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Online Backup for Macs?

Submitted by davintosh on October 10, 2007 - 9:30pm. Development & Software Hacks

What do you all use for backing up the data on your Macs? Backing up data on the home Mac is something that I haven't done. Ever. And I'm finally getting that round-tuit going.

I found an online solution (mozy.com) that looks pretty slick, and it's even free for up to 2GB of data. And they even have a Mac (10.4) version! But I'm thinking I may need more room than 2GB, and then it costs $5 a month, which is still pretty reasonable. From the sounds of it, their software takes care of scheduling the backup & all the nitty gritty details of getting it done securely. I haven't tried it yet, but it looks pretty slick. (I'll report back after using it to let you all know how well it works.)

But then I got to thinking... I moved my website over to a different hosting service (powweb.com) earlier this year, and have a huge amount of space available (300GB) with that account that I'll never, ever use. A little creative use of Fetch, Automator ought to get the files up there during the off-times, but there are some files I don't want there without some kind of encryption...

But I hate using a cobbled together system to make it work. And I know that I'm not the first person to try something like this, so I throw out the question for those that have; How'd you do it, and how well did it work? Is there some software solution out there that can do this for me?

And for the hacker types, is there a way to direct Mozy's software to back my data up to a different location?

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Disk Utility

Submitted by vieuxnez on October 10, 2007 - 10:41pm.

I use Disk Utility, back up whole volumes to a firewire drive, either as bootable partitions, or to disk images.

» Dustin

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davintosh's picture

Re: Disk Utility

Submitted by davintosh on October 11, 2007 - 12:49am.
vieuxnez wrote:
I use Disk Utility, back up whole volumes to a firewire drive, either as bootable partitions, or to disk images.

I've done that in the past as well on computers at work, but what I'm looking for is an offsite backup solution where I don't have to worry about extra hardware. Also, bonus points for any solution that my wife can negotiate.

The more I think through this, the better Mozy sounds (and no, this isn't a commercial ad for them.)

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I dump data on my old Macs to

Submitted by Unknown_K on October 11, 2007 - 2:57am.

I dump data on my old Macs to DAT tape (Mostly DDS1/2), and I use DDS 3/4 on my PCs (main machines). For archibes of the old stuff on Macs I use MO drives/disks (mostly disk images).

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eeun's picture

Mac drives are cloned to at l

Submitted by eeun on October 11, 2007 - 5:01pm.

Mac drives are cloned to at least one backup drive occasionally. PC "c" drive is ghosted and stored on DVDs...about once every couple months.

Incremental backups are made of important files to the Ubuntu server in the basement, and the mp3 collection on that server is also mirrored on my PC's hard drive.

I've considered adding a larger drive to my wife's PC, and using that as a third mirror.

I don't trust uploading any sensitive documents to an online server, even encrypted. Teh Internets doesn't need my financial information Eye-wink

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moosemanmoo's picture

I've tried Mozy in the past,

Submitted by moosemanmoo on October 12, 2007 - 7:11pm.

I've tried Mozy in the past, and I was very impressed at the idea, but the actual implementation is rather lacking. After a while the software would forget what it had backed up, or it wasn't backing things up for some reason. You should be able to make certain folders not accessible from the web on your hosted account, if you want to go that route.

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Article and posts are rather

Submitted by frida on October 18, 2007 - 7:50am.

Article and posts are rather informative. It was useful to read!

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