Backing up

[turtlehead]

I want to back up my computer, stuff such as my email, contacts from adress book, general preferences and stuff... I've been told by someone before that I can simply copy my "library" folder to an external drive and this will be taken care of. I'm wondering, does this truly handle that, and should I do this from my c/Library or would it be c/Users/"myname"/Library? or does it matter?

Thanks a ton

 

[Ric]

Hi there !

The folder you want is -->

Users/yourusername/

This will then back up everything that is in your home folder, all your documents, preferences etc. It won't though back up all your Applications, but presumably you have the original disks for these.

This would back up all your 'data' and preferences, but not Applications...Software Updates etc.

Depending on your needs there are various ways to back up, I use different backup plans for different machines.

This laptop that I'm working on is used for a lot of Development work and so I use Retrospect to do Incremental Backups (back up everything completely...then it only backs up changed data after that), and I also use to do a complete bootable backup.

If you imagine that you back up your home folder, and then you install some new software and it makes your Mac unstable and keeps crashing, you would have a number of choices...

You could do an Archive and Install, from the original OS X DVD. This is one of the easiest ways because it would replace the old System files with new, and then preserve all the Apps that you had loaded and would also preserve all your user Data. You would however have to re download all the System Updates and apply them before being able to do anything else.

From experience the above method can take the best part of an afternoon, depending on how many updates there are etc.

If you use something like CCC, the scenario is different, I make sure that CCC is scheduled to 'Clone' my drive ever day (at 3.00am). It does this to two different 'targets'. eg on Monday CCC creates a 'clone' disk image of my drive to Firewire Disk A then on Tuesday to Firewire Disk B . This gives me the option of taking my drive back to the state it was in "Yesterday' or 'the day before'.

So now if I decide to install the latest must have piece of software and my Mac decides that it doesn't like it, then all I have to do is plug in Firewire Drive A or B (depending where I want to take my Mac back to...) and then reboot from the drive...then erase my internal drive and tell CCC that the External drive is the 'source' and that the Intenal Drive is the 'Target'...then it will copy everything back to how it was. From start to finish, depending on your drive size, my laptop 100GB drive can be wiped and replaced in around an hour.

regards

Ric

 

[turtlehead]

exactly what I needed, thanks

 

[Ric]

No problem...

Have a look at SuperDuper

...it has a few extra features, that are quite nice.

regards

Ric

 

[Larry]

Hi Ric,

I have a similar problem, but not exactly to others. I have Max OSX and am trying to back up to an external hard drive via firewire and I am getting "file name too long" errors. Seems the the actual file name is not too long but the full pathname is too long. It obviously makes backing up impossible since it keeps stopping to ask how you want to shorten the name. Any fixes for this?

thanks very much

 

[Ric]

Hi Larry and welcome !

Can I just check, what version of OS X have you and what software are you using to backup with, (if any).

regards

Ric

 

[Larry]

Hi Ric, No back up software, just dragging and dropping some folders. OSX 10.3.9

 

[Ric]

Hi there Larry apologies, very busy weekend !!!

just a quick question can you remember how your drives were originally formatted ?

Having a route around at the minute to see what I can figure out !

regards

Ric

 

[Ric]

If you get chance can you open up Disk Utility and let me no what "Format" your Internal drive is formatted as, and also the external drive...

regards

Ric

 

[Larry]

Hi Ric,

Sorry I didn't get your post until too late in the afternoon my time (Boston) for your time.

The hard drive on the G5 is Mac OS extended (journaled) on a 150GB drive
The external hard drive is one I bought when I got the previous G4 and it is a 30Gb formated as Mac OS Standard - not "extended". Does this simply mean I need to reformat in Mac OS Extended?

Thanks,

Larry

 

[Ric]

Hi Larry,

I would give it go !

Do it the same as your Internal drive and let us know if it makes a difference.

regards

Ric

 

[teapot]

Hi All
I use a little app called Chronosync for backing up my home directory to my external hard drive (firewire). It does have problems in copying 2 data files where software keys are stored. I have just reset the backup proceedure and it has taken 30 miutes to back up my entire home directory(38Gb). now I only backup changed files which only takes seconds.
http://www.econtechnologies.com
Regards
Teapot