Back up software, what do you recommend?

I was wondering what software do you guys use and why? I've heard of so many different ones. Do you guys back up to a disk or to an external hard drive? Is there any advantages to disk or external hard drive? If you use a hard drive which one do you recommend and why? How often do back up your computer? Is backing up your computer easy? Thank You!

 

Backing up the computer is pretty easy. I'm using an external hard drive right now, and while I recommend Super Duper! for backup software, I'm not personally using it right now. Right now I'm just making copies of my important files (photos, music, etc.) onto the external hard drive.

Time Machine looks very promising for a backup application. Time Machine will be in Leopard, arriving in October.

 

I really like super duper!. I also recommend using both an external drive and an optical disk. That way you are relying on one backup.

 

What is an optical disk? What are your thoughts about .mac software from apple? Thank you!

 

An optical disk is a CD or a DVD.

.Mac is really cool, and the new 10 GB size is nice, but I still don't use it. $100 for 12 months isn't that bad, only about $8 a month, but I won't be using the .Mac features, such as iWeb and the Web Gallery, so I don't use .Mac.

 

If you really want to learn about .mac watch some of the demo videos and sign-up for the 60-day free trial. You may want to wait until Leopard is released to use the free trial though.

 

Superduper! is good if you want some automation options, and if you have a .Mac account you get the Backup application with that also which is a very basic backup application that gets the job done.

Or you can just copy stuff over manually of course, nothing much to it really.

 

Theres always Time Machine.

 

Well yes, but that's in Leopard so it isn't really an option for another month at least (still no release date on Leopard besides "October").

 

The main point of backing up is so that if your hard drive suddenly fails you won't lose any important files forever.

So you can be very cautious and use backup software where you can boot back into your Mac from the external hard drive, but backing up your data can also be as easy as just having a second copy of your important files, like documents, photos, music, etc. They can be stored in flash drives, CD/DVDs, external hard drives, even online.

 

I think .mac is only worth it if you have more than one Mac. Then you can sync the multiple machine, backup, etc. Otherwise, not worth it. Depending on the sensitivity and importance of your data, there are several things you may want to do. For instance, you may want one backup with you, another off-site, and yet another perhaps online. You may also want several types of media in case one fails. Again it is all about how important things are. I personally just have a single external hard drive for everything, and then I burn photos to DVD every now and again.

 

^^ i agree. right now im savin up for an external drive that will be my primary source. aside from that, i have a 1gb flash drive that i use to back up all my school work.