[Ham-Mac] backup options

[Hans-Christian Becker]

Happy New Year, everyone,

On Jan 5, 2006, at 4:47 AM, harris ruben wrote:

> Speaking of backups, I've been meaning to get a firewire drive for  
> myself. (Shame on me; I don't back up)
Shame on you, indeed ;-) But you are on the right track to salvation  
with your thoughts of getting an external Firewire drive!

> My Mac techie at my old job suggested a bus-powered unit, but  
> reviews are very spotty about ALL the drives. Who's using what, and  
> what do you guys recommend?? Let's say, $250 or so.
Unless you absolutely need to use the drive in locations where you  
have no external power, I see no use to go with a bus-powered device.  
IMO, it is just not worth the extra money and limited selection of  
drives to avoid the extra cable(s) and power supply.
I have been very happy with a LaCie d2 160GB drive (now 2.5 years  
old)---the case is rock-solid, the power supply brick is light, and  
the power connector on the drive case appears sturdy enough to  
survive frequent connect/disconnect cycles. My SO has one Western  
Digital and one Maxtor unit, and they seem to work fine as well.
I would strongly recommend getting either a Firewire drive, or a FW/ 
USB combo drive, because you can boot your Mac from FW devices,  
provided you keep a live system on the drive, of course.
For backup, I use a combination of Retrospect (pricey, but has worked  
very well so far), and Carbon Copy Cloner (shareware). Whatever  
solution you choose, the most important thing is to check that you  
can restore your data! By the way, some external drives (at least  
LaCie, I think) come with backup software for the Mac.
Good luck,
Hans SM5TLH


-- 
Dr. Hans-Christian Becker
Department of Physical Chemistry
Uppsala University, P.O. Box 579
SE-751 23 Uppsala, Sweden