[OS X TeX] OT: Backup software

[Claus Gerhardt]

I have two backup strategies:

(1) A clone of my main drive, done by SuperDuper!, to be on the safe  
side, in case of a hard drive failure or a botched OS update.

(2) Daily incremental backup to a third external hard drive (LaCie  
Triple extreme 300GB, fast, silent, excellent) using ChronoSync: the  
backup looks like a copy of your original files (for the latest  
incremental backup) with a few additional folders containing the  
older versions of the files.

With regard to Bruno's dilemma with his mail:

- Either have your mail on the server deleted only by your PowerBook,  
or delete the read mail after a longer period, e.g., a week.

- Cc your sent mail from your MacPro to your account.

Claus


On Oct 10, 2006, at 12:36, Bruno Voisin wrote:

> Le 10 oct. 06 à 11:56, Rick Zaccone a écrit :
>
>> Personally, I'm waiting for Time Machine <http:// 
>> www.computerworld.com/action/article.do? 
>> command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9003885&pageNumber=1>.  If you  
>> haven't seen the WWDC demo of it, take a look.  It's impressive.
>
> Same here.
>
> For the moment I'm sticking to Apple's Backup: I make a full backup  
> of my home directory to an external hard drive, once a month say  
> (actually it tends to be once every three months, due to lack of  
> time, but that's clearly not often enough), and one incremental  
> backup every day. But a .Mac subscription is required, otherwise  
> you're limited to 100 MB in one go.
>
> I'm very impressed by Gary's backup strategy: if I understood  
> correctly, incremental backups every hour to different hard drives  
> in the day and in the evening, plus a bootable clone of the whole  
> hard drive every day. Unfortunately that doesn't seem possible  
> here: first, it requires several different hard drives, which  
> moneywise isn't possible; and it requires configuring several  
> pieces of software rather precisely, which I'm not sure I can manage.
>
> Another concern is size and time: my home directory is about 20 GB,  
> and making a full backup with Backup takes already about 2 hours,  
> which is why I am not able to do it as often as advisable. And even  
> doing a daily incremental backup takes most of my PowerBook's CPU  
> while the backup is being performed. That's why I'm skeptical about  
> attempting to backup more often. Not even to say cloning the entire  
> hard drive!
>
> Two more things:
>
> - With the MacPro in which you can put several hard drives, I think  
> I've read somewhere it's possible to create a software RAID with  
> these drives. I've no idea how this can be done, or whether it's  
> built-in somewhere in OS X or requires 3rd-party software, but that  
> might also serve as backup. The only problem would be, of course,  
> the fact that all the backups would live within the same machine,  
> so that if something bad happens to that machine (theft, fire,  
> water, ...) then all the backups are lost.
>
> - Last week I just got a MacPro. Given the difference in speed with  
> my venerable PowerBook G4, I will move to the MacPro as my main  
> computer. The only significant problem is email: when all my mail  
> was living on the PowerBook, I could read and send mail from  
> everywhere (home, McDonald's, ...), having all the past  
> correspondence available all the time. Now that I'm reading and  
> sending mail from work on the MacPro during the day, this means I  
> don't have most of the correspondence of the day at home in the  
> evening on the PowerBook: I can't see the Sent messages, stored on  
> the MacPro, and all the messages that were transferred upon arrival  
> to local mailboxes through filtering rules (like moving all OS X  
> TeX messages to a local OS X TeX mailbox) are also stored on the  
> MacPro.
>
> This is certainly a trivial problem, but I haven't yet figured out  
> a satisfactory solution -- other than forgetting about email at  
> home in the evening, which on the other hand turns out quite good  
> for my social life ;-) Given my email directories sum up to about  
> 2.5 GB, I doubt OS X synchronization could deal with it  
> transparently: for sure it would take ages to synchronize mailboxes  
> on two computers every day?
>
> Bruno Voisin
>
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