News & Views

In my last article I gave general information about backup principles. This month I will get more specific.

Backing up to another hard disk

If you have a second hard disk (e.g. an external Firewire drive), you can use Finder to copy the desired files to the other drive. You can easily create folders to keep multiple backups on the drive, e.g. labelling the folder with the date. This method works for documents you have created, or you can even go as far as backing up your entire home folder. If you want to back up files elsewhere on the computer (e.g. the system software) then things get more complicated. The easiest and cheapest solution Ive found for doing a complete backup of your main hard drive to a second hard drive is a program called Carbon Copy Cloner. It is very cheap: the author asks for a donation via PayPal, but you can try it for free. Carbon Copy Cloner can copy selected or all folders at the top level of your hard disk, and preserve all the permissions. It also has options for erasing the destination drive, and making the backup copy bootable. If your second hard drive is larger than your main one, you might want to partition it so that you can use it to hold a complete bootable backup of your main hard drive, and have more space for other uses. You can use Disk Utility to do this. Your backup partition should be at least few megabytes larger than your main hard drive.

Backing up to removable media

If you have a read/write removable drive like a Zip, Jaz or Rev drive, you can simply treat it as a smaller version of an external hard drive, and use Finder to copy the desired files to a removable disc. You can delete old backups when you dont need them any more, and reuse the media.

Backing up to CD/DVD with Finder

If you have a modern Mac with a built-in CD or DVD writer, and the amount of data you need to back up will fit on a single recordable CD (700 MB) or DVD (4.5 GB), one of the easiest and cheapest option is to use the built-in Disc Burner feature of Finder in Mac OS X. If you are using Mac OS X 10.3 (Panther) or earlier, you also need enough free space on your hard disk for a temporary copy of the data to be backed up. With 10.4 (Tiger) you can get away with less free space.

Doing a backup to CD with Finder consists of three steps:

1. Insert a blank recordable CD or DVD. It should appear on the desktop as a CD/DVD icon. (If the computer asks what to do with the disc, choose the Finder option.) Give it a suitable name, e.g. Backup and the date.
2. Drag the folders and files to be backed up onto the CD/DVD. (With 10.3 and earlier, they are copied at this point.) 3. Eject the CD/DVD, which will ask if you want to burn the disc. Answer yes, and after a delay the disc will be burned and verified. It then appears on the desktop as a completed disc, and you can inspect the contents before ejecting it. You should write the discs name on its label. This is best done using a felt tip pen which is specifically intended for writing on CDs. You can buy these from most stationery suppliers.

Complications

While this method is very easy, it has a few pitfalls: 1. If you are only backing up a small amount of data, writing it to CD/DVD with Finder will waste the unused space on the disc: you cant add any more data once the CD is burned. (If you use CD-RW media, you can erase the disc using Disk Utility, then reuse it.) 2. If you want to back up more data than will fit on a CD/DVD, you have to manually select a subset of the data which will fit on a single disc, burn that, then select the rest of the data to burn on another disc. This opens up the potential of mistakes. If you need to back up a single file which is larger than a CD/DVD, you simply cant do it using Finder.
3. If you are backing up data from several places on your computer, selecting the files by hand can be time consuming and error prone: you might miss something you wanted to back up unless you are careful. If you regularly back up the same areas of your drive, it can get tedious to repeat the process each time you do a backup. Automating the process would make things much easier.

Potential solutions

If you have a .Mac account from Apple (about NZ$200 per year), it includes a program simply called Backup. This lets you back up files to your .Mac account, and also to local media. Ive never seen it so I dont know exactly what features it offers. If you like backing up to CD/DVD but want to avoid the problems in the previous section, one solution is Roxios Toast Titanium, which costs about $200. It lets you burn data to CDs in multiple sessions, so you dont waste the unused space. The latest version also supports spreading data over several CDs (though reconstructing it is a little complicated). It offers a lot of other features as well. The big daddy of backup software for the Mac is Dantzs Retrospect. A cut- down version is supplied with some backup devices, or you can buy the Desktop edition for about $200. Retrospect supports backing up to hard disks, removable media, CD/DVD and tape drives. It can be scripted to automate the backup process selecting the files for backup, starting the backup at a specified time (useful to get you in the habit of backing up regularly), automatically spreads data over multiple discs as required, and supports multiple backup sets. The main problem with Retrospect is that it can be tricky to set up, but I am available to help (I use it regularly). Retrospect Desktop can also back up other computers over a network connection. If you need to back up a computer running Mac OS X Server, you must buy the Workgroup or Server edition of Retrospect, which are much more expensive.

If you wish to contact me, your best option is to send E-Mail to <president@welmac.org.nz>.