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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?"
it's unix. except that cron isn't useful on a system that sleeps, and launchd is badly broken in several painful ways. anacron is supposed to be good, but i haven't looked into it.
I use RsyncX (http://archive.macosxlabs.org/rsyncx/rsyncx.html) on the OSX server (10.3) in a lab I do some work in. It works well, and you can just set up cron jobs. Last I checked, the Rsync that comes with OSX wouldn't handle resource forks, which is why a third-party app is necessary. This may be fixed in newer versions of OSX, but since the lab isn't upgrading until 10.5 is released I have no experience with 10.4.
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. You can backup to another hard driver or directory, or over a network. For remote backups, it uses the rsync protocol so it only transmits changes.
It's a command-line tool, so it's not very OSX'y, but it works very, very well. I use it to back up all of my machines, including some remote servers. I do it all with cron jobs, and all over network links, because that way I can just ignore it, but you can also run it manually if you prefer.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
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%
I'd rather not use a backup solution "for Mac OS X". Instead, I'd use a solution that works on multiple platforms. The main argument for this is that I can still use the solution and access my old backups when I decide to switch platforms (and, consequently, that the backup solution isn't an impediment to switching). I also have the feeling that if software is used and maintained on multiple platforms, there is a lesser chance of it just being end-of-lifed one day than if the software is just for one platform - especially considering that the platform might also change radically (like Mac OS -> Mac OS X) or disappear. All in all, using cross-platform solutions gives me a greater sence of freedom and security.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
http://www.emcinsignia.com/
We use it to back up our web and database servers. The high end products might be over kill but the Express version might do you right. Retrospect will compress the data to save drive space, and it allows you to restore via a date of your choice. Lots of scheduling and etc options. Works like a champ.
Although it is on the expensive end of the backup software scale, Synchronize Pro X is extremely versatile and has saved my bacon through a series of drive failures (that resulted in Apple replacing my PowerBook). I currently have it running 4 different scheduled backups on my system and have another backup set up that activates when I attach a certain thumb drive: it syncs a selected group of folders to the thumb drive and then unmounts the drive automatically. Plug, sync, unplug--very cool.
I use rsnapshot. It's written in Perl, and uses rsync, so it should work on Mac OS X as well as it does on my Linux box. It's pretty configurable, and rotates backups hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, etc. It uses filesystem hardlinks to do incremental backups.
Gan Family Homepage
I don't do nightly backups or anything, but I backup on my own using CCC from Bombich Software. It gives fully bootable backups (at least on PPC) and works in Rosetta. Just a reminder, PPC Macs can only boot off of firewire drives. This might not be exactly what you're looking for, but it suits my needs and the needs of most people I know who need backups.
I don't know about right now, but once Leopard comes out, I guess it would be Time Machine. 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.
I demand the Cone of Silence!
I just got a drive the same size as my internal hdd, and setup a scheduled clone of my drive, not as elegant, but if my drive dies, I just swap the new one in, and its like it never even died.
Amanda is a great Unic backup tool. It should work for OSX as well.
Backup on Mac is not as easy as one would think...
t e-of-backup-and-cloning-tools-under-mac-os-x/k up-software-harmful/
e .html
http://blog.plasticsfuture.org/2006/03/05/the-sta
http://blog.plasticsfuture.org/2006/04/23/mac-bac
Maybe TimeMachine will offer an interesting solution...
http://www.apple.com/se/macosx/leopard/timemachin
)9TSS
As many have pointed out, standard Unix backup tools aren't good on OSX.
Surprisingly, many OSX backup tools aren't either. There's an extensive comparison of many different backup programs for OSX and it has lists of exactly what the programs will backup/restore and whether or not those things tend to be important.
i use file vault on my work computer and used to have a crontab something like this for Documents and Library: /usr/bin/rsync -av ~/Documents serverUserName@serverName:/share/serverUserName/Do cuments/backupDir
i already had generated ssh keys and this worked well. i'd have it run three times a day.
however, i began to get thinking why encrypt my local home directory only to put it on the server unencrypted. so i've switched over to using scp to copy my entire file vault disk image once a week. i have gigabit enet from my computer and back to the server, so even a 15 gb image doesn't take too long.
While this is mostly for desktops and is very inflexible (only full copy or 1 folder), Lacie's SilverKeeper does incremental backups and is free.
Come on - that's just mean. I might've modded funny but somebody might actually try it.
I used the Backup application from dotMac faithfully for over a year. Ran well every night, backing up my system. Then, my computers were stolen. No problem, they were insured and I had a backup. These things happen. I got my new Macintosh and went to Backup.app to restore. Selected everything and hit restore.
Backup crashed.
Tried again. Crashed again.
Backup won't restore more than one or two files at a time without crashing. It seems to be a memory leak, as it dies during a memory allocation routine. Granted, I had a lot of files and a lot of incrementals. But this is the JOB OF BACKUP! To be able to RESTORE my FILES! The files are there, I can see them (each backup file has a disk image inside it which you can mount manually). I just can't get at them systematically.
So, I contacted Tech Support. Got something like "wow, that's strange", sent my logs and such. It's been two weeks and I've heard nothing. My followup emails go into the bit-bucket.
By now, it would have been easier for me to have spent the last four nights manually mounting disk images and copying files over by hand.
Needless to say, I'm going with Retrospect as soon as I have something to backup again. Cancelling my dotMac account too.
I use ChronoSync.
I'm happy to fiddle and tweak and produce home-brew solutions to many things, but not as the sole backup: The point of a backup program is to ensure that you have backed up exactly what you think you have backed up. ChonoSync provides a reliable and flexible back-up system. It is commercial ($30) -- which you may not like -- but they offer free updates to a reasonably priced product, and have been around for a while. Their customer service is also excellent: they provided a less restrictive demo for me to try, and provided a lost serial number in less than 24 hours. I have no affiliation; just a satisfied customer.
I back up my desktop, my PB, the wife's PB, my Dell, and my Linux server to an extra hard drive in my Desktop. Always been able to restore files that I've needed, and I've had to do one bare metal restore of my PB. Did a barebones install of 10.4.x on it, added the Retro client, clicked the mouse a few times...and came back to MY perfectly functioning PowerBook. A lot of people here will sneer at a commercial solution, but that restore paid for the software in my time and aggravation not spent.
I'm no expert, but I can point you to a couple of interesting web pages by people who do seem to know a lot of the details:
- Mac Backup Software Harmful and the earlier The State of Backup and Cloning Tools under Mac OS X at plasticsfuture
- MacOS X Backups at Seth's Unix Tips
In short, there are lots of different backup and cloning tools, from the Unix cp, ditto, and rsync commands up to the free Carbon Copy Cloner, cheap SuperDuper!, and expensive Retrospect. And very few of them preserve everything. HFS+ carries a lot of baggage from the old Mac OS, and adds a lot more stuff from Unix: there are resource forks, HFS+ extended attributes, BSD flags such as creation date and owner/group permissions, ACLs, symbolic links, aliases, and lots more -- and almost none of the options can preserve all of those.You also need to think about what your backups are for and how much time and money you're prepared to expend: for some, burning a few personal files to CDR every few months will suffice, whereas for others an external HD holding a complete clone is the thing, and power users may need daily or weekly incremental backups with the ability to retrieve any file going back years.
Personally speaking, I'm in the middle category, with a large external Firewire HD holding a clone of each of my drives, which I redo every month or so. (Having it bootable is also a good idea, and has saved my bacon at least once!) I've mostly been using Carbon Copy Cloner, which has given good results, but I've recently switched to SuperDuper! which is cheap and seems to preserve absolutely everything. But don't take my word for it: read the linked pages, work out your needs, and make up your own mind.
But DO think about it! Disaster WILL strike in some form or other; disks DO fail (as I know to my cost), and you need to plan for it. It's not a question of how much time or money you can afford to spend; it's a question of how much data you can afford to lose!
Ceterum censeo subscriptionem esse delendam.
backs up your files and gives you that freshly plundered feeling in the morning
arRsync
I use SuperDuper! to make a clone of my boot partition on a FW drive. "Smart Update" is fast and if something goes bad, I can reboot on the external drive and work immediately, then take the time to fix it later. For important files, I use unison to a remote server via ssh, I prefer it over Rsync. Chronosync is nice to make automatic backups to external drives.
I don't see how Apple's Time Machine could make Super Duper! obsolete, at least for me. What if I can't boot anymore and needs to work now?
you can set it to back up over the network or to another drive, you can specify manual or automatic, and you can schedule different backups at different times. it's easy and quick.
For external drives, there is plenty of software around. iBackup is what I have installed and it does what you want.
.Mac
What I'm looking for and haven't found yet is something that'll do backups over the network, and is not
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Since I didn't found myself a simple, robust, free solution I wrote a script that uses rsync and a gentoo server to backup my /Users folder. (I don't backup the other stuff, if its necessarry I reinstall everything (besides thats a good way to update your system).)h tml.
You can find it here if you are interessted: http://stud4.tuwien.ac.at/~e0325716/apple_backup.
Greetings, Astifter
I'm in a similar situation. I'm trying to help a fellow graduate student who recently accepted a postion at a univeristy set up his new office. He's decided that he wants to switch to all mac's and is looking for a way to keep his laptop and desktop in sync. I mentioned dotmac for bookmarks, addresses, mail, etc. but he's also looking for something that'll sync the files in his home directory as well. Basically he wants to use his desktop at work, press a button and have it sync everything to his laptop when he leaves, and then sync any of the work he did on the laptop back to the desktop when he gets back to the office. I've been looking through what I could find, but nothing I've found seems to be quite what he's looking for. Does anyone know of any way he could do this easily with existing software?
Bureaucracy expands to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.-Oscar Wilde
As mentioned in another article, shell scripts are usually the best. I'll look at Time Machine when it comes out, but the very fact that it's OS X-specific would relegate it to a curiosity for me.
OS X provides "rsync," which is one of the best tools for the job, and it works on most (all?) Unix-based platforms as well as Windows (using Cygwin). With rsync, you should definitely look into the following options:
--exclude (exclude file name patterns from being backed up. You don't really nead your web cache or other temporary files backed up)
--backup and --backup-dir=dirname Allows rsync to do incremental backups. Use a different "dirname" every day, like "Volumes/USB Drive/Incremental/2006/12/16" (for those files that were modified on 16-Dec-2006). This way, you can have backups of works in progress... I can't tell you how many times these incrementals came in handy! You should also have a periodic process prune the incrementals, as they start to add up.
The nice thing is that rsync can work over a network, which means that you can have it transfer your data to a separate machine. Thus, it's possible to have off-site backup in case of disaster.
As far as other utilities are concerned, they probably work, and might be more suitable for you, since "rsync" is definitely command-line oriented (and scriptable).
Good luck, and here's an "atta boy!" for even thinking about backup solutions... most people don't until it's too late!
"May I have ten thousand marbles, please?"
I always use Deja Vu and always keep returning to it: http://propagandaprod.com/
It uses psync (like rsync but with resource forks etc.) and is generally brilliant. I simply create an incremental duplicate of my entire hard drive to an equally sized other hard drive every day at 6 PM.
Silverkeeper works great - I have it set up for most of the computers I support a work that don't use University network backups, and it's totally automated and will keep multiple copies on the external hard drive. A good review of it is on MacOSX Hints - http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20040 421082847552
from EconTechnologies is my choice. It's easy to use, supports archiving, and unattended operation. That's pretty much all I need. I back up my home folder with all my shtuff, and /usr/local where I have data and config files. Everything else in my world is downloadable, configurable, or forgotten. If I lose my hard drive once a year, I'll spend less time rebuilding then I would searching for and configuring a more advanced backup package.
I've been using time navigator for about 6 months now, very good enterprise backup and it really maximized the amount of tape and disk storage i have. my main complaint is there is no "bare metal" restore for osx, which would be nice for disaster recovery
It has been best at preserving meta data. Here's my FAQ on backing up Mac OS X:
http://www.macmaps.com/backup.html
SilverKeeper (a free-as-in-beer download from LaCie) is actually more flexible than you might think. If you look into the advanced options, you'll notice that you can set exclusions (such as ~/Library/Caches when you back up your home directory, or other individual files/folders). It's more of a file synchronization utility than a back-up solution, but it can be scheduled to run automatically, and it's much friendlier than, say, rsync.
find -d /Users/me | cpio -dpl mybackup
This makes a zero space snapshop of me. preserves everything except permissions. This is not a backup it's a snapshot. do the backup with rsync. then take a snapshot.
I sometimes use rdiffbackup too
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
For business and large organization use, a large government agency I used to work for first tried Retrospect. The whatever-it-is industrial strength version. We didn't have a very easy time of things, mostly minor technical issues that constantly plagued us, not generally with restoring, usually just with backups timing out, taking forever, jamming, etc.
We were finally given the go-ahead to try something new, and since our backup guy had been checking out Tivoli Storage Manager and really like it, we gave that a shot. I don't think I've ever had a smoother backup solution that worked for both our 800 Macs and our 900 PCs.
I've used NetBackup, Tivoli, and Retrospect, though I've never used NetBackup for Macs (we do at my current employer, but I've never touched it).
There's probably plenty of other good commercial backup solutions, but I have to admit that I was impressed. Things may have changed, since that was back in the 10.2 days, but who knows.
This is not the signature you are looking for...
Boot from an alternate volume (like a Tiger install DVD -- after you select the language, there's a "utilities" menu or something where you can run terminal and disk utility), and use "asr -source $SOURCEVOL -target $TARGETVOL -erase" where $SOURCEVOL is your boot drive and $TARGETVOL is a sparse diskimage on a Firewire or USB disk.
It's fast, it's a pure copy, and it doesn't modify the access times of files on $SOURCEVOL. Make sure you're booted from a different volume and you use the "-erase" flag, though, or it can't unmount $SOURCEVOL and does a file-level copy instead. It still works, but it's a lot slower (and I'm not sure if it's modifying last-access times or not).
Technically, you can do the same thing with Disk Utility, I think, but I've been using asr.
`man asr` for the gory details.
The only backups that do any good are the ones that you actually make. I've tried various things that require doing by hand, going back to mounting 9 track tapes on PDP-11 tape drives in the seventies. I've made floppy, CD-ROM and DVD-RW backups on an intermittent basis. In general, when the time came for disaster recovery, the backups were too old to do any good. Unless you are far more conscientious than I am, completely automatic is the way to go.
I use Retrospect 6.1 to run nightly incremental backups of four Macs to two separate Linux machines on alternate nights (Raid 1 on the cheap, I guess). I do have to check every week or two to be sure that Retrospect hasn't wedged. The user interface is way too complicated, but I've come to terms with it over the last six or seven years. I used to have full backups scheduled, but they take quite a long time and frequently either wedged or took so long that they interferred with the other backups. I don't have super regular "off-site" backup, but my house hasn't burned down yet. (We all use laptops as our main computers, so I do keep an external drive at our vacation home and run backups when we take our laptops out there. )
I've not only recovered indivudual files accidentally deleted or damaged but recovered from three complete drive meltdowns with no loss of work in two cases and only a few hours worth in the third, so I consider it worth the time and money.
In summary, if you don't actually do the backups, you're toast. If your work or your time is worth money, you can't afford not to do backups, and you shouldn't hesitate to spend some money. And finally, if you haven't done a restore from your backups, it is practically guaranteed that they don't work.
Backuplist+, available at the usual search engines in your neighborhood :-), is a pretty nice gui frontend to several backup options. You can select Finder-like copy/backup, rsync, ditto, and cpio IIRC. It's free/donationware, so I'd recommend at least reading thru the documentation to see if it'll do all you need.
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
I used Impression for over a year and really liked it. I used it because it did verification of the data written and this feature was very important to me. Unfortunately, Impression became an orphan and I switched to SuperDuper.
Fortunately, Impression has a new parent and is no longer an orphan. You can buy it at http://www.ineedyoursoftware.com/ .
I am sticking with SuperDuper for now as it extremely easy to use.
Both programs back up to standard Mac files so retrieval is not dependent upon any special software.
Dave Barnes 9 breweries within walking distance of my house
I like Amanda because it's completely automated once you set it up... you don't have to keep track of whether you're doing full or incremental dumps. But there's all kinds of alternatives, and any UNIX backup software that can be configured to use hfstar or hfspax to catch the extra HFS+ attributes can accomodate a Mac as well.
retrospect is no longer a viable option for mac. many people have moved to tolisgroup bru (server or "le" for local backups). the unix toolset has been around for many years and is used in many mission critical environments. the mac osx gui is the result of a formal request from nasa for a mac version. :)
http://www.tolisgroup.com/press/2006/09.25.html
we have bru server deployed at many locations. it does disk-to-disk-to-tape backups easily (d2d2t). incrementals are individual stage files (unlike retrospect that keeps jamming incrementals into the same growing file that inevetibly corrupts/implodes).
the gui is maturing...and tolisgroup is the kind of company that follows the old unix rule...each tool does one task and does it well. bru does backups well...and restores well. don't expect any marketing hype from them, just solid, dependable backups AND restores.
don montalvo, nyc
curmudgeon at large
This one is the best. Easiest to use. Well designed. It just gets it done.
l
http://mac.softpedia.com/get/Security/BRU-LE.shtm
I had a very similar experience. After years of faithfully backing up to .Mac, I actually needed to recover my data and Backup ran for hours without accomplishing anything. No error message, but no recovered files either. After three attempts of 8 or more hours each, I finally went to the Genius Bar for help.
The Apple Genius ("That's only my job title, and not an actual description.") blamed the problem on my numerous incrementals. He said that Backup needs full backups every so often to work reliably. He suggested weekly. Gee, it would have been nice to roll that into the program.
HERE'S THE GOOD PART:
The files created by Backup are actually bundles, which means you can 'cd' into them from the command line. The directory structure within the bundles mirrors the directory being backed up, though it is a sparse tree. A given incremental backup only contains the files that were changed. It didn't take much work to whip up a Python program to copy files out of each bundle, starting with the earliest. If I could perform the recovery with well under an hour of coding and no prior experience, why couldn't Apple do it with years of development time?
Of course, my less-frequent full backup made with rsync worked flawlessly.
For my money Déjà Vu has done it quick dirty and simple. I've seen this run for 3 years not be touched and have no issues. Not really a enterprise solution but great for home & professional users who don't want to shell script things.
-ZuCom
I'll second the motion here for 'Carbon Copy Cloner' (not 'Carbon Cloner Copy' or whatever it was mistakenly called above) by another poster.
Sure, there are quite a few different tools and systems and what-not with which one can easily make backups of your Mac; however, two things I like most about Carbon Copy Cloner are:
1.) that it can make a fully bootable disk *and*
2.) it actually does what its name implies: it copies your data onto another disk.
These handy features can be quite a relief in the event of Something Very Bad(tm) as you can easily get going again from your Carbon Copied disk; however, with other systems there may be a lot of other steps or gyrations (like tar -czpf your_backup_file.tgz) you have to go through to get back in action.
Aside from this, if you're really concerned about data loss, in addition to regular proper backups, the next must-have insurance policy (for pennies these days) is a second drive so you can create a RAID-1 array. Not always possible (i.e. laptops), sure, but if you can do it, it can be a HUGE timesaver to help you avoid having to resort to your backups.
I have a rsync running in the cron. Works fantastically!
/Users/user/ /Volumes/Brain/Backup/ --exclude "*.cache" --exclude "Cache/" --exclude "Logs/" --exclude "Parallels/" --exclude "Temporary\ Folder/" --exclude "Acrobat\ User\ Data/" --exclude ".Trash/" --delete >/BackupLog/rsyncBackup.log
rsync -a -v
As you can see above, I exclude some stuff, including the Parallels stuff (would take way to long to copy over, anything in the trash, and a couple of other things). So far as I can tell, everything copies fine, and is a complete duplicate, including resource forks, etc. I do not copy over applications, or other items outside of the ~ folder, though. Seems a waste of time/space, being you can just download / re-install the apps if necessary.
The settings above will copy everything from the user directory (library, documents, etc.) to my backup HD (Brain, in this case) in "archive" mode, which copies pretty much all the attributes of a file.
For those who aren't familiar with rsync, the --delete option deletes items on the backup that were deleted in the original. If you want to have the poor-mans versioning, you can remove that switch.
since osx was released, retrospect has fallen behind more and more. aside from the fact the mac application is a cheezy port of an ok os9 backup application, the fundamental design is wrong...for both os9 and osx. retrospect layers incrementals onto the full backup file. if this one full/incremental file gets corrupt, you lose everything. osx saavy backup applications (like atempo, bru and netbackup) have built in disk-to-disk-to-tape functionality and incrementals are stored as separate files. retrospect (like quarkxpress and to a certain extent eudora) are cash cows. marketing hype sells retrospect - but common sense turns people away to better designed applications. i know plenty of mac sysadmins (myself included) who have had failed restored (and/or failed backups) with retrospect. retrospect is on a downward spiral, better bail now (or move to the windows version that's at 7.5.x now). don't wait until you get caught with your pants down. move away from retrospect if your livelyhood depends on data protection - or if your clients depend on you. don
Can't you just set up the folders that you want to sync with .Mac and store the files over there? I guess if you have gigs and gigs, you probably aren't backing that up every month anyway. Better to burn all that pr0n...rather, legally purchased iPr0n...rather, legally purchased iTunes content and your family photos and movies onto DVDs for your archives. Really depends what you are backing up, how much of it there is, how frequently and quickly you need to access it, and if you care who sees it.
I use plain rsync from the std installation, without the -E option. On the Xserve at work I only backup ASCII text files, so it doesn't matter. However, even on my home Macs it looks like all types of files I tried, backed up with rsync sans resource fork, can be recovered. These include Photoshop, AppleWorks, Office, etc.
Am I being over-confident?
Using the -E option with "Apple's" rsync is a bit of a pain because the resource fork dates change all the time even if the file is not accessed.
SuperDuper is nice. Personally, I use Synk Backup from decimus. There's also Retrospect for professional backup, and of course, Mac OS X 10.5 will include its own Backup functionality called Time Machine.
Avoid Apple's current Backkup app, as it sucks.
psyncx is a graphical front end to psync and works quite well.
at my last job, i backed up a machine using retrospect and an exabyte loader and it was weeks of headaches. nothing went right at all.
psyncx doesn't have the complex options of something like retrospect, but it's perfect for the user of a single machine who wants a basic backup - selected folders or drives copied to another location - done on a schedule of manually, using inexpensive shareware software.
I don't know your needs, but if you are serious about backup and aren't looking for a simple personal backup solution, this can be what you're looking for. Please research performance and problema, because I'm not using it myself and can't share with you any insights.
http://www.tolisgroup.com/
Use Bacula. Support for HFS+ resource forks, and many other useful features one comes to love about backup software (when one must use it). http://www.bacula.org/
SIG: HUP
Retrospect - should do everything you're asking of it.
Yeah, shell scripts are good, but I recommend going to lacie.com and downloading their one step backup software for OS/X -- which is freeware. and... it retains your file permissions to boot. It doesn't offer compression, or advanced features, just copies to any removable or non-removable device. I fyou have an external FW you will love it. enjoy!
I use Phew. It's basically a GUI on top of rsync. Very simple and work's nicely if you're not looking for much.
I have a "system" for backups which includes:
:)
1. Nightly rsync of my iMac and powerbook to a hard disk connected via firewire to my iMac (runs from cron)
2. Plans to install rsnapshot to shorten the window of exposure from 1 day to 1 hour. Used to use this on Linux with great success, fully expect that this will work well on OS X.
3. I bought 2 firewire/USB drive enclosures, and populated them with PIDE drives. I keep one, and gave my sister one. The enclosures are identical and the drives are partitioned with one Windows partition and one OS X partition. When I see my sister (a few times/year) we trade enclosures. I rsync my home movies/pictures/music to the OS X partition, and she uses the "freeware" SyncBack to back up her data
The only down side to this approach is that I'm limited in backup size to ~140GB unless I'm willing to pony up for a pair of SERIOUS TB sized drives. In general it's not a big deal - I suppose I could end up losing my home movies of my kids - that's what really eats up disk space. Guess I need to archive my tapes to the safe deposit box.
The idea that I'll be able to easily recover my data if my house burns down brings me great comfort. The cost is fairly minimal and the level of effort is pretty low, too.
But Herr Heisenberg, how does the electron know when I'm looking?
Without doubt, Retrospect 5.0.x, 5,1.x, 6.0.x and 6.1.x have all been Carbon apps. Apple promised Dantz that OS X would ship sooner then it did, so Dantz made the early decision to move faster with Carbon then it could have moved with Cocoa. Unsurprisingly, OS X slipped, but the chance was lost and they were stuck with LaunchCFMApp.
"retrospect layers incrementals onto the full backup file" has limited meaning (as tape backups are not really files), but why is needing two different files/tapes inherently better? If the incremental bru file gets corrupted, you don't have your most recent version. If the full backup file gets corrupted, you can't do a full restore.
Retrospect's matching technology allows the maintaining of multiple Backup Sets, each capable of a full or partial restore, using Snapshots for time selection. Redundancy is good, and Retrospect allows for it.
The patents that Dantz received (now owned by EMC) keep the program unique, and no other backup software has the feature set that Retrospect does.
But alas, Retrospect for Mac OS does indeed seemed doomed. EMCInsignia will have no booth at Macworld in January 2007, and I hold out little hope that we'll ever see a rewritten version of the program to provide features that have been lacking since 5.0.201 first shipped.
> Without doubt, Retrospect 5.0.x, 5,1.x, 6.0.x and 6.1.x have > all been Carbon apps. Apple promised Dantz that OS X would ship > sooner then it did, so Dantz made the early decision to move > faster with Carbon then it could have moved with Cocoa. > Unsurprisingly, OS X slipped, but the chance was lost and they > were stuck with LaunchCFMApp. retrospect's problems go well beyond what programming language is used to port over from os9. it's a single threaded application that needs to be launched on the local computer to run. no way to monitor backups/restores/logs remotely. dantz needed to rewrite retrospect - instead they tried to take the easy way out. now retrospect's failure rate on restores and the growing number of issues and the lack of feature parity between pc/mac is beyond hope. > "retrospect layers incrementals onto the full backup file" has > limited meaning (as tape backups are not really files), but why > is needing two different files/tapes inherently better? If the > incremental bru file gets corrupted, you don't have your most > recent version. If the full backup file gets corrupted, you can't > do a full restore. that's what multiple "sets" are for. incase one set goes bad, you have another set to go to. separate incremental backup files are more portable and easier to protect than one huge archive spanning multiple disks/tapes. > Retrospect's matching technology allows the maintaining of > multiple Backup Sets, each capable of a full or partial restore, > using Snapshots for time selection. Redundancy is good, and > Retrospect allows for it. what backup system doesn't allow multiple backup sets? if a client or user asks for a restore, they tell us where the file was and what day they want the restore done from. this is standard practice in most companies. retrospect's searching/matching function doesn't compensate for its many shortcomings. > The patents that Dantz received (now owned by EMC) keep the > program unique, and no other backup software has the feature > set that Retrospect does. my understanding is that emc bought dantz for their open-file technology (windows side). this way emc can save the per-license fee charged by the company they were paying royalties to (legato?) for using their open-file technology. in buying dantz, they now can stop paying the license fee - not that they would pass the savings to customers. emc saves money, customers don't save a dime, and retrospect for mac goes down. > But alas, Retrospect for Mac OS does indeed seemed doomed. > EMCInsignia will have no booth at Macworld in January 2007, > and I hold out little hope that we'll ever see a rewritten > version of the program to provide features that have been > lacking since 5.0.201 first shipped. i think most people know this. i've pushed bru to my clients as a server/client solution. it works great. it's a true unix application and the gui exists for osx thanks to nasa who formerly requested it. the tolisgroup developers are sharp and they don't make changes for the sake of making changes or to feed the marketing folks (since when has tolisgroup done heavy marketing?)...they tweak and refine, as all good unix tools are developed. bru is modular so you can run the server and console on different boxes (the third component, the agent, needs to be installed on any source computers). you can launch console remotely and totally manage backups/restores. you can be logged out and not worry about cheezy gui dialog boxes popping up - bru uses a very well proven and refined toolset that's been used heavily on the unix side for many years. that being said, the mac osx gui is maturing slowly but surely. i for one would rather hedge my bets on a modern application that has a maturing gui than an old application that's little more than a cash cow for a company that lies through it's teeth. "we're working on a new mac retrospect"...yeah, and bats fly out my ass. i have three consoles open now...one for each of three remote backup sessions at separate companies. each is doing d2d2t. no hiccups on backup. no hiccups on restore. a modern, multithreaded, modular and highly refined backup system at a reasonable cost. bru is today what retrospect was before osx. don don montalvo, nyc
> Without doubt, Retrospect 5.0.x, 5,1.x, 6.0.x and 6.1.x have
> all been Carbon apps. Apple promised Dantz that OS X would ship
> sooner then it did, so Dantz made the early decision to move
> faster with Carbon then it could have moved with Cocoa.
> Unsurprisingly, OS X slipped, but the chance was lost and they
> were stuck with LaunchCFMApp.
retrospect's problems go well beyond what programming language is used to port over from os9. it's a single threaded application that needs to be launched on the local computer to run. no way to monitor backups/restores/logs remotely. dantz needed to rewrite retrospect - instead they tried to take the easy way out. now retrospect's failure rate on restores and the growing number of issues and the lack of feature parity between pc/mac is beyond hope.
> "retrospect layers incrementals onto the full backup file" has
> limited meaning (as tape backups are not really files), but why
> is needing two different files/tapes inherently better? If the
> incremental bru file gets corrupted, you don't have your most
> recent version. If the full backup file gets corrupted, you can't
> do a full restore.
that's what multiple "sets" are for. incase one set goes bad, you have another set to go to. separate incremental backup files are more portable and easier to protect than one huge archive spanning multiple disks/tapes.
> Retrospect's matching technology allows the maintaining of
> multiple Backup Sets, each capable of a full or partial restore,
> using Snapshots for time selection. Redundancy is good, and
> Retrospect allows for it.
what backup system doesn't allow multiple backup sets? if a client or user asks for a restore, they tell us where the file was and what day they want the restore done from. this is standard practice in most companies. retrospect's searching/matching function doesn't compensate for its many shortcomings.
> The patents that Dantz received (now owned by EMC) keep the
> program unique, and no other backup software has the feature
> set that Retrospect does.
my understanding is that emc bought dantz for their open-file technology (windows side). this way emc can save the per-license fee charged by the company they were paying royalties to (legato?) for using their open-file technology. in buying dantz, they now can stop paying the license fee - not that they would pass the savings to customers. emc saves money, customers don't save a dime, and retrospect for mac goes down.
> But alas, Retrospect for Mac OS does indeed seemed doomed.
> EMCInsignia will have no booth at Macworld in January 2007,
> and I hold out little hope that we'll ever see a rewritten
> version of the program to provide features that have been
> lacking since 5.0.201 first shipped.
i think most people know this. i've pushed bru to my clients as a server/client solution. it works great. it's a true unix application and the gui exists for osx thanks to nasa who formerly requested it. the tolisgroup developers are sharp and they don't make changes for the sake of making changes or to feed the marketing folks (since when has tolisgroup done heavy marketing?)...they tweak and refine, as all good unix tools are developed.
bru is modular so you can run the server and console on different boxes (the third component, the agent, needs to be installed on any source computers). you can launch console remotely and totally manage backups/restores. you can be logged out and not worry about cheezy gui dialog boxes popping up - bru uses a very well proven and refined toolset that's been used heavily on the unix side for many years.
that being said, the mac osx gui is maturing slowly but surely. i for one would rather hedge my bets on a modern application that has a maturing gui than an old application that's little more than a cash cow for a company that lies through it's teeth. "we're working on a new mac retrospe
> dantz needed to rewrite retrospect - instead they tried to take the easy way out
Well, uh, yeah. That's what I said. But the "easy" way in 1999 was presented (by Apple) as the best way, when from a business standpoint it was important (for Dantz and for Mac users) to have Retrosect available when OS X shipped. It wasn't until 10.2 that it was even possible to completely backup/restore an OS X machine (due to an issue with how symbolic links worked in previous versions), but Dantz didn't have a crystal ball back in the 20th Century.
> retrospect's failure rate on restores
Do you have statistics on this? Or are you pulling it out of your ass?
> the growing number of issues
Actually, the "issues" have been pretty much the same all along. OS specific changes that prevented Retrospect from running (ie FileFault) were addressed, as were _some_ important features (breaking it's older Terabyte imit, Unicode support (of a sort), etc).
> what backup system doesn't allow multiple backup sets?
Ones that use a file's "backed up" tag to identify it as having been copied.
> if a client or user asks for a restore, they tell us where the file was and what day they want the restore done from.
What if they don't know? Can the backup administrator get a list of files from a specific directory? Can the backup be searched on various file attributes? Can the contents of the backup be searched without the tapes being online? (I really don't know in the case of bru; I'm just asking)
> bru uses a very well proven and refined toolset that's been used heavily on the unix side for many years.
I'm sure it's robust, and I'm sure I'll be using it soon enough. But it will be difficult to discard those features unique to Retrospect, including Macintosh stuff like recognition of Finder labels and type/creator codes. Will bru match existing files in an archive (I haven't used the program, so I don't know the actual nomenclature) so that identical files that live in multiple locations (or on multiple machines) are only copied once?
> that being said, the mac osx gui is maturing slowly but surely. i for
> one would rather hedge my bets on a modern application that has a maturing
> gui than an old application that's little more than a cash cow for a
> company that lies through it's teeth. "we're working on a new mac
> retrospect"...yeah, and bats fly out my ass.
I don't think Retrospect for Macintosh has been a cash cow since 2002. Slow Windows sale saw a restructuring of Dantz in 2003, but I'd guess that Mac sales haven't been robust for quite a while. I also don't think you're hedging your bet; you're betting the farm.
I haven't heard any public pronouncements of a pending new version since the EMC takeover; Larry Zulch posted on their mailing list in February, 2005, about them working on unifying their code, but even that was not a promise. I'm curious what EMCInsignia employee made other promises to you.
I don't intend my first-ever Slashdot post to be flame war. There will be a revision of Retrospect when Leopard comes out (as noted on their support Forum), but it will probably be the last one. Hopefully they'll improve their client software, so users who are willing to suffer with a Windows box in order to have Retrospect's feature set can do so for Macintosh clients (without Rosetta). And I'll look at bru at Expo, where I'll ask to see a demonstration of how easy it is to find and restore folders/files across multiple backup archives even if the owner of those files is a little confused about names, dates and location.
Dave
> I don't intend my first-ever Slashdot post to be flame war.
:) nothing wrong with being heavy handed (often times it's the only way to get people to wake up). what bothers me is to see someone defend use of retrospect when it's obvious an alternative needs to be considered. the sooner the better if you're responsible for protecting data.
really? could have fooled me. your post matches the tone of your 2000+ posts at the dantz/emc forum.
> There will be a revision of Retrospect when Leopard comes
> out (as noted on their support Forum), but it will probably
> be the last one. Hopefully they'll improve their client
> software, so users who are willing to suffer with a Windows
> box in order to have Retrospect's feature set can do so for
> Macintosh clients (without Rosetta). And I'll look at bru at
> Expo, where I'll ask to see a demonstration of how easy it
> is to find and restore folders/files across multiple backup
> archives even if the owner of those files is a little
> confused about names, dates and location.
>
> Dave
retrospect for mac is a dead product. anyone responsible for backups/restores is already looking at alternatives. there are some feature differences between retrospect and the alternatives (like bru/atempo/netbackup/etc.) but mac-centric desires like looking for type/creator or labled files is not something any of my clients worry about.
it all boils down to your clients' needs and what they're willing to accept in terms of backups. our clients require rotating tape sets to iron mountain and unannounced restore tests. search the retrospect forum and you'll find lots of posts from people complaining about corrupt archives/catalogs and failed restores. on the other hand, search the bru forum (their mailing list has more traffic, fwiw), and you'll find complaints about features but not about failed restores.
a backup system is only as good as it's ability to restore when there's a disaster. bru has proven itself across many 'nix platforms over the years - thanks to nasa, tolisgroup released a mac version. the gui has a way to go before it catches up to the capabilities of its unix toolset.
i'm not sure about searches...as i stated, in most corporate environments, a restore request is submitted where the user is responsible for supplying:
1. location of file/folder needed
2. name of file/folder needed
3. date for file/folder restore
you can search snapshots in bru. i don't think there's a search feature. remember, bru gui is relatively new so the gui only takes advantage of a small percentage of the unix toolset's capabilities. i don't need to search for type/creator or label - but some people might. maybe bru isn't the solution for them.
if you're looking forward, retrospect for mac is no longer a viable choice. out of the other choices, bru is the one with the strongest toolset. those of us who've migrated mac clients over to bru server can rest soundly knowing backups/restores are taken care of. those who haven't migrated away from retrospect can go with the windows server and hope the mac client continues to be developed - or plan on an alternative. dollar for dollar and based on history, reputation and capability, bru is the choice for me and many of my clients.
don
> you can search snapshots in bru.
i meant to say you can "browse" snapshots in bru.