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Mike
February 27th, 2011, 04:16 AM
While I've been working on PCs since the early 1980s, I don't know enough to support Brent with his Mac.

I need to create an easy backup solution for him. He has a G5 running OS X (10.4 or 10.5, I believe).

We have an external drive that should have sufficient capacity to hold all the working files that Brent uses.

What is the best way to back up to that drive?

On my PCs, I use some scripts with XXcopy to mirror the files to my external drives. This saves all my settings and data files, so in case of a disk crash, worst case scenario is to reinstall all the programs and then restore the settings and data. (I'm not confident that an image backup would allow me to pick and choose what needs to be restored.)

Is there anything similar on the Mac?

If not, what advice can anyone give for backing up the G5 with OS X, so that all the user files (including those on the desktop and in folders on the desktop) and program settings are preserved? ...thanks!

sidney
February 27th, 2011, 06:32 AM
What is the best way to back up to that drive?

The easy Mac way is with something called Time machine that is built in to Mac OS X. Format the external disk using Disk Utility (You run DIsk Utility by using the Finder menu Go | Utilities which opens the folder containing the utilities apps, then double-clicking on Disk Utility). To format a disk use the Erase tab. Select to format it as Mac OS Extended Journaled.

The Apple support knowledge base article on Time Machine is at http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1427

Basically it works like this: You specify an external disk that will be your backup disk. The first time you use it, the Mac makes a complete backup of your primary disk, which could take a while. Thereafter, when the backup disk is plugged in, every hour the Mac runs an incremental backup, writing out anything that has changed. The backup disk contains the logical equivalent of an hourly snapshot of the entire disk. When the backup disk gets full, the oldest snapshots are deleted to make room.

In the event of a total failure of the primary disk, you can boot from the install DVD and run a full restore of the most current snapshot from the backup disk to a new primary disk.

If you want to retrieve an old version of a particular file or folder that you deleted or messed up, you run Time Machine, which puts you in an interface in which you zoom through time in the Finder until you get to what you want. You can then specify that you want that file or folder restored or copied.

fhaber
March 1st, 2011, 01:50 PM
No Time Machine on Tiger (10.4). I recommend SuperDuper!, which makes image backups which can be booted (one of the glories of the Mac OS - no copy protection). It can sparsely update that image in a couple of minutes (something like a differential+full image set). Easy to use. $30.

Others like CCC - Carbon Copy Cloner, free I believe.

Time Machine was flakey to begin with on 10.5. Make sure he's updated. It does work.

ktinkel
March 1st, 2011, 02:31 PM
What Frank said. In fact, even with Time Machine, it is a good idea to have a bit copy available.

To set it up to work automatically check out this page (http://help.bombich.com/discussions/suggestions/75-suggestion-for-automated-backups) (with advice from the CCC developer).

Mike
March 4th, 2011, 03:37 AM
Thanks, Sidney, Frank, and Kathleen. I'll double-check the OS version on Brent's computer and proceed accordingly.

I know it's not the latest point release of OS X, because he has to use Classic to run an old old old version of Quark (we just don't have the budget to upgrade it to run on the latest OS X).