000

I’m using a mirrored drive as my backup against drive failure. I’m using an offsite storage backup site updated via rsyncX for the data folders, in case something happens to the drives. The use of SSH confers some security to the data as it is transferred over the internet.

I know the offsite backup isn’t bootable. It isn’t supposed to be. If anything happens that we need the offsite backup data, I anticipate we’ll have some other more urgent problems.

RsyncX is free and using a shell script and cron, it is automatic and trouble free. The system has been working for over a year now without maintenance.

I should note that the file server also backs up the user data folders on their individual machines via RsyncX. It is the unfortunate reality that users tend to deposit files that should go on the server all over their individual home folders. For those of us who aren’t using NetBoot or network home folders, backing up that data is important in making sure that nothing is lost.

RsyncX works well, and its ability to sync data from remote machines is useful. I’m sure people have come up with better ways to do this, but as of a year ago, most of them were pay-to-use or would’ve required periodic maintenance.

[WM: Thanks for your note. Rsync is a great tool. We’ve recommended it for Asterisk server backups for a long time. The only trick is getting it configured. Here’s our article that shows how.]

By: Thom Rosario

Thom Rosario — Mon, 28 Nov 2005 15:29:05 +0000

I’m surprised that you didn’t mention OS X’s built-in support for RAID. If you want, you can add a second drive to your Mac and use RAID 1 to mirror the contents across both drives, so that you can simply replace a drive when it fails.

By: OddyOh

OddyOh — Sat, 17 Sep 2005 13:24:58 +0000

Another SuperDuper satisfied user here! Well worth the price. Once you’ve done the first backup, "smart update" backups (where it basically sync’s between source and destination) can take 10 minutes or less, I run mine once a week, or whenever a new update comes out. 😉

By: Ward Mundy

Ward Mundy — Fri, 15 Jul 2005 13:47:29 +0000

The 10.4.2 update for Tiger was released this week and reportedly fixes the problem with Carbon Copy Cloner which explains why the software developer (who happens to work for Apple) didn’t release a patch. We’ve amended this article accordingly.

By: Billy Bob

Billy Bob — Sun, 19 Jun 2005 11:25:07 +0000

Another backup solution using Apple's built-in utilities: sudo asr -source / -target /Volumes/firewireBU -erase where firewireBU is the name of your mounted backup drive or partition. You can read all about it with man asr in a Terminal window. The -erase switch blesses the backup volume so that it will boot.

By: James Katt

James Katt — Mon, 23 May 2005 02:44:15 +0000

SuperDuper! creates the best, most perfect clones. It doesn’t drop aliases, permissions, etc. I’ve tried others, but SuperDuper! does a better job than even CCC.

By: Ronald Brunt

Ronald Brunt — Fri, 20 May 2005 16:41:50 +0000

Don't forget about trying SuperDuper. It is shareware [$19.95, but you can clone for free!] and is an excellent choice.

By: Lenn Hann

Lenn Hann — Fri, 20 May 2005 16:20:00 +0000

Good article! Have you guys reviewed SuperDuper or Synk? So far, SD appears to be the leader in the Tiger era. Both get good reviews, but which tool builds the "best" clone, i.e. closest to the actual source disk with no dropped files, permissions, etc?

http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/SuperDuperDescription.html
http://www.decimus.net/synk/

Mike Bombich (CCC) works for Apple now. Apple wins, but CCC may not be updated for quite a while.

By: Jim

Jim — Fri, 20 May 2005 16:13:37 +0000

If you don't know about it, I would highly recommend a program called Super Duper. It creates perfect, bootable backups which can be updated incrementally; it is clearly and simply designed and easy to use, while also having a lot of powerful features. It has been updated for Tiger. It is one of those Mac shareware programs that really emulates the Mac way of being user-friendly, from interface to marketing to documentation--like Transmit, for instance.