popum Posted August 26, 2007 Share #1 Â Posted August 26, 2007 Advertisement (gone after registration) As an add-on to Sean question about hard drives, I have a question about preferences in backup software. I'm on a Mac but I suspect PC users would also like to hear the thoughts of forum members. Â Mike Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advertisement Posted August 26, 2007 Posted August 26, 2007 Hi popum, Take a look here Calling all techies: Backup software question. I'm sure you'll find what you were looking for!
spylaw4 Posted August 26, 2007 Share #2 Â Posted August 26, 2007 Well, if you're a dotmac member (much better value now you get 10Gb storage) why not use Backup. It's flexible programmable and will backup to external drives/CD/DVD. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guy_mancuso Posted August 26, 2007 Share #3 Â Posted August 26, 2007 .mac is good for keychains, bookmarks and such and i do use that all the time between 2 computers, so it is really good for syncing data between them. Backup is a nice program and you can select folders ,files and such and off load that somewhere like a external. The best program I have found and apple uses it also is Syncronize Pro which besides being a good back up software , it will also let's me make a exact bootable backup on another internal drive. So if the crap hit's the fan i can simply reload the whole system back again, so I keep one internal drive specifically for that alone, just pure bootable backup. It will also do folders , user folders and files also. Now for pure image files i have several externals. What I do as soon as a download raw images is back them up to a specific external drive that ONLY has raw images, so everything I shoot goes there immediately on download. Than i work from my desktop folder of raw images than raw process and all my final Tif's from that get backed up to a specific Final images drive only, than i also make a backup DVD along with clients DVD and store them outside of my office. So my trick is having specific drives be it internal or external handle certain functions , so if i ever go down which has happened than i will never be left with nothing. Than i even have a internal drive that hold all downloads of software , actions documents and such . Basically a junk file cabinet Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
brucek Posted August 26, 2007 Share #4  Posted August 26, 2007 As an add-on to Sean question about hard drives, I have a question about preferences in backup software. I'm on a Mac but I suspect PC users would also like to hear the thoughts of forum members. Mike  Mike:  I own Macs and use a shareware program called SuperDuper to backup my Mac's hard drives to external Firewire drives. These are bootable backups so if the main drive fails I simply start the Mac with the Option key held down and then boot from the external Firewire drive. The program has saved my butt several times.  Bruce Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
wda Posted August 26, 2007 Share #5 Â Posted August 26, 2007 Mike, I am a PC user. When I bought a Maxtor external drive it came with Retrospect backup software which I find works well. When I bought two Iomega external drives it also came with backup software. Check to see if your drives had useful software included. Â David Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
ericperlberg Posted August 26, 2007 Share #6 Â Posted August 26, 2007 SuperDuper is excellent. The lite version is free. Â I suspect there are a few such excellent programmes. Carbon Copy Cloner is another I've heard is very effective though the universal binary is only in beta testing at the mo. The current version runs in Rosetta. Â The important issues for me in backup software are: 1) It has to be easy to understand and set up 2) it should allow me to create a daily backup schedule to automatically backup my data so I don't need to remember to do it, even if my computer is in sleep mode. 3) it should allow me to clone my startup drive to create a bootable clone so in case of a startup drive failure or un-fixable glich I can get up and running immediately. I've had this happen. Nasty. Â Other people need more sophisticated options like backing up only certain folders buried somewhere in a hierarchy of folders,scripts on what to do after the scheduled copy is made (shut down? sleep? nothing? etc). The better programmes do all this and more. Hence my requirement for understandabiity. Â Online storage (like .mac) is ok for simple needs as Guy points out but those of us who have large amounts of data to backup would find it impractical to move that much data over the internet and far too expensive. I'd fill 10gb in a few days of photography and professionals would probably fill it in one job. And then it wouldn't allow me to make a bootable clone of my hard drive. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
marknorton Posted August 26, 2007 Share #7 Â Posted August 26, 2007 Advertisement (gone after registration) Norton Ghost for me, no relation (!), does an unattended backup each night, full backup once a month, incremental each night. Â Version 10 is great, tidied up after Symantec bought the company, but not enough time for them to mess it up. No idea how it will be with Vista which I hate. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
pierovitch Posted August 27, 2007 Share #8 Â Posted August 27, 2007 LaCie silverfast is good if you Repair Privileges before use. A good idea for macs. and Syncback for PC's 2BrightSparks: File Backup and Utility Software which includes full logging, simulation and error reporting to make sure everything is working. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
dugby Posted August 27, 2007 Share #9 Â Posted August 27, 2007 Please Please Please....... if you value your data files or photos, Â do NOT use shareware or BETA versions of software to backup your files. Â Are you so willing to trust your important data to SW that has no accountability to how you data ends up being in-assessable....? Â Â What happens when that shareware that you trusted, is no longer working or supported....?? Â Â Backup is only half the issue........can you actually restore the files....? Â Â If you've never restored any backed-up files....... how sure are you that you can actually get them back.....? Â How compatable is the backup media, to migrating this to new technology...... eg very simple example.....those backups you made to floppy disk can't be read in a CDROM drive ..... Â These are important long-term decisions you need to allow for...... Â Â Will the backup version of software N+2 (in two years time) be compatible to the version you used last year....? Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
johnwolf Posted August 27, 2007 Share #10 Â Posted August 27, 2007 For my PC, I use two internal and two external SATA drives. I keep images on one internal drive. I use NovaBackup software, which runs a nightly incremental copy of my C:My Documents folder and images drive to an external SATA drive. I swap out the external drives periodically and keep one off-site. Â I chose NovaBackup because it's the only software I found that does a schedule incremental copy, rather than a backup. The copy takes more space but is more convenient. You can mark selected files for inclusion in the copy, so the nightly backup also includes my email address book, browser favorites, Lightroom database, and misc. other files. Â John Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
popum Posted August 28, 2007 Author Share #11 Â Posted August 28, 2007 Thank you all for your help. It is most appreciated. Â Mike Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.