[OS X TeX] Backups -- Was Pointer to .bib file

[Rene Borgella]

Hello Bruno,

I think that making a full backup of your entire home directory is a 
great idea.  I would highly recommend you check out ChronoSync or 
Tri-Backup.  I own both but use Tri-Backup myself, although many 
folks I know are happy with ChronoSync too.

Tri-Backup
Full versions can be tested for 30 
days<http://www.tri-edre.com/english/tribackup.html>

ChronoSync
Limit of ~500 files in Demo mode.
<http://www.econtechnologies.com/site/Pages/ChronoSync/chrono_overview.html>


I use a backup strategy based on "mirroring".  I have Tri-backup make 
a copy of my entire home every hour (you can choose whatever interval 
you like) to another drive (at home and also at work).  It does this 
in the background only  copies files that have changed, has no 
problem with open files, and handles permissions, etc. with no 
problem.

I also synchronize my home to an external firewire drive that I can 
take between home and work so that I have the latest versions of all 
my work with me wherever I go.


When I was in another job and part of my responsibilities was to 
provide support to a half-dozen users who were truly 'point and 
click', using Tri-Backup worked well because none of the users needed 
to do anything for a backup, and the backups were never more than one 
hour old.

My only complaint about Tri-Backup is that its interface is not as 
clear as one would like. I would suggest making up some sort of test 
directores to use when you are learning and that way you won't lose 
anything.

I haven't used SilverKeeper for a while, but it's not LaCie specific. 
You can use it with whatever hardware you like (at least the version 
I used last). I didn't like it for these reasons: 1) it choked on 
directories with too many subdirectories, 2) it had a problem writing 
to Linux volumes, 3) errors were not always logged so that one could 
think the backup was ok until you needed the files.


Some folks I know use Carbon Copy Cloner together with rsync
<http://macosxlabs.org/rsyncx/rsyncx.html>
and are quite happy with it.  If I recall, CCC will assist one in 
installing and configuring rsynch to work with it.  I find that it 
works well, but I like the level of specificity I can set with 
Tri-Backup too much to use this solution.  With Tri-Backup, I have 
"filters" so that directories named "Cache" etc. are not backed up.

Regarding .Mac -- it's been years since I've used it -- since it's 
cost money in fact. But I hear more complaints than kudos for this 
solution.  If you visit MacInTouch, for example, you'll see many of 
these complaints. I think that this website also has a backup 
software report that you may wish to read.

Good luck!

Rene'
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