Backup Solutions for Mac OS X?

SpartanVII asks: "I purchased a Mac roughly two years ago and have made the switch with a fair amount of ease. However, one thing that has troubled me is how best to backup my important data to an external hard drive. Right now, I have rigged up an Automator workflow that runs every night, but I have also seen software options like SuperDuper and Knox. Since the Automator workflow lacks much of the flexibility and features available with these apps, I am ready to try something else. What app have you come across that provides the best backup solution?"

SuperDuper!

[coffee_bouzu]

I'm a big fan of SuperDuper! since it's trivial to use, does incremental backups and you don't have to worry about missing files or applications if you mirror your entire hard drive.

If you have a firewire external hard drive, you can have SuperDuper! backup your computer's drive to it and if you should ever want to step back to your last backup or lose your laptop's hard drive, all you have to do is plug in the external drive, press option while you are starting up your mac, boot from the external drive, run SuperDuper! to copy all your files back and reboot normally when its done. You are left with a computer EXACTLY like it looked when you last backed up.

It can also handle drives of different sizes (assuming you aren't trying to copy 100GB of files to a 60GB drive) so you can also use it to upgrade your hard drive without needing to reinstall OSX or your applications.

I know it isn't FOSS, but it is still a reasonably priced, wonderful application and I reccomend it 100%

Today shell scripts, tomorrow Time Machine

[Fulkkari]

I don't know about right now, but once Leopard comes out, I guess it would be Time Machine [apple.com]. Just wait until it starts shipping in the beginning of the next year.

If you don't want to wait or upgrade, write a shell script doing the job for you. I don't know what kind of experiences others have had with backup tools on the Mac, but Retrospect kept crashing on me when trying to run it. I wouldn't trust that kind of software to keep track of my backups. So I guess it's pretty much shell scripts or nothing right now.

Re:Cross-Platform Solution

[knappe duivel]

Most backup programs just copy the files, so you are in no way tight to, or dependant on such program. I do avoid programs like Retrospect, which compress the backups, forcing you to also use the program for restoring of browsing your backup data.

Re:SuperDuper!

[piojo]

SuperDuper! is for people that don't want to take the time to mess with shellscripts and cronjobs and such. Back up everything with almost no options and nothing to screw up. If you wanted to muck around with shellscript and rsync backup solutions, you probably wouldn't be asking here. I installed SuperDuper for my boss and did a couple backups for her (never had to restore), and it seems like a wonderful piece of software.

Re:rsync, bash script, calendar event

[iangoldby]

Here's my script. This is an amalgamation of several ideas that I easily found by searching the web. It keeps the last three copies, using links to avoid copying or storing twice any file that hasn't changed.

#!/bin/sh
 
# To use Apple's rsync switch commented lines below
# To use rsyncx:
# RSYNC=/usr/local/bin/rsync --eahfs --showtogo
# To use built-in rsync (OS X 10.4 and later):
RSYNC="/usr/bin/rsync -E -v"
 
DEST=/Volumes/Backups
 
# Function for toggling Spotlight indexing
spotlight_switch()
{
/usr/bin/mdutil -i $1 /
# /usr/bin/mdutil -i $1 /Volumes/Backups
}
 
# sudo runs the backup as root
# --eahfs enables HFS+ mode
# -a turns on archive mode (recursive copy + retain attributes)
# -x don't cross device boundaries (ignore mounted volumes)
# -S handle sparse files efficiently
# --showtogo shows the number of files left to process
# --delete deletes any files that have been deleted locally
# $* expands to any extra command line options you may give
 
# make sure we're running as root
# id options are effective (u)ser ID
if (( `id -u` != 0 )); then
{ echo "Sorry, must be root. Exiting..."; exit; }
fi;
 
! test -d $DEST && echo "Please mount the backup drive!" && exit
spotlight_switch off
 
rm -rf $DEST/backup.2
mv $DEST/backup.1 $DEST/backup.2
mv $DEST/backup $DEST/backup.1
 
$RSYNC -a -x -S --delete --link-dest=../backup.1 \
    --exclude-from backup_excludes.txt $* / /Volumes/Backups/backup
 
# make the backup bootable - comment this out if needed
 
bless -folder $DEST/backup/System/Library/CoreServices
 
spotli ght_switch on

My excludes file:

/tmp/*
/Network/*
/cores/*
*/.Trash
/afs/*
/a utomount/*
/private/tmp/*
/private/var/run/*
/p rivate/var/spool/postfix/*
/private/var/vm/*
/Pr evious Systems.localized
.Spotlight-*/
/Users/*/Library /Caches

The only 'issue' is that I don't seem to be able to boot from the backup, but this may be no bad thing, given that a backup is not supposed to be a mirror, nor a mirror a backup.

Any suggestions (or flames as to why my backup strategy will fail catastrophically) welcomed!

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Re:rsync, bash script, calendar event

[kidordinn]

I've used SuperDuper! for the past two years and I'm very happy with it. SuperDuper! is truly a no-brainer: it checks and fixes file permissions and makes the backup disk bootable. That last function saved me when my iMac internal drive drive died. I lost only a few hours of work and I was able to run my iMac on the backup drive until Apple shipped me a replacement unit. Then it was even very easy to copy all my OS and data back to the new internal drive. SuperDuper! is the best way to protect your work and there's no scripts to write or test. I moved away from the Dark Side to have an easier and trouble-free life. I found it with Apple and these small and inexpensive utilities like SuperDuper!.

Re:rsync, bash script, calendar event

[Burz]

If his system is 2 yrs old, it could be Panther. That means using rsyncX instead of rsync; it's what I use. If you want snapshot-like backups from rsync, then use rsnapshot (it uses rsync, so on a pre-10.4 system you'll need to replace rsync with the rsyncX version).

If Leopard is on the horizon, then just use the Timewarp(?) snapshot tool built into the OS.

If you want a full image backup done efficiently, then CCC (Carbon Copy Cloner) is the free GUI tool of choice.

Other great options: DAR, rdiff-backup, Unison, and a tar variant called 'xtar'.

These ALL handle resource forks in their current versions. Of the above, rsync and rsnapshot create full-use backups (folders you can browse), CCC creates a volume you can mount or even boot, and the rest create some type of archive file. You may need Darwin Ports or Fink to easily install some, like rdiff-backup.

IMO the above are the best-of-the-best free tools, and are very competitive with commercial stuff (and I wouldn't buy any at this point with Apple adding robust GUI backup to the OS).

Re:rsync, bash script, calendar event

[sribe]

On OS X, rsync -E will copy resource forks and extended attributes. Works fine for backup.

If you don't mind resetting creation and modification times of every file (not just changed ones) on the backup every time you backup.

rdiff-backup creates and maintains a copy of not only the current data but also keeps reverse diffs so you can recover old versions too.

It's extremely fragile. Any interruption in any backup and it will leave things in a state where manual cleanup and starting the backup over from scratch is required.

Retrospect will compress the data to save drive space, and it allows you to restore via a date of your choice.

It works great when it works. But it also has a nasty tendency to corrupt its catalog files, forcing you to run a "repair" operation on you backups. For disk-based backups this is not too bad since it just takes time; for tape you get to feed in all the tapes in the set so it can read them. This bug has persisted across at least 3 paid upgrades now. Not everybody experiences it, and I don't know what conditions trigger it, but I've seen it at multiple sites with different setups.

As for SuperDuper, I've heard only good things about it. Seems to be a very solid little product for individual backup. I haven't tried it because I need network backup for multiple machines. (I'm so frustrated I'm about 90% of the way to deciding to write my own!)