Backups on the Mac

[dedee]

I have at last started to take backups on the iMac using the built in DVD/CD burner.
I am doing this by just copying directories into a burn folder & then burning the DVD. Very easy. Although on both DVDs that I have used (Verbatim -RW 4x) the verification has failed with an EM suggesting I should use a new disc. I have checked a number of files
on the DVD on both the Mac and Windows machines and all looks OK. Should I be worried about this apparent verification failure?

I am disappointed though that I cannot append data to a DVD.
If I have read the books correctly I can append to a CD but not to a DVD. Is this correct?

I'd be interested to know what backup applications & routines other Mac users are using. I am not prepared to pay for .Mac membership in order to get their Backup software.

I am on a pre-Intel iMac running OSX 10.4 (Tiger)

Andy

 

[RogerS]

Andy

If you log into http://discussions.apple.com/search!default.jspa and enter DVD verification failure as your search terms you'll get quite a few threads to browse through. That may help you pin point your problem.

Re multi-session DVDs..sorry can't help you on that one.

Re backing up....I use Synk which is a very good program. There are others. I use an external firewire hard disk drive and also periodically backup stuff to a network hard disk drive, located in the outbuilding, although this is a real pain as being Windows based it can't handle long file names from the Mac...and so I use it as a last resort. Have to confess that my backup strategy is a little cavalier. It's not rigorous at all. Stuff that I can't easily replace, like my photo's from the India trip, were burned to DVD as well as to magnetic. Rest of the stuff is backed up when I remember. The external drive is/was large enough to take several complete copies of my data (30Gb) from different days. These were complete copies. Again, I have Synk but don't even use that religiously. Mainly because most of my data is not that critical.

Having a long term 'lack of sleep' problem on my G4, I finally bit the bullet over Christmas and reformatted the internal drive and did a clean (OK..several) re-installs. Prior to that I backed up my data to the firewire drive and also a separate USB 1.0 (was that slow!) hard drive. Took the opportunity to also stick a large additional drive inside the G4 and repartition the original hard drive. The large drive will give me a backup problem since it's 400Gb...Synk should allow me to do incremental backups.

Hope that helps. PM me if you want.

Roger

 

[dedee]

Thanks Roger,
I really should have thought to look at Apple/Dicsussions first. I'll try different media and slower burns speeds this evening & see what happens.

Andy

 

[ByronBlack]

My own personal Mac backup solution at the moment using a program called PSync - it's an application that allows you to setup a number of backup sets to an external hard-drive.

I have it running once a week for my application folder, and nightly for my home folder, because it's incremental, it only adds to my backup files that have changed, so each backup only takes a matter of minutes.

I also each week burn any new photos/music etc. to a DVD or CD (Depending on how much space is needed). These are then stored of-site in my shed.

Buying .Mac doesn't offer you anything of great value in terms of backing up, their backup program is not very good. You can do the same thing by buying some webspace which would be a lot cheaper than .mac and just using an FTP program to upload the contents of a Smart Folder to your webspace. This would be a good idea for any small-ish but important stuff like your address book, email, keychains etc..

I can't help on the appending to a DVD as i've never had the need to do it myself, maybe i'm lazy, but bulk DVD's are very cheap these days so I never feel the need to re-use and add to one. I also like have that particular days backup on a particular DVD - makes reverting to old files a lot easier.

 

[dedee]

Thanks guys.

I sorted out the verification problem last night. By dragging folders and files into a burn folder one is actually creating aliases of the original files rather creating a copy. This means that if applications are used while the backup is being done it is likely (especially if browsing the web) that files would have changed between backup and verification.

The solutions to this are
1) use disk utility to create a disk image & then backup.
2) do not back up the library folder (where the various caches are held).
3) close down all other applications while backing up - My preferred solution.

I have had a look at the backup program suggestions and they look a bit techy to me. I'm going to see how I get on with few demo versions although now I've sorted the verification problem and all the while my backup set easily fits on a DVD I might just stick with what I'm doing.

Andy

 

[Charley]

I backup my PC's and Mac to a NAS backup drive.

On the Mac I use arRsync to do the actual backups to the drive. Which as you might of guessed by the title, uses rsync so only backups new/modifed files so you don't have to do a complete backup every-time you run it.

 

[RogerS]

That's good news, dedee.

I also recommend that on the mc you close all programs when installing anything new and repair permissions ...but you may know that already!