Backup facility/program

In article <uli_nospam-3A1C37.22523426072004.DeleteThis@news.stanford.edu>, Uli
Wienands <uli_nospam.DeleteThis@remove.slac.stanford.edu> wrote:

 > I just found out that my old Retrospect 4 won't run under Classic. The
 > latest Retrospect costs $129, a bit steep. Are there any other backup
 > solutions for OS X (Panther)?

Personal Backup X is cheaper and very (too?) simple.<!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->
 >> Stay informed about: Backup facility/program 

In article <uli_nospam-3A1C37.22523426072004.DeleteThis@news.stanford.edu>, Uli
Wienands <uli_nospam.DeleteThis@remove.slac.stanford.edu> wrote:

 > I just found out that my old Retrospect 4 won't run under Classic. The
 > latest Retrospect costs $129, a bit steep. Are there any other backup
 > solutions for OS X (Panther)? Alternatively, does a utility like cpio
 > allow for incremental backups (and if so, how do I do that)? I know
 > about the man pages for cpio but can't find how to make incremental
 > backups.
 >
 > Uli

Have you considered buying an external drive. If I used it in relation to
business, I would transfer all the new stuff to the hard drive at least
once a week. I use my mac at home and only do this about once a month.
About once every 4 months, I intialize the external hard drive and
transfer everything from the internal drive to the external drive. This is
in case I missed some stuff during the monthly transfer of files. This is
easy under OS 9.1. I don't know how to do it under OS X and higher but it
should be possible.

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 >> Stay informed about: Backup facility/program 

On Mon, 26 Jul 2004 22:52:34 -0700, Uli Wienands <uli_nospam RemoveThis @remove.slac.stanford.edu> wrote:
 > I just found out that my old Retrospect 4 won't run under Classic. The
 > latest Retrospect costs $129, a bit steep. Are there any other backup
 > solutions for OS X (Panther)?

You might be interested in Amanda, an open-source project that's been
around for quite a while, is very flexible, and cross-platform. Pretty
active development community, as well.
<a style='text-decoration: underline;' href="http://www.amanda.org/" target="_blank">http://www.amanda.org/</a>

 > Alternatively, does a utility like cpio
 > allow for incremental backups (and if so, how do I do that)? I know
 > about the man pages for cpio but can't find how to make incremental
 > backups.

I've done a few home-rolled backup/archive projects, and they always end up
being more work than using something written by someone else. Take a look,
maybe Amanda will fit your needs.

Dave Hinz<!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->
 >> Stay informed about: Backup facility/program 

"Michael wrote:

 > If it's tape, then Retrospect and BRU (http://www.tolisgroup.com/) are
 > _it_ AFAIK. MacOS X doesn't have a tape driver nor is there one out
 > there that's open source. You'll have to write your own.

While this won't work for everyone, one option is to archive to a
tape drive over a local network. In my case I archive to a DLT on a
Linux server. This is pretty easy to do with OSX's own ditto program and
netcat. ditto insures that all the resource forks get properly preserved
during back-up and are put back during a restore. On the Linux side,
another netcat process is run to accept the stream from ditto and that
gets piped to dd to write the data to tape. Both ditto and netcat are
included with OSX and make it easy to put together a shell program to
handle the backup job.

For incremental archives, I'm experimenting with hfspax using the same
network method to a DLT drive.

Another option is just to get a huge IDE drive and put it in an external
firewire enclosure. Then just use that drive purely for archival
purposes. Using this method, it then becomes a simple matter to use
OSX's own GUI based disk imaging tools.<!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->
 >> Stay informed about: Backup facility/program 

Uli Wienands wrote:

 > I just found out that my old Retrospect 4 won't run under Classic. The
 > latest Retrospect costs $129, a bit steep. Are there any other backup
 > solutions for OS X (Panther)? Alternatively, does a utility like cpio
 > allow for incremental backups (and if so, how do I do that)? I know
 > about the man pages for cpio but can't find how to make incremental
 > backups.
 >
 > Uli

<a style='text-decoration: underline;' href="http://propagandaprod.com/dejavu.html" target="_blank">http://propagandaprod.com/dejavu.html</a>
<a style='text-decoration: underline;' href="http://www.lacie.com/silverkeeper/" target="_blank">http://www.lacie.com/silverkeeper/</a>
However, I don't trust the latter 100%.<!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->
 >> Stay informed about: Backup facility/program 

On Tue, 27 Jul 2004 11:35:25 -0500, Jason wrote
(in article <Jason-2707040935250001.RemoveThis@pm4-broad-46.snlo.dialup.fix.net>):

 > Have you considered buying an external drive. If I used it in relation to
 > business, I would transfer all the new stuff to the hard drive at least once
 > a week. I use my mac at home and only do this about once a month. About once
 > every 4 months, I intialize the external hard drive and transfer everything
 > from the internal drive to the external drive. This is in case I missed some
 > stuff during the monthly transfer of files. This is easy under OS 9.1. I
 > don't know how to do it under OS X and higher but it should be possible.

Weekly!!! Monthly!!! I have two external drives, each divided into five
partitions (Monday, Tuesday, thru Friday) and each night do a Retrospect
duplicate backup to the appropriate partition on one of the external drives
and then in the morning replace that drive with the other which has been
disconnected and kept offsite. This way I have strong assurance that the
worst case scenario is to lose a single day's work. I can't imagine the
effort to recover from a week's loss, not to mention a month's loss. I fail
to understand or appreciate the casual attitude generally held regarding the
importance of backing up.

-- James L. Ryan -- TaliesinSoft

"My dog never came across a bush he didn't like!"<!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->
 >> Stay informed about: Backup facility/program 

In article <uli_nospam-3A1C37.22523426072004.RemoveThis@news.stanford.edu>,
Uli Wienands <uli_nospam.RemoveThis@remove.slac.stanford.edu> wrote:

 > I just found out that my old Retrospect 4 won't run under Classic. The
 > latest Retrospect costs $129, a bit steep. Are there any other backup
 > solutions for OS X (Panther)? Alternatively, does a utility like cpio
 > allow for incremental backups (and if so, how do I do that)? I know
 > about the man pages for cpio but can't find how to make incremental
 > backups.

I use Psync and its OS X front-end / kick-starter PsyncX. PsyncX makes
it easy to set up multiple backup sets. They're incremental in the sense
that only the files that change get backed up the next time (but not in
the sense that multiple versions of a document are preserved). I had to
do a reformat / reinstall / restore from this backup once, so I know it
works. (I have one of my backup sets to go to my iPod.)

For example, I have a Writing backup for crucial documents I'm working
on and a Financial backup for those files; they allow me to make very
quick (less than a minute) backups of stuff at the end of the day --
stuff I would jump off a bridge if I lost. I have a Users backup that
does the whole Users folder (four users on my machine) and corrects
permissions on the backup so I can't see the backed-up files that don't
belong to me. I run that once a week.

Another choice is Synk, which DOES allow you to preserve multiple
versions of documents in an archive folder. I've used this one too and
like it, although I tend to favor PsyncX.

--
Tad Davis
taddavis.RemoveThis@ucwphilly.rr.com<!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->
 >> Stay informed about: Backup facility/program 

TaliesinSoft <taliesinsoft.TakeThisOut@mac.com> wrote:
  > Weekly!!! Monthly!!! [...] I can't imagine the effort to recover
  > from a week's loss, not to mention a month's loss. I fail to
  > understand or appreciate the casual attitude generally held
  > regarding the importance of backing up.

Absolutely agree. For all but my video editing workspace (where
small edits can produce gargantuan file changes) I snapshot user
files hourly using a set of Perl scripts that I wrote for this
purpose. The scripts turned out to be useful enough that I
documented them and now distribute them as freeware.

<a style='text-decoration: underline;' href="http://freshmeat.net/projects/snapshot/" target="_blank">http://freshmeat.net/projects/snapshot/</a>

Quick summary of how to use them:

Do this once (example assumes you have an external disk named
"otherdisk"):

$ mkdir /Volumes/otherdisk/snapshots
$ snap-register /Users/you /Volumes/otherdisk/snapshots

Then do this (make snapshots) as often as desired:

$ snap-snapshot /Users/you

To access your snapshots do this once:

$ mkdir /backup

And do this just before you need to look for a backup file:

$ snap-view /backup /Volumes/otherdisk/snapshots/*

You'll find a Finder-friendly directory view of the dated
snapshots in /backup with links to the snapshots stored on
"otherdisk".

To trim snapshots down to the last 14 days worth.

$ snap-baseline 14d<!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->
 >> Stay informed about: Backup facility/program 

In article <uli_nospam-3A1C37.22523426072004.TakeThisOut@news.stanford.edu>,
Uli Wienands <uli_nospam.TakeThisOut@remove.slac.stanford.edu> wrote:

 > I just found out that my old Retrospect 4 won't run under Classic. The
 > latest Retrospect costs $129, a bit steep.

You can't upgrade for less than that? Wow.

--
"...crying in your drink is bad enough; crying into a hot fudge sundae
is disgusting." - Jerry Farnsworth in _Job: A Comedy of Justice_<!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->
 >> Stay informed about: Backup facility/program 

"Howard Shubs" <howard DeleteThis @shubs.net> wrote in message
news:howard-D85DC3.07464229072004@news.newsguy.com...
 > In article <uli_nospam-3A1C37.22523426072004 DeleteThis @news.stanford.edu>,
 > Uli Wienands <uli_nospam DeleteThis @remove.slac.stanford.edu> wrote:
 >
  > > I just found out that my old Retrospect 4 won't run under Classic. The
  > > latest Retrospect costs $129, a bit steep.
 >
 > You can't upgrade for less than that? Wow.

I just bought Retrospect 6 Desktop (full version) for $99 from MacMall.
They have upgrades there which would be cheaper than the full version.

--
Tara<!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->
 >> Stay informed about: Backup facility/program 

In comp.sys.mac.system Kyle Jones <kyle_jones.RemoveThis@wonderworks.com> wrote:
 > TaliesinSoft <taliesinsoft.RemoveThis@mac.com> wrote:
  > > Weekly!!! Monthly!!! [...] I can't imagine the effort to recover
  > > from a week's loss, not to mention a month's loss. I fail to
  > > understand or appreciate the casual attitude generally held
  > > regarding the importance of backing up.
 >
 > Absolutely agree. For all but my video editing workspace (where
 > small edits can produce gargantuan file changes) I snapshot user
 > files hourly using a set of Perl scripts that I wrote for this
 > purpose. The scripts turned out to be useful enough that I
 > documented them and now distribute them as freeware.
 >
<font color=purple> > <a style='text-decoration: underline;' href="http://freshmeat.net/projects/snapshot/</font" target="_blank">http://freshmeat.net/projects/snapshot/</font</a>>

Your Perl looks clean, nice job. I shall look into using your code ...

Steve<!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->
 >> Stay informed about: Backup facility/program 

In article <0001HW.BD2C058400403EA9F03055B0.TakeThisOut@news.dallas.sbcglobal.net>,
TaliesinSoft <taliesinsoft.TakeThisOut@mac.com> wrote:

 > On Tue, 27 Jul 2004 11:35:25 -0500, Jason wrote
 > (in article <Jason-2707040935250001.TakeThisOut@pm4-broad-46.snlo.dialup.fix.net>):
 >
  > > Have you considered buying an external drive. If I used it in relation to
  > > business, I would transfer all the new stuff to the hard drive at
least once
  > > a week. I use my mac at home and only do this about once a month.
About once
  > > every 4 months, I intialize the external hard drive and transfer everything
  > > from the internal drive to the external drive. This is in case I
missed some
  > > stuff during the monthly transfer of files. This is easy under OS 9.1. I
  > > don't know how to do it under OS X and higher but it should be possible.
 >
 > Weekly!!! Monthly!!! I have two external drives, each divided into five
 > partitions (Monday, Tuesday, thru Friday) and each night do a Retrospect
 > duplicate backup to the appropriate partition on one of the external drives
 > and then in the morning replace that drive with the other which has been
 > disconnected and kept offsite. This way I have strong assurance that the
 > worst case scenario is to lose a single day's work. I can't imagine the
 > effort to recover from a week's loss, not to mention a month's loss. I fail
 > to understand or appreciate the casual attitude generally held regarding the
 > importance of backing up.
 >
 > -- James L. Ryan -- TaliesinSoft
 >
 > "My dog never came across a bush he didn't like!"

Good point. The only reason I don't do it more often is because I use my
computer only at home and rarely ever add new data or delete data. When I
do add an important file, data or program--I make sure that I update the
external drive. Needless to say, I would make a change in my backup system
if I used my computer for business. You would be amazed at how many people
don't have any backup system.

--
NEWSGROUP SUBSCRIBERS MOTTO
We respect those subscribers that ask for advice or provide advice.
We do NOT respect the subscribers that enjoy criticizing people.<!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->
 >> Stay informed about: Backup facility/program