Since I’ve started running Leopard the backup situation on my computer systems has gotten much better. It’s not just that Apple has created a slam-dunk solution in Time Machine (trust me it rocks). Or even that Time Machine is a complete backup solution (it isn’t). But that Time Machine has inspired me to get all my ducks in a row.
For starters there are two computers I use regularly: my Macbook Pro, and the household server running FreeBSD. Until I installed Time Machine, neither had a consistent (or even existent) backup strategy. In my mind, a backup strategy must handle three situations:
- accidental deletions
- hardware failure
- site disaster
Since installing Leopard, a clear backup strategy has started to evolve, it’s still not complete, but here’s a table listing I’m dealing with the three aspects of backup/recovery on my two main machines.
| Failure | Laptop Solution | Server Solution |
|---|---|---|
| accidental deletion | Time Machine | snapshot |
| hardware failure | Carbon Copy Cloner | RAID-1 |
| site disaster | ??? | ??? |
Cheap hard drives makes the first two failures easy to implement solutions for, I spent less than $350 to acquire almost a terabyte of backup disk. Clearly, I’m still looking for a good solution for off-site backups. If anyone is willing to trade bandwidth I’d be interested in using CrashPlan, but I’m open to other suggestions.
How are you handling off-site backups? Leave me a comment and let me know.
I’ve been hearing good things about Amazon’s S3 service. I was using Mozy for a while, but started having some issues with the interface when I upgraded to Leopard and dropped it. Also, I wanted it to support network drives as well, which, at the time, it didn’t.
Offsite for me is two-fold: I bought a portable harddrive that I sync with with all the music, media files (which live on an external drive connected to the Airport Express), & document folder and I carry that drive in my bag most everywhere I go. I sync those files every week. In addition, I use .Mac’s iDisk to backup all my documents folder weekly and all of my in progress files daily. I doubt I will stay on .Mac after my year is up, but for now it works to offsite my important documents.
I’ve been hearing good things about Amazon’s S3 service. I was using Mozy for a while, but started having some issues with the interface when I upgraded to Leopard and dropped it. Also, I wanted it to support network drives as well, which, at the time, it didn’t.
Offsite for me is two-fold: I bought a portable harddrive that I sync with with all the music, media files (which live on an external drive connected to the Airport Express), & document folder and I carry that drive in my bag most everywhere I go. I sync those files every week. In addition, I use .Mac’s iDisk to backup all my documents folder weekly and all of my in progress files daily. I doubt I will stay on .Mac after my year is up, but for now it works to offsite my important documents.
Miss your writing my friend… you’ve posted nothing for a while…
Off site backups. Thank you for reminding me. I used to take my CCC image backup from work home and the one from home to work…
I need to start doing that again.
BTW – I do CCC image backups (bootable) to firewire connected external drives (USB2 for the Air), and I use Time Machine to backup incrementally in between. Each external drive is many times the capacity of my machines, and so when I swap them (the ones from home and work), the backups of the now remote machines stay intact for a long time (though more and more stale).
Miss your writing my friend… you’ve posted nothing for a while…
Off site backups. Thank you for reminding me. I used to take my CCC image backup from work home and the one from home to work…
I need to start doing that again.
BTW – I do CCC image backups (bootable) to firewire connected external drives (USB2 for the Air), and I use Time Machine to backup incrementally in between. Each external drive is many times the capacity of my machines, and so when I swap them (the ones from home and work), the backups of the now remote machines stay intact for a long time (though more and more stale).