Mac Backup Software Recommendations

Matt-P

Matt-P

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What would people recommend as backup software for a Mac? I'm running time machine on an external drive, but wanted the ability to backup my photos onto some old external hard drives. As a newly migrated windows user I'm not too sure about what's out there

I was looking for something that would give me the ability to do incremental backups rather than copy everything every time.

What's best for this?

Thanks
 
Chronosync does incremental backups i believe?
 
Time Machine only does incremental back up's too....I mean by that it only back's up anything new. if that's what you mean. Works very well for me.
 
Carbon Copy Cloner is a useful tool for incremental backups

Nick Froome
 
Have a look at Integeo Back Up manager Pro. It performs backups when you want and you can specify what you want to back up and when.

However Time Machine does all this for you so why not use that. The only real time you need additional software is, if like me, you have your images stored on an external drive , not on the the Mac's drive
 
Anything similar to MS synctoy?
 
Thanks for all the thoughts. A Mac equivalent of synctoy would be exactly what I was looking for.

I'll look a bit deeper into what Time Machine can do, but I'm pretty happy with that running as it does as my regular onsite backup, what I wanted to do was use a couple of spare hard drives I had lying around to dump my photo folders onto, keep offsite and rotate on a regular basis. This would be in addition to the regular time machine backups.

Cheers, Matt
 
I agree with carbon copy cloner. It is so much better than time machine. I have actually used it for backing up my main drive with os and one day removed my drive then booted up straight away from the backup drive and continued working as if nothing had ever happened. Time machine just seems to cause hassle and it never used to work once it filled my backup drive.
 
Matt-P said:
Thanks for all the thoughts. A Mac equivalent of synctoy would be exactly what I was looking for.

I'll look a bit deeper into what Time Machine can do, but I'm pretty happy with that running as it does as my regular onsite backup, what I wanted to do was use a couple of spare hard drives I had lying around to dump my photo folders onto, keep offsite and rotate on a regular basis. This would be in addition to the regular time machine backups.

Cheers, Matt
Click to expand...

Just set the timemachine settings for when you have that drive plugged in to only backup your photos folder or library. Job done, then it is simply a case of plug in the drive and the rest happens automatically...
 
As I said Silver Keeper from LaCie should do what you want.

You can set it up so that it will backup specific folders/file to individual drive and as the time intervals you require.

You could have it backup your photo daily to an external drive, and also weekly to a different drive . All done automatically .
It'll backup all new files added to a folder and never delete anything, and of course you can have it sync the backup so file deleted in main folder is deleted in backup folder too.


As it's a free download easy to try to see if it suits your needs, they don't support it anymore but works fine on mountain lion for me.
 
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Wow Silverkeeper now that is a blast from the past :) I'm pretty certain I used it on OS9...
 
dejongj said:
Wow Silverkeeper now that is a blast from the past :) I'm pretty certain I used it on OS9...
Click to expand...

Just cause your old does not mean you can't perform :D
 
:agree: :thumbs:
 
I did use MS synctoy on win7. Worked well.

However now iam on Mac, I need something aswell. I thought time machine was a totally separate device/software...but it looks like you can use any HDD's with it.

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1427
 
jimmy83 said:
I did use MS synctoy on win7. Worked well.

However now iam on Mac, I need something aswell. I thought time machine was a totally separate device/software...but it looks like you can use any HDD's with it.

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1427
Click to expand...

Time capsule is the network device, timemachine is built in software. Henc it is bring recommended as it is already there, works very well and fully automatic.
 
Another user of Carbon Copy Cloner - it's pretty flexible - recommended!
 
dejongj said:
Time capsule is the network device, timemachine is built in software. Henc it is bring recommended as it is already there, works very well and fully automatic.
Click to expand...

Ah yes, thats made things abit clearer now. I think I will use Time Machine, can you just use TM for backing up photos instead of your whole computer?
 
You can, on a per backup volume basis you could exclude other stuff.

I wonder though why you would want to do that. The whole point if time machine is that everything is fully integrated.

Say you are in mail, you accidentally deleted that message in your local folder. Just hit time machine it will show you that folder and you can go back in time still looking at that folder. Once you are happy just click restore and it is there.

Backup is great, but ultimately how easy a restore is is what is important.

I see no reason why you wouldn't want the other stuff backed up.
 
dejongj said:
You can, on a per backup volume basis you could exclude other stuff.

I wonder though why you would want to do that. The whole point if time machine is that everything is fully integrated.

Say you are in mail, you accidentally deleted that message in your local folder. Just hit time machine it will show you that folder and you can go back in time still looking at that folder. Once you are happy just click restore and it is there.

Backup is great, but ultimately how easy a restore is is what is important.

I see no reason why you wouldn't want the other stuff backed up.
Click to expand...

Just for space more than anything, I would have thought OS backups would be pretty big.
 
The os backup is probably the smallest part of your backup. Basically, if you have a 1tb drive, get a 1tb backup drive and that will do you as the backup will be the same size as the original.
 
flicker said:
The os backup is probably the smallest part of your backup. Basically, if you have a 1tb drive, get a 1tb backup drive and that will do you as the backup will be the same size as the original.
Click to expand...

:thinking:

Shouldnt back up drives be larger than the drive they are backing up? If you want a simple mirror, then the same size drive is good, but for back up you should have a larger drive.
 
Rapscallion said:
If you want a simple mirror, then the same size drive is good, but for back up you should have a larger drive.
Click to expand...
Why do you think that? They only need to be larger if your backup strategy is to keep multiple versions of files - and then only if the size of originals + number of copies > size of original disk.
 
arad85 said:
Why do you think that? They only need to be larger if your backup strategy is to keep multiple versions of files - and then only if the size of originals + number of copies > size of original disk.
Click to expand...

I would suggest that keeping multiple versions of files is a sensible backup strategy!
 
Rapscallion said:
I would suggest that keeping multiple versions of files is a sensible backup strategy!
Click to expand...
Not necessarily. I tend not to - very few files actually get versions in reality and you normally only want the last version anyway. If you are versioning to go back and fore through time, you are better off archiving out to a checkpoint as a separate file IMHO as working solely on time and date for a versioning history is inadequate for most uses. In fact the only time I've ever needed to go back and fore through versions of files is when developing code. In that case, the code management system (e.g. git/cvs) does that for me.

If you really do want versions of files, typically, these are very small files (text files, Word documents etc..) and are really likely only to be a minimal overhead when backing up.
 
File corruption?

I have recently had to restore from backup a few Microsoft Project files, if the back up only contained one version i'd be stuffed!

Id be very nervous if i only had one file version in backup, but thats just me. ;)
 
Unless you keep ALL versions of ALL files, you can never reliably recover everything and you should know file corruption (which is all you should be using versioning for) the next time the file is opened, so in that case, 2 is all that is necessary. And as I say, files that do create versions are the exception and not the norm so are a minimal overhead on a backup strategy if you do want to keep them. Me: I'm happy with my backup strategy (which now includes offsite which is versioned, but that isn't why I have it) and only versions based on the fact I keep multiple copies in different locations and versioning is done by how often the backups are copied around.
 
if you are on lion or mountain lion then there are already multiple versions. If you are backing up an exact clone, you can have your drive die completely, then boot from your backup drive and all your version history is still there for you to sift through if you must.

I see absolutely no point whatsoever of having a backup drive bigger than what you need to back up.
 
flicker said:
if you are on lion or mountain lion then there are already multiple versions. If you are backing up an exact clone, you can have your drive die completely, then boot from your backup drive and all your version history is still there for you to sift through if you must.

I see absolutely no point whatsoever of having a backup drive bigger than what you need to back up.
Click to expand...

Out of interest, if the source drive is full, how could there be multiple copies of files on the backup drive of the same size?
:thinking:
 
because there are multiple copies of the files on the source drive anyway. Its the way versions works on lion.
 
Ah right, i see what you mean now. What files does lion version? i havent come across it myself.
 
Rapscallion said:
Ah right, i see what you mean now. What files does lion version? i havent come across it myself.
Click to expand...

It only does that of applications that are aware. Unfortunate I'm not aware that ms office has been updated yet. But most other applications like one of my favourites omnigraffle does for example or textedit or the iWork's suite etc. iirc it automatically locks the file after two weeks unless recently edited such that you can't accidentally overwrite with a new version. But if you do, just click the name in the title bar and you can go back in time ala time machine. I like it a lot.
 
^ Aye. But if you want multiple versions of anything else I would assume most people would do what I do e.g. draft1.psd, draft2.psd etc... on my main drive and this is of course cloned along with everything else.
 
flicker said:
^ Aye. But if you want multiple versions of anything else I would assume most people would do what I do e.g. draft1.psd, draft2.psd etc... on my main drive and this is of course cloned along with everything else.
Click to expand...

Possibly, I hate that kind of clutter system. Also don like how you have to dig through the "backup/clone" yourself to restore. Much prefer the versioning provided through aperture and stack them opposed to all this manual management.

But hey each to their own. At least there is the choice.
 
Not every program supports 'versioning' - as far as i know...
With the relative cheapness of external drives why not go for something just slightly bigger and let TM take the strain as one of your backup routines
Personally I prefer to find a lost/deleted file in a TM backup - I like navigating the folder structure to find what I want :)
 
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