When Leopard was introduced, backing up became an automatic and effortless operation. Set it and forget it. Unfortunately, Time Machine backups are not off-site and don’t protect you against an on-site disaster. When I previously covered some online off-site backup solutions, Apple’s backup utility was not one of them.

Apple Backup is still a nifty way to back up critical files to your MobileMe account, or any hard drive you can mount, and I personally use it every day to back up my most critical files. I have tons of space on my MobileMe account, so I might as well use it. Best of all, it’s a free program with a MobileMe subscription.

However, in the move from .Mac to MobileMe and from Leopard to Snow Leopard, the development of this utility has seemingly stopped. The latest version is 3.1.2, and it was released on Oct. 27, 2007 — over two years ago. The branding of the program still states it does backups to your “.Mac” account and doesn’t mention MobileMe. I find it a complete resource hog while running in the background. Obviously, it’s not optimized for 64-bit processors. Humorously, it still has Quickpick options in the interface to automatically back up Internet Explorer data. Internet Explorer hasn’t been released for the Mac in over half a decade. If that doesn’t convince you Apple Backup needs updating, then I’m not sure what will.

Apple, it’s time to update Backup, and here’s what I want on the feature list.

First, make it fit into the current Apple product line. Change the references to .Mac, and optimize it for Snow Leopard. Additionally, allow me to schedule backups directly from iCal.

Next, give me Quickpicks for programs currently in use by typical Apple users. Remove the backup options for Internet Explorer and add programs such as Firefox and Quickbooks. While you are tweaking the code, make it easy for users to back up their Preferences directory. Sure, it’s not that hard to do it manually, but the average Apple user doesn’t realize how critical preferences are.

If you really want to knock my socks off, include encryption options like you did with the latest iPhones. I hate not having encrypted backups. Speaking of iPhones, how about a Quickpick to allow the automatic off-site backup of our existing iPhone backups?

Apple’s Backup application used to be a great added value for .Mac/MobileMe users and a convenient way for all Mac users to do backups. It has grown very long in the tooth and needs to be made relevant again. Apple, you have your marching orders, so get to work! Readers, don’t forget to add feature request in the comments below.

Recently the group that I work in was given the opportunity to move from Dell laptops to MacBook Pros. Score! Since the business infrastructure has been 100% percent PC to date, we had to develop something of a business plan for how to deal with having Macs in the workplace. Chief among our concerns was how to keep them backed up to protect all of our hard work. Probably not unlike many businesses, we have a NAS that everyone’s machine backs up to, and surprisingly, this is where we [temporarily] came to a bit of a sticking point with our Mac migration.

Some of the more obvious choices (at least to this author) were Apple’s own Time Machine (free with OS X), SuperDuper! ($27.95), and Carbon Copy Cloner (free). It came as a surprise, however, that none of these options seemed to allow for targeting a Samba mounted shared server. Some Googling showed that Time Machine could manage it with a hack, but we were unsuccessful in making this solution work. So the search was on — what could we use as a backup solution to target a password authenticated Samba share?

We tried nearly everything. We Googled until we were blue in the face, but to no avail, which was surprising, as this can’t be an isolated need for Mac business users. So I raided my Applications folder (a mess of apps that I’ve toyed with over the years and never deleted) to see if I couldn’t find something. Luckily, I came across Econ Technologies’ ChronoSync, just lying in wait, right there in my own apps directory!

Chronosync offers the typical options for backing up or synchronizing anything on your Mac. Its superior flexibility of different source and target folders was ultimately what made it the go-to for our scenario at work. One of my favorite features is the ability to do a trial sync, which shows you what files will be copied and how, before committing a full-fledged backup operation. Add to this a myriad of settings for defining rules about what’s synchronized, when, and how, and this is one of the most powerful backup solutions I’ve seen for OS X.

If you’re in the market for a seriously capable and configurable backup solution on your Macintosh — and especially if you’re a business Mac user — I suggest you give Chronosync a try. The demo version limits the number of files that can be synced, but you’ll get a better idea of whether it’s worth you $40 for a single license or not.

I took to the soapbox recently about the lack of flexibility in iPhoto for incremental backups. I still don’t have a great solution that suits my particular needs and desires, though some useful suggestions can be found in the comments of that post. But here’s a little tip that may be useful if you’ve got lots of archived iPhoto libraries and you want to quickly drill down to the standout shots. I call it the “iPhoto Favorites Library.”

In my experience, a year’s worth of photographs is around 4,000 strong. Of those 4,000 image files, somewhere between 5 and 10 percent get four- and five-star ratings. Sure, most of my photos are important to me personally, but the majority aren’t the ones I’ll go to when showing off the kids to a friend on my iPhone. Now take into consideration your yearly (or whatever) iPhoto library backups, and you’ve got a mountain of photos in several different libraries to traverse before you find your those standouts.

The solution is pretty straightforward, actually. Pull all of your four- and five-star photos (assuming you’re consistently using ratings) from each of your archived iPhoto libraries. If you’ve created Smart Albums in iPhoto in the past (such as anything with four or five stars), you can create a simple Automator workflow that filters photos from that album, selects them, and copies them to a designated folder of your choosing. This effectively exports all those photos you want, from whichever iPhoto library is currently set as the default. Is it easier than just opening that library and dragging and dropping them by hand? Probably not, but that’s your call.

Once you’ve got a folder full of four- and five-star photos from over the years, it’s time to create a new iPhoto library. Open iPhoto and hold the Option key. This allows you to select a new library to create. With that blank library open, drag all of those photos from (their file location) above into iPhoto. Moving forward, you’d just open this Favorites library and add the latest keepers to it.

Perhaps I’ve answered my own question to the iPhoto Backup issue. I don’t need to cart all of those so-so images around all year long. I could just roll with a Favorites library, and then my current yearly library. Either way, this should help you access those great photos from years passed more quickly, without having to spend time digging through multiple libraries.

Snow Leopard’s release is just around the corner, so here are some quick and easy steps to make sure that you are ready to upgrade.

Turn On Time Machine

If you haven’t already, now is a great time to turn on the Time Machine built in backup. It’s not perfect, but it’s a great first line of defense against data loss.

Make a Bootable External Drive

Use Carbon Copy Cloner or Super Duper to clone your Mac’s hard drive to an external USB drive as an emergency backup, in case both the upgrade and the Time Machine backup both go south. The real point of both this step and the Time Machine step are to backup, backup, backup! Get your data off of your computer and onto something else that can be saved in case of the worst.

Get Rid of Haxies

Haxies are unsupported hacks that alter the appearance or functionality of OS X. While they can be cool, and nothing against Unsanity, anything that’s done under the covers or outside of what Apple says is OK to play with is easily broken during a major OS upgrade. Application Enhancer has been a known culprit in the past, and some developers will ask that it be removed before support or ignore crash reports that involve it all together.

Disable Bundles

Bundles like SIMBL are also a sort of hack that can cause problems during an upgrade. As I said before, they are a good hack, but a hack nonetheless, and can cause unforeseen problems during an upgrade.

Sync Up

iPods, iPhones, MobileMe, any third-party devices or syncing that you have set up…make sure they are all synced and up to date before starting the upgrade procedure.

Update Your Apps

This shouldn’t be that big of a deal as long as you are already running Leopard, but it’s still a good idea to check and make sure that you are running the latest released version of your apps. Developers who joined the Apple Developer Connection as a premier member have had access to Snow Leopard for a while now, and have hopefully worked out the bugs in running their app. That being said, upgrade your apps, just to make sure. I’ve found that it’s also a good practice to download updated installers for your favorite apps and burn them to a CD or DVD for quick access.

If you are feeling daring, you may want to give AppFresh a look and see about having it update all of your apps for you.

Clean House

Have a ton of old apps laying around that you don’t need anymore? Now is the best time to AppZap them! I seriously do not understand why AppZapper, or some similar functionality is not built into OS X. Both Cocktail and Onyx have functions to clean out temporary files, check permissions, and ensure that the OS is in good operating order.

Watch the Clock

Snow Leopard is set to be released in September 2009, which as the writing of this happens is just around one month away. Snow Leopard brings with it the opportunity to make your Mac “Better, Faster, Easier,” than ever before.

Have a favorite OS X upgrade tradition? Sound off in the comments!

Recently, David tee’d up a great article about migrating from Aperture to iPhoto. And iPhoto is a great photo management application — it’s easy to use and extremely powerful. But the problem (for me at least) comes when trying to archive photos. I try to keep about 16 months worth of photos at any given time, but unfortunately because iPhoto stores everything in a tidy library file (rather than several individual ones), it doesn’t support this sort of backup.

So what happens when you want to incrementally back-up your iPhoto photographs? Although problems ensue, there are some ways to work around them.

The Problem

On one hand, it’s ideal to have a single mega iPhoto library where everything is stored. The downside of course, is that it quickly grows out of control — I get that. So I’ve taken to naming my iPhoto library files ‘monthyear-monthyear.’ (That way I can go back to that range of time and see how much hair I had. Ah, those were the days!) The problem arises if and when you want to only backup a portion of the current iPhoto library, and retain the rest locally. I’ve used a couple solutions, none of which are anywhere near as user friendly as everything else in iPhoto.

Some Sorta Solutions

One way to manage this scenario, is to select all the photos to backup from your current iPhoto library, and drag them to a temporary folder (say, on your Desktop). Now open the backup iPhoto library and drag all of those photos over to their new backup home. The first, and most obvious, issue is that this is a manual task. (I attempted an Automator workflow, but selecting images by time frame didn’t work.) Regular backup programs do everything on their own, so why would I want to do this by hand? The other issue is that the metadata, like facial recognition, has not always transferred accurately (for me at least).

You could opt to view the package contents of the iPhoto library file (right click the library for this option), and do a stare and compare, again, manually dragging all folders and files from the local library to the backup library. This is both more robust in transferring metadata accurately, and more time consuming. The downside is that you’re messing with some important data structures, and could potentially hose your backup (or local) library if you miss something.

I suppose the most obvious is just to get over my own desires to carry a rolling 16 month libray of photos. If I can get past this, then I could just backup the library each calendar year, and start from scratch each time. My issue with this is then I have no immediate access to my photos from even a few weeks ago, depending on the timing of that transition. So now all those images are unavailable to load to my iPhone, and show off at the drop of a hat. Bummer.

A Disappointing Verdict

There doesn’t seem to be an ideal solution to this dilemma. Worse yet, as you try to view older iPhoto libraries (assuming you keep up to date with the latest iLife updates) you then have to go through upgrading them prior to viewing. It would be great to see iPhoto given the ability to backup to a Vault type solution as Aperture boasts — but perhaps that’s just one of the ‘Pro’ features you’re paying for (unlike Faces and Places).

I’m hopeful that some of our sly readers have some great solutions to share that may solve this annoying problem. If you fit this description, please share!

If you look at the amount of advertising out there these days, you’d think the Mac vs. PC war is a mere slap fight compared to the war being raged for your data backups. They want your data, and they want it now!

In one corner you have Mozy, which shares corporate DNA with former Mac backup champion, Retrospect. In the other corner is Carbonite, which began supporting the Mac this year. Mozy had almost a 2-year head start on Carbonite, but the software race doesn’t always go to the first one out of the gate. I gave both products an intense 3-month test. Which one deserves your data? Read on.

Round One: Staying Power

I wouldn’t trust my data to a brand-new company that could go out of business when I need my data (X-Drive, anyone?). Carbonite and Mozy are both well established. Of the two, Carbonite has the better name recognition, referencing Han Solo’s preservation in the “Star Wars” series. But Carbonite also seems to attract bad press like the Millennium Falcon attracted mynocks.

A server failure in 2007 lead to quite a few lawsuits, but according to Carbonite, no data was lost. Additionally, Carbonite was caught using “the Force” to influence reviews on Amazon — and by the Force I mean its employees. Carbonite uses Rush Limbaugh as a spokesperson, and you can’t get more controversial than Rush. However, Mozy has the “Mozy gal,” who has almost as high a following as Deltalina. This is a tough choice, and we’ll call Round One a draw.

Round Two: Setup and Installation

Carbonite cleans Mozy’s clock in software design. For reference, both Mozy and Carbonite require Tiger, but Carbonite is Intel only.

Both programs have assistants that automatically pick your critical data, as well as let you manually decide what to back up and how much bandwidth to use. Because these programs upload large amounts of data, the average system could take weeks to back up. Neither program will back up external media. Mozy claims it does, but if you detach it, it forgets the configuration. Carbonite flat-out refuses to back up externals. If you keep critical files, such as iTunes or iPhoto libraries, on something besides your main boot drive, neither product will back it up reliably.

Mozy is a background program that can easily be quit, reconfigured or uninstalled without asking for an Administrator password. Like the Death Star, one well-placed shot, or mouse click, renders this program useless. On the other hand, Carbonite runs as a daemon, requiring Administrator approval to change or quit. Mozy allows you to back up other users, but doesn’t always run when switching users.

Dare I say that Mozy operates like a clumsy blaster and Carbonite is the elegant light saber? The clear winner in this round is Carbonite. If you have more than one user account on your system, it’s time to go home, because Carbonite has won.

Round Three: Restoration

Carbonite takes a blow to the chin in this category. Both services offer a web-based restore program, not requiring installation of their software. Unfortunately, Carbonite does not handle Mac OS packages well, so I could not restore OmniOutliner and Keynote data files via its web site, since its software saw them as folders rather then files.

However, Carbonite restored those files properly after installing the client software. Unfortunately, after installing the client software for either product on the restoring computer, the services got confused and stopped backing up my old computer.

The process for restoring Mozy is a bit more complex. Mozy has you choose the files to restore, and emails you when they’re “ready.” The prep for a 6GB file took about an hour. Mozy also allows you to order a DVD of your files at a rather hefty price of 50 cents a gigabyte, plus a processing fee of $29.95 and a next-day shipping charge of $40.

Neither company wins this round: restoration isn’t easy or efficient. Both programs, go back into your corners and make this process easier for subscribers.

Round Four: Support

Neither company includes phone support, but Carbonite allows you to purchase it for $19.95 a year and Mozy provides it with their “Pro” package. I tested support via free online chat sessions. Of the multiple times I contacted support for both real and made-up problems, both companies failed to provide quality tech support folks that could understand the most basic of questions.

Emailing questions was equally frustrating. I consistently received conflicting and contradictory information. This is very scary when we’re talking about backups. Carbonite annoyed me more because their reps would reference instructions they were going to email me, trying to quickly close the chat. Neither company wins this round and both deserve an upper cut for lousy tech support.

Round Five: Security

Mozy, how could you let your guard down? Its software, when used properly, has all your critical and very personal data stored on its servers. When resetting your password, no security questions are asked. All you need is access to someone’s email and you can quickly and easily reset the Mozy password on an account. Email accounts can be hacked and if all you need is someone’s email password to get into any file on their computer, well, that’s a foul stench even Princess Leia can smell from across the galaxy.

Carbonite forces you to answer a series of personal questions before it’ll let you reset, and not the standard biographical info you can find on the web about anyone. The clear winner in this security round is Carbonite.

Round Six: Cost

Both Carbonite and Mozy have limited trial versions, but these tests were done with the full versions. Mozy offers a multitiered plan of 2GB of backup for home users for free. Unlimited backups for home users are $4.95 per month (though 20 percent off codes are easy to find). Business users of the Pro version pay $3.95 a month plus 50 cents per GB. Carbonite is simpler at $54.95 a year for everyone ($4.58 a month, for those without calculators). Carbonite is less expensive, but Mozy does offer the free version. We’ll score this round a draw.

The Winner

Overall, there’s no clear winner in this fight. If you have multiple users on your computer, Carbonite wins by default because it easily backups all accounts and prevents others from tampering. Additionally, if security is of high concern, then Carbonite is also the winner due to Mozy’s terrible security practices. However, if you have exclusive control of your email and don’t have multiple people using your Mac, then Mozy might be the better choice since it has the friendlier pricing plans. Who wins? I’ll leave that up to you to let me know in the comments, and/or with your wallet.

But wait, a new contender approaches the ring! New to the scene is Internet darling BackBlaze. The winner of the Mozy vs. Carbonite bout will go on to fight BackBlaze in a further review, coming soon. Make your predictions now.

As you head out the door, you have your tickets, you set the alarm. What did you forget? Unless you’re boarding Oceanic Flight 815, you probably have little to really worry about, but there are a few things that will ease your anxiety and ensure that your trip is as stress-free as possible.

Sometimes you just can’t go back in time

Time Machine makes backups automatic, but your Time Machine drive is probably right next to the computer. You might have a problem with a magnetic disturbance, or you might simply face more mundane issues like floods or electrical storms while you are gone. Before you leave town, make a manual backup of your critical data and take your backup offsite. I keep mine in the glove compartment of my car parked at the airport (password-protected, of course).

If traveling with a laptop, don’t bring your primary Time Machine drive with you. It defeats the purpose of having your computer and backup in the same place; just ask Ed Baig from US Airways Flight 1549 — or some of the passengers of Oceanic Air…They always face disaster.

Be very afraid if Dennis Haysbert shows up on your doorstep

When the unforeseen occurs, are you sure you’re covered? What’s your deductible? Is data recovery included? Will it be excluded because of business purposes? Is it covered when it’s stolen from the car? Spend a few minutes and call your insurance agent so you know how to handle these things should disaster strike. Personally, I have all my computers “scheduled” on my homeowner’s policy. Juliet thought she’d be gone for a few weeks, and it turned out to be much longer. Her agent said it should have been on the business policy and not homeowner’s policy. Ouch. Good to know what your coverage is before disaster.

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Some numbers are easy to remember; others are harder. If the police call saying they’ve retrieved your MacBook, can you prove ownership? It’s hard to even make a police report without the serial number. Time is of the essence, because you never know when you might slip away. Choose “About this Mac” from the Apple Menu and click on the operating system version twice to get your serial number. Keep it in your wallet or at least tell it to a friend you can easily reach, if you can reach them.

Because sometimes having a working phone is vital

If your iPhone dies while out of town, is destroyed by “other” people, or just flakes out on you, do you have time to go to an Apple Store? Is there even one around? No phone while traveling is rough, especially for people like doctors and other professionals. Pop out the SIM card of your iPhone, put it in a disposable GoPhone, and you are, pardon the pun, good to go. I travel with a GoPhone for just this reason. You may not have all your data from your iPhone, but you do have a phone, and can hold tight until you get home.

Can you go back to the beginning?

You are on the road, and now your Mac is acting wonky. Unfortunately, you don’t have a software toolkit. What one disk would you take to a deserted island? Your Mac OS installer DVD. As long as the problem is software and not hardware, you can solve a multitude of woes with this DVD. You can boot off the DVD, repair the hard drive, get online, and even run a backup. In a worst-case scenario ,you do an Archive and Reinstall. You might need to reinstall applications, but on the road, you’ll at least be up and running. Think of it as a do-over without the bright flash of light.

Gosh, I really guess I’m missing TV over this summer break. I might be “lost,” but my Apple stuff isn’t. What tips do you have for traveling with your Mac and iPhone, besides avoiding Oceanic Airline flights over the South Pacific and paying attention to your fellow passengers?

Last December we pointed you to cloud-based backup solution, Backblaze. At the time it was only in beta release for Mac, but today that changes. Head on over and try Backblaze out for yourself, as it’s now open to the public.

There are several options in this space, but Backblaze approaches the backup issue from an exclusionary perspective. If you’re scratching your head at that explanation, try this. Rather than having to select all the files and folders that you believe you want to keep safe via backup, Backblaze assumes you want it all by default. It’s then up to you to filter out specific files and folders, and clip out media types and file sizes that you want Backblaze to ignore.

For only $5 per month, you get unlimited backup for a single computer (and connected drives). If you’re unsure — that’s a sweet deal. Restoring from their webpage is easy, and you can browse your backed-up file tree if you just need a specific file. You may opt to download zip files of your data, or pay for DVD media or USB hard drives with your restore data.

As with any backup solution, I feel that real-world examples help to illustrate the importance of this practice. Our data is important to us, and I don’t have to tell you that the majority resides on our computers. Personally, I don’t want to lose my family pictures, paid-for music downloads, and financial docs, so I backup religiously. Good thing, too, because just two weeks ago my 6-month-old unibody MacBook’s factory hard drive died a miserable death. Luckily, my backup was only three days old. Except for some local bookmarks and Macheist apps, nothing was lost.

So try Backblaze out for yourself. If it’s not for you, keep trying other options as well. Because I guarantee that sooner or later you too will be bitten by the dead hard drive. When that time comes, you’ll either be thanking me, or see me vividly in your dreams saying, “I told you so.” Maybe the latter is a bit much, but don’t wait and see for yourself!

Get ready for yet another cloud-based backup offering for the Mac. The folks at Carbonite are now shipping a beta version for us Mac folks. Should we be excited? Well, let’s see…

After trying out their software, I can’t say that it does anything more useful than my current solution, Backblaze. In fact, I can say it is less useful. Read on for details on the positives and negatives.

Installation & Main UI

Installing Carbonite is pretty straightforward. You download the package from the Carbonite site and follow the standard install process. Once installed, Carbonite adds a menu item and System Preference Pane.

Carbonite Primary UI

Within this screen, you can define if the Backup is Enabled, Disabled, or Paused. There is also a checkbox for using low-priority mode to conserve bandwidth. Honestly, I can’t tell if this is useful or not, as it took the app over 10 minutes just to calculate 100GB of data. Let’s say that from what I can tell, Carbonite is not speedy.

If you choose to disable Carbonite, this screen changes by adding an Uninstall button for quick and easy removal of the software.

Backup UI

What’s interesting here is that Carbonite works similarly to Mozy in terms of backing up specific data rather than just backing up all of your data like Backblaze or Time Machine. On the flip side, you can completely customize what you want to backup. However, you cannot specify applications or system folders.

Carbonite Backup UI

Restore UI

Carbonite can restore your files via this simple UI. Just select the files you want to restore and then specify the drive for restoration.

Carbonite Restore UI

It also has a restore wizard. So, if your drive fails and you need to restore to another Mac, you can simply walk through this wizard and wait patiently for your files to download.

Carbonite Restore Wizard

Summary

Carbonite has done a reasonable job providing a simple Mac client for users who want offsite backup. The product is easy to set up and is competitively priced. However…

If given the choice between Backblaze, Carbonite, or Mozy, the answer appears to be simple: Backblaze. For the money (each service is approximately $50/year), you get more coverage with Backblaze and more recovery options as well. Mozy is a great alternative if you want some free storage (2GB) and then decide to add more.

In the end, what Carbonite is offering for the Mac is decent. You get roughly a two-week trial, so if it fits your needs, then please give it a shot. If you’re a small office and have been running Carbonite on your Windows PCs, then to maintain consistency it makes sense to use Carbonite with your Macs.

However if you are looking at all of the options available to Mac users for online backup, I would recommend looking elsewhere.

I was recently introduced to the Drobo box. If you’re not familiar with it, simply put, it’s the ultimate home backup server.

For $400, you get a BeyondRAID array that can support up to 4 simultaneous drives, and caps at 16TB. Even cooler is the ability to swap out your drives with a single push of a button. Drobo will backup your files across each drive, so if one fails, your files are still safely stored on the others.

Backing Up

Drobo makes it apparent how easily it integrates with Time Machine right from the start. You can set the limit to how much Time Machine will backup on your Drobo drives, and with FireWire 800, or via your network, it’s hassle free backup just like Time Capsule.

iTunes Streaming

To add a little envy to the product, DroboApps features an iTunes Media extension that allows you to share your iTunes library across your network. Keep in mind it costs extra for the FireWire and Network support as it’s a separate attachment. So not only will it back up your data, but now it can stream your iTunes content to your Apple TV or computers across your network.

The Competition

Drobo may offer redundancy and media sharing,  but let’s look at some other viable options. Correct me if I’m wrong, but if you were to hook up a secondary drive to your Apple Time Capsule as a NAS drive, wouldn’t it be the same thing? One drive for back up, and one for sharing media across your network?

I question Drobo, only because from the people I know who have experienced it, and based on Drobo’s Amazon customer reviews, the device doesn’t seem 100 percent reliable. However their customer service record looks to make up for it.

Also considering other alternatives, such as HP’s Media Smart Server, I’m left wondering which is the most effective, but ultimately cost effective device for my home. I guess it really comes down to what matters most to you. If you’ve had experience with any or all of these devices, please share in the comments.

Backing up your computer is an essential task that many of us neglect until something goes horribly wrong. With OS X Leopard, Apple has made it much easier to ensure that your data is always backed up and protected through a feature called Time Machine.

Time Machine is an application that automatically synchronizes your computer hard drive with another storage device every hour. Reverting to an older version of a file is simple, facilitated through an interesting ’space-like’ interface.

This article will provide an introduction to Time Machine, explain how best to set your computer up, and the process of restoring a backup if you accidentally delete data or suffer a hard drive failure.

What You’ll Need

There are two main requirements for using Time Machine. First is a copy of OS X Leopard — older versions of the operation system don’t include the backup software. Second is an external hard drive.

I’d generally recommend buying the largest hard drive you can afford. The more capacity, the more room there is to store older files (and the further back in time you can go to restore a file). At the minimum, the drive should be bigger than the internal drive in your Mac.

Apple does offer a dedicated router/hard drive combination called Time Capsule, coming in either 500GB or 1TB varieties. If you’d like a all-in-one network router and backup drive, it’s a great option — if you plan on using it solely as a hard drive, it does work out expensively.

Setting Up Time Machine

The quickest way to get started with setting up Time Machine is simply to plug in your new hard drive. OS X will recognize that you haven’t used the drive before, and ask whether you’d like it to function as a Time Machine backup. Alternatively, head into System Preferences, select Time Machine, and choose your new hard drive from the list of options that appear.

Once set up, Time Machine will begin to back up your drive for the first time. The initial process will copy every single file from your computer’s hard drive to your backup drive. This could involve copying many thousands of files, and will likely take a couple of hours. Be patient, and choose a time when you won’t need to unplug your laptop or power down the machine.

The speed will also depend upon how the hard drive you are using is connected. If plugged in directly via USB (as most will be), the process will be relatively quick. If you’re using a Time Capsule or other networked hard drive you may need to be prepared for a slightly longer wait.

After the initial process Time Machine will only copy files that have been added or changed in the past hour, making future backups far quicker. You’ll find that the following backups are kept:

• Hourly backups for the past 24 hours
• Daily backups for the past month
• Weekly backups until your backup hard drive is full

Changing Options

There are very few options to tinker with when setting up Time Machine, but those that do exist are worth noting.

Firstly, you are able to specify a number of files or folders which you’d like Time Machine to refrain from backing up. This isn’t usually necessary, but can be handy for large files which you don’t need to keep safe.

In addition, you can tell Time Machine not to back up when your laptop is running on battery power to conserve energy, and specify whether you’d like to receive a warning when older backups are deleted.

Restoring Individual Files

Should you lose a file or accidentally delete it, open the folder which used to contain the file, and launch Time Machine. You’ll be presented with a window similar to the following:

Clicking the arrows to the right of the screen will go forward or backward in time, scanning through the various backup dates. It’s possible to take a closer look at a file through Quick Look, by selecting a file and pressing the Spacebar.

When you’ve found the file to restore, select it and press the ‘Restore’ button in the lower right corner. Time Machine will exit and copy the file back to its original location. If it would involve overwriting an existing file, it will ask you what action you’d like to take. Easy!

Restoring an Entire Backup

If the worst happens and you suffer a hard drive failure (or, on a more optimistic note, buy a new Mac!) you may need to copy everything back across from your Time Machine disk. Again, this is a fairly simple process.

If you’ve purchased a new Mac, you’ll be asked when setting it up whether you would like to ‘Migrate’ from a Time Machine backup — simply agree, and follow the instructions to proceed.

If you are booting from an installation CD (after suffering a hard drive failure), select the ‘Utilities’ option from the menu bar, then “Restore from Time Machine Backup.” You then select the Time Machine drive you wish to restore from and follow the simple instructions. Your Mac should be back up and running in no time!

Other Solutions

If you’d prefer not to use Time Machine, there are a couple of other options available:

• Use a utility to create an entire “clone” of your hard drive onto another on a regular basis, such as SuperDuper!
• Use an online service such as Dropbox or Syncplicity to backup important files and documents to your online storage space

Conclusion

Time Machine provides a simple, ’set it and forget’ backup solution. You’ll need to spend some money to pick up an external hard drive, but I guarantee it will seem worth it when you accidentally delete a set of family photos, an important business document, or your music collection.

Restoring is simple, and it even makes the process of swapping to a new computer almost seamless. Remember to pay attention to any error messages which may pop up occasionally, and regularly try to restore a file (just to check that your backup is functioning as it should)!

Hopefully you’re now all set up and ready to sit back and relax while your Mac keep itself well protected.

These days our lives revolve around our computers — for better or worse. We keep our finances there, photos, purchased music, and much much more. It seems like a no brainer that we should all be backing up our data regularly, but it still surprises me how often I hear from a friend that they’ve lost everything. I’ve written about the importance of backups before — illustrated by my own dead drive experience – so don’t write this off as something that can’t happen to you.

All you need to backup your computer is software, external storage space, and the will to set the two up. From my experience, the last of the three represents the greatest barrier to entry. Whether it be a lack of understanding or possibly a fear of how to setup the actual backup, and which files to choose for inclusion, I’m not sure — maybe both?

Well friends, I present you with Backblaze. For $5 per month (that’s the price of Starbucks for one day after all!) you have an internet based exclusion (that means you only choose what NOT to save) backup solution with unlimited storage space. That’s correct — there is no limit to the amount of data you backup with Backblaze. Ever. Your data is stored securely (via AES, military grade encryption) in the 365 Main datacenter, and can be further protected with your own private password. Versions are kept for 4 weeks in the event you overwrite something accidentally. And then when it is time to retain your backed up files, you have three options for doing so: Download a zip file, have DVDs burned of your data, or order a USB drive to be sent to you.

As is to be expected, Backblaze comes with both pros and cons. I invite you to read on to determine how the features and limitations may fit into your specific set of needs. And if this sounds like something that’s up your alley, the first 50 readers from The Apple Blog to follow this link will get in on the Mac beta (the rest will be able to sign up for future beta offerings) and have a 15 day, fully functional trial period.

The Upsides:

• Easy!
  If you haven’t yet begun backing up your data, this is a fantastic way to begin. Now.
• Backup Anywhere
  You don’t need a hard drive or be near one to backup your data for a rainy day.
• Runs Automatically
  Backblaze runs in the background, so you don’t need to schedule it or remember to kick it off manually.
• Exclusion Based
  Especially for the novice user, it’s much simpler to exclude the data you don’t care about, than figure out all of the stuff that you do care to keep safe. Choose to exclude file types, specific files, folders, or even limit to file sizes.
• Web-based File Browser
  The web interface is simple and effective. Once your files have been backed up to Backblaze, there’s a web-based file viewer which displays all the files that have been saved. Come restore time, you can select any files or folders you wish to retrieve, and they will be prepared in a zip file for your download (or a DVD or USB drive which would be mailed to you).
• Off Site Data
  Having your data backed-up off site is piece of mind in case, heaven forbid, your home burns to the ground, taking your backup with it!
• Encryption
  AES keeps your data safe from even determined prying eyes.
• 5 Bucks!
  And really, can you beat the price at only $5 per month for unlimited data?!

The Potential Downsides:

• “Speed”
  A couple of factors weigh heavily on the speed of the Backblaze internet-centric backup solution: your connection speed, and amount of data needing to be backed-up. Media files (photos, movies, music) take up a great deal of storage space and at a 6Mbps cable connection like I have, it would’ve taken weeks to backup everything I really wanted to save. (For the purposes of this review, I limited to a single folder and then, only files under 2 megs.)
• Security Concerns
  The encryption in use with Backblaze is top notch, but if you’re the tinfoil hat type (or if you’re just rightly concerned about your sensitive files), you may not be feeling great about letting your data out of your posession.
• Restoration Costs
  While backups over the web are free, it’s not very convenient with a huge amount of data (I’m sporting 150 gigabytes…) to download in order to restore. The alternative is to pay for [a maximum of 4.2GB of data on] DVDs, or a USB hard drive of your data to be mailed out. The most convenient being the USB drive, which is easily the cost of buying your own drive for personal use and then some. (To restore my 1.3GB of test data, DVDs would have run me $99, or a USB drive $189.)

At the end of the day, Backblaze represents a backup solution that is within anyone’s grasp. The setup is almost nonexistent, it runs in the background (essentially saving you from yourself), and the service cost is almost nonexistent at only $5 a month. Despite some downsides, the functionality is solid and I truly forgot about it once I set it up and let it go. There’s piece of mind in knowing that, without any interaction, your data will be safe if and when you need it. I think if you’re not already backing your data up, you should definitely start today, and Backblaze could be the perfect place to start.

One of the things I loved about the old Mac OS Classic was that to create a bootable disk, all you had to do was make a folder named System Folder, drag in System and Finder files and an Appearance Folder, then drag your bare-bones System Folder to a disk — hard drive, Zip, floppy, CD-R, etc — and voila! you were in business. Usually one would add a few more items like Control Panels and Extensions folders, Preferences and Fonts folders, but it was a simple, quick and not-too-dirty way to make bootable disks.

Alas, you can’t do that with OS X and its thousands of tiny, usually invisible files, but the next best thing is disk cloning, which is to make a copy of an existing bootable volume on another disk or drive. This is excellent for backups, but has the added advantage of allowing you to create bootable disks without going through the hassle of running an OS X installer program.

There are several software utilities available that can clone drives, but it’s hard to go wrong with Mike Bombich’s Carbon Copy Cloner, which is offered as uncrippled shareware, with donations suggested if you like the software and decide to continue using it once you’ve checked it out.

Backups Too

Besides drive cloning, Carbon Copy Cloner allows you to do backups and drive synchronization. supporting any HFS+ formatted partition or hard drive (excluding volumes used for Time Machine) as well as FireWire and USB hard drives, including iPods. Note that not all FireWire hard drives are bootable with Mac OS X, and while it is sometimes possible for Intel-based Macs to boot from USB hard drives, it’s not a sure thing.

Note also that for bootability you must format the FireWire drive with the appropriate partition map using Apple’s Disk Utility or other formatting software. The Disk Utility formatting selection sheet (Options button) is self-explanatory.

You can read more about formatting issues and my using CCC to create a bootable clone of my main hard drive to a SimpleTech Duo Pro Hard Drive here.

CCC’s marquee function is cloning one hard drive volume to another, copying every single file to create an exact replica of your source hard drive. Aside from the obvious comprehensive backup you get, if it’s done to a bootable volume you can, say, send your computer in for repairs while continuing to boot and use your standard work configuration until you get your computer back, then just clone the FireWire drive’s updated content back to your internal drive.

Using CCC for Backup and Synchronization

CCC can also be used as a backup utility. When you select a source volume, CCC displays the contents of that volume (including normally hidden items). Uncheck items that you don’t want to back up, select a target volume, and press the clone button. CCC also is smart enough to scan the source and target volumes for files to be copied, and only copy only files that have changed. You can also schedule automated backups.

Another advantage of CCC backups is that rather than using proprietary archival methods, CCC backs up your data to an ordinary filesystem that you can browse in the Finder. To restore your backup data, just select your backup medium as the source drive and the backup destination as your new target volume, and let CCC do its stuff.

Carbon Copy Cloner 3 also supports cloning to disk images, which you can use to restore content to a physical hard drive and produce a bootable, exact clone of the original.

Carbon Copy Cloner 3 requires Mac OS X 10.4.8 or later. Version 2.3 is still available for Mac OS 10.2 and 10.3 users.

The past two weeks have been fairly hectic, with little time to deal with anything but security updates to software (hence, no software update news). This week, however, my iPhone needed some serious care and feeding as it was taking forever to load up the SMS screens since I have saved most every SMS I have received since purchasing the phone last July. Despite the iPhone using SQLite as the foundation information store for items such as SMS messages and Contacts, a large number of entries in these repositories seems to slow the associated user interfaces to a crawl (which is probably an app/UI issue more than it is a database issue). Rather than just clear the extended conversations, I wanted to have an accessible, readable backup of them first.

I turned to Ecamm’s PhoneView program as it has been much Twittered about lately and is from the makers of the most excellent Call Recorder software (highly useful for Skype interviews). Along with providing access to SMS history (which is what I really wanted) it also claims to provide easy access to your iTunes media, photos, notes, call history and contacts, including the ability to drag and drop each file from the iPhone to your desktop.

After downloading the trial version, just plug in your iPhone and it will automagically recognize the device and load up the data from it:

While I will not be showing the SMS retrieval portion (it would pretty much be a gigantic redacted block), the notes feature,

call history feature (with export to tab-delimited file capability),

and disk view mode make it a very handy tool.

This is one app where I highly recommend tweaking the default preferences since it will come up each time you connect your iPhone if you do not disable that ability.

I was all set to purchase PhoneView, but kept having shopping cart issues and really wanted to get the SMS bits off of it prior to both clearing the SMS databases and installing iPhone OS 2.0.2, so I turned to a less interactive solution that requires a bit of command-line-fu.

First, grab unravel, a small Perl script which you will use to rifle through your iPhone backup files (which are liberally generated these days). Then, using the Finder’s “Go to Folder…” option (via the “Go” menu), enter: ~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup

Each of the weirdly named directories contains various backups of your iPhone data. Copy the Perl script to the most recently modified folder. Now, you will need the full path of that folder to continue and I suggest using either the Finder toolbar or keyboard-shortcut version of Open Terminal Here to make your life much easier. Either manually, or via “Open Terminal Here”, fire up Terminal.app, change directories and run the Perl script (yours may be named unravel.perl.pl or unravel.perl depending on how you or your browser saved it).

You can browse the results by going to ~/iPhone/Backup in the Finder. The SMS database is in ~/iPhone/Backup/Library/SMS and I recommend grabbing the open source SQLite Database Browser to look at and export any of the SQLite databases.

If you can get through Ecamm’s shopping cart, the $19.95USD is a pretty good deal as it gives you a decent interface and free upgrades for life. If you just need to grab information once in a while or have some casual interest in what can be pulled from the iPhone backup files, then unravel may be a good option for you.

What extra tools do you use to manage your iPhone data? If you’ve used unravel or PhoneView, sound off in the comments!

I just plugged in my 4th external hard drive today – the 1TB My Book Essential Edition. That brings my total external storage capacity to about 2TB – which is pretty good considering most people don’t have ANY sort of backup solution. But as I was plugging in the new drive I came to a realization that my backup solution was actually only a 50% solution to my backup needs.

The hard truth is hard drives fail. Manufacturers quote a lifespan of approximately 5 to 10 years. But most of us know that estimate is about as accurate as Apple’s estimated battery life. So although I have an entire row of hard drives, if one of them were to fail I would be “fraked.” (No, I can’t believe I said that either)

So in order to truly sleep soundly at night I moved my most sensitive and important data online. I looked into a number of different solutions including Mozy, Box.net, and even a manual upload using my Dreamhost account – but none of those solutions met all my needs. I wanted something simple to use and a solution that could grow depending on my changing backup needs.

Jungle Disk Desktop 2 seems like the best solution for the job right now. Although the price might turn some people away (read: it’s cheap but not free) the pricing structure allows you to pay for only what you use since the application uses Amazon’s S3 internet storage service. After the one-time purchase of $20, this translates into $0.15 per GB-Month of storage used, $0.10 per GB of data uploaded, and $0.17 per GB of data downloaded. For my current needs I’m paying about $1.95 per month for storage and pennies each month to upload new data.

The best feature of Jungle Disk Desktop is the fact that your Jungle Disk mounts just like your iDisk – allowing you to access your files directly from the Finder. Drag and drop, copy and delete. You can use your Jungle Disk just like any other hard drive.

Jungle Disk Desktop 2, which was just released this week provides some welcome upgrades to the previous version. Perhaps the biggest change is the user interface. The new backup preview dialog so you can see exactly what will be backed up and the selection dialog makes it faster and easier to set up automatic backup.

The new version, which is a free upgrade to previous users, also includes a number of other upgrades and new features including:

• Better “bucket” management – Jungle Disk uses Amazon’s “bucket” structure to store files. Amazon S3 itself doesn’t have a built-in notion of directories or folders at all. Because of this, it is up to each application that uses S3 to decide how to use buckets to store files and folders. The new bucket features allow you, among other things, to encrypt your data without having to re-upload your data.
• Support for connecting to multiple buckets at the same time
• Support for multiple backup jobs with independent scheduling
• New command line options to integrate with external task schedulers and batch jobs
• Expanded bandwidth limiting feature

I’ve used Jungle Disk primarily to backup my iPhoto library – the most precious 13GB of data I own. However, due to the changing nature of the iPhoto library, I opted to purchase the optional Jungle Disk Plus service which allows you to make block-level file updates – uploading only the changed portions of your large files. It also gives you web-based access to the files (even via iPhone) and the ability to resume uploads of large files where they left off. The Plus service will run you an extra $1 per month, but I think the savings in both bandwidth cost and time are worth it. Every week at a given time, Jungle Disk scans my iPhoto library file for changes and uploads them. That’s it. It’s that easy.

Of course, if you’re uploading a large amount of data it’s going to take time. As I write this post I’m backing up an additional 6GB using my cable internet connection at 360 kbits/sec. According to Jungle Disk it’s going to take approximately 1 day and 13 hours to finish uploading. But if you’re performing incremental backups quietly in the background or in the middle of the night, this shouldn’t be an issue.

After using Jungle Disk for a few weeks, I have to say I’m impressed. It’s proven to be the easiest, most convenient, and most affordable solution for me. It quietly backs up my data in the background and I feel safe knowing that my data is floating around inside Amazon’s data cloud. Combined with my external hard drive backups, I can now sleep soundly at night knowing my family photos are backed up.

Many people still have not made the “Leopard leap” and upgraded to Apple’s latest operating system. And of those who have, I am sure there are many that are either not using Time Machine, or want an off-site backup system. It is nice to be able to back up all your stuff to a backup hard drive, and pray your home or office does not go up in flames. Apple has provided a partial system available for this, the wireless base station with a hard drive, called Time Capsule. This walkthrough for beginners is meant to help those who don’t have a backup system get their most important files onto an off-site backup site quickly and easily. Plus, I will tell you how to get a few extra gigs of backup space beyond the free 2.0 gigs.

The Set Up

The first thing you want to do is go to [referral link: I'll explain why you should use a referral link later] mozy.com and get signed up. I know there are a lot of other products out there, but this is one that I have used for both backup and a restore of my files, and it does work. 

When you get to the home page, you will click on MozyHome. MozyPro is an unlimited account for businesses. Sadly, Mozy does not offer the free 2GB on the home page, so you will need to click through to find it. 

Once you do click on MozyHome, you will find the free sign-up about half-way down the page, on the left-hand side. It looks like the picture above, but without the red arrow. Click “Sign Up Now, and I will walk you through the process.

You will come to a screen that looks like the one above. Fill out all the information, and click continue.

This little survey is a bit of an annoyance, but you need to fill it out anyway. Mozy won’t let you continue if you don’t. My personal feelings about this, though, is that if you are getting something for free, it is fine to pay with a little background info so the company knows who is utilizing their service. And, luckily, Mozy has a sense of humor about their request for you to fill out this “soul-sucking” survey.

As I stated above, use a referral link. For each person that you refer that uses the free service, you get an extra 256 MB. The good thing is whoever uses a referral code, regardless of whose code it is, also gets an extra 256 MB. Let’s spread the love, leave your referral codes in the comments so those who sign up can get some extra space.

You need to start using the service for the extra storage space to appear in either account.

Once you click the link in the email address you provided Mozy, you will come to a screen like the one above. Click “Download for Mac” and you will be able to download the desktop client that allows you do the actual backups. You will download a DMG file (disk image file) that you will need to open. 

If you get a warning like the one above, disregard it, and open the file, anyway.

Once it is downloaded and opened, you will need to open the Mozy 1.0.0.0 Installer. Double click that, follow the prompts on-screen, enter your computer password when it prompts you, and Mozy will be installed. As it is installing, you will probably get a pop-up that says, “This package contains a program that determines if the software can be installed. Are you sure you want to continue?” Click “Continue.”

Once it is installed, It will open up the configuration screen. This is where you decide what you will backup. There are two things here that are important: Backup Sets and Files and Folders. Files and Folders will allow you to go through the Finder and select specific files and folders that you want to back up. This option works great if you are fairly organized.

The Backup Sets section will back up all the files of a certain type, or related to a certain program. If you have a million things saved to your desktop, with no rhyme or reason, you can choose to save all your presentations and spreadsheets, and Mozy will search through your folders all over your computer to find the types of files you request.

You can select items from each of these, and you can add different sets to the backup sets window. For example, you could create a set that included all your files for a certain project, and then you just have that box checked. Mozy integrates Spotlight nicely, so you can easily search for files that you have named a certain way. So you can put a BU at the end of each file you create and it will be automatically added to the backup set you created.

When you are ready, select “Save Configuration.” If you have not yet backed up, Mozy will ask you to backup. Depending on how much you have selected to back up, this could take a very long time. I suggest starting the backup just before you go to bed. Mozy says it may take many days to back everything up, but it only took a couple hours on a wireless connection for me to back up my 1.5 GB.

Preferences

One drawback of the Mozy backup system is that it by default backs up your computer whenever you aren’t using it. It is a drawback because it takes a lot of resources to run the backup program, which slows down the rest of what you are doing.
Luckily, you can easily change it.

I suggest you keep all these boxes checked. That way, Mozy can update as it needs to, and you will always know what Mozy is doing if its status is in the menu bar. The menu bar menu looks like the picture below. You can see the Mozy logo at the top. When Mozy is not backing up, it is grey and black. It turns black and orange when it is backing up.

Typically, I leave my computer on at night, and so I backup every morning at two a.m. I turned off the automatic backup because I am often away from my computer for a time, and then I need to get back to something else that is resource-heavy. It was very annoying to wait for five minutes for anything to happen. Besides, my computer doesn’t crash very often, so I don’t need backups multiple times a day.

Since I am the only user of my fiber-optic Internet connection at home, I don’t need to throttle my bandwidth usage. You may need to, so it is there. The more it is throttled, the slower the backup could be, so be aware that this could be the case if your backups are taking a long time.

Restoring Your Files

When you lose files, erase your hard drive, or your computer crashes, it is time to restore. To restore your files, you will log in to your Mozy account. There are three options when you choose “Restore Files” from the list on the left of your “My Account” screen. You can choose to restore your files through DVD, Mac Client Restore, or Web Restore. For a processing and shipping fee, Mozy will send your files on a DVD. You can also download straight through the browser for a web restore. We will choose the Mac Client Restore for this walkthrough. This is great for a small number of files.
From the Mozy menu bar icon, you will select “Restore Files…”

For me, this box stays up for a couple minutes before I get anything else.

You can select the backup date that you want to restore your files from. Choose the location and click “Restore” to start downloading those files.

The download process is pretty quick, and didn’t take as long as I thought it would. The files are saved by default to your desktop, but you can put them wherever you want to.

Alternatively, you can download everything using your browser or you can order a DVD.

All in all, this is a very easy program to use. If you need more than the standard 2 GB of backup space, they do have an unlimited option for $4.95 per month for home users. Their business service does not support Macs.

Macworld 2008’s keynote is currently underway and the first new product out of the gates is Time Capsule.

Time Capsule seems to be Apple’s answer to wirelessly backing up your data with Time Machine. Time Capsule is an Airport Extreme base station with a “server grade” internal hard drive. It looks pretty much identical to the Airport Extreme Apple currently offers.

There will be 2 versions available: 500 GB version at $299 and 1 TB at $499.

Thinking back a few years, I remember every time I needed to upgrade my system or prepare for a format, I’d rely on using CD-Rs as a method for backing up my media and documents. Pain yes, efficient no, effective, yes. Of course this was back in the early XP days when I needed to format every 6 months to keep my sanity, and my computer booting. But as I grew older, so did my volumes of content. Eventually good fortune was bestowed on me, and a bad Trojan Virus led me to my first iBook. From there formatting wasn’t an issue, now it was only a matter of backing up. Three years and one hard drive later, I had learned my lesson the hard way.

Needless to say I began to look for much more efficient tools to remain organized and safe in case that one inevitable day should return, hard drive hiccups and all. I began using an external for basic back up. Thanks to OS X’s ability to simply copy files from my Library to save settings, I was able to back up my iCal, Address book and other application preferences. For software it was more of an issue, keeping .dmg’s can be tough. Documents were simple drag and drop, and media, in all its extenuating glory took quite a bit of time. Then came Mozy. And I was happy. It seemed that for 2 gigs of space I would be able to keep a constant back up of key files, documents, few pictures, and application preferences. Having it completely in the cloud and up to date without me touching it, seemed like the perfect blend of web and application.

I did come across SuperDuper! in my trials, and without paying, the free version only allows for a complete wipe of an external drive and an exact duplicate of your hard drive. I gave it a shot, and felt content only until I realized how quickly I add or update files. Without paying for it, free would be out of the option. I finally saw Leopard spots on the horizon and began preparing my backups for a completely clean install and restore for my now MacBook. I figured now would be the best time if any to put all my backing up methods to the test. So I re-plugged in my external and re-SuperDuper!’d my entire Tiger operating system to create a bootable external drive. Thinking about it made me feel the most secure, mostly because of the issues I kept hearing regarding Leopard installs. Next I made sure my Mozy was synced up ready to go with the nearly all 2 gigs filled with documents, app preferences and more. CD-R’s you ask? I think I’ve had enough for a few lifetimes, and for the record I never had a Re-Writeable drive in those days, so you can imagine how fun it was for me every 6 months to re-burn everything. Having a 2 gig thumb drive, however, I duplicated all the files going to my Mozy on it for reference, and well, just in case.

Despite the few Leopard install issues I was hearing about, I was prepared for my clean install, and ready to migrate everything if necessary from my external drive. It was my hope that Mozy would be the most efficient method for getting set back up on Leopard. So now came the faithful moment. I popped in the Leopard CD and after one necessary Disk Permission Repair, I had a completely formatted MacBook and Leopard ready to go. So I accessed Mozy’s site, logged in and saw three choices for retrieving my files. One, download the client and restore; two, request the files be sent to me via email; three, buy a DVD burned of my files mailed to me. One, I downloaded the client, set it up, but when I chose to restore files, no files appeared in my directory. It took me a minute, but I finally found them. Browsing through my files, a few were missing, namely my iCal. I attributed this to Leopards new and improved iCal which no longer resides in the Library. However I soon realized more was missing, including documents, and other application files. Odd, I remember backing them up, yup, they’re all on the thumb drive. Let’s see the other options. Two, sure, I’ll request it by email, but it takes a few hours to receive the e-mail, and 2 gigs will take a bit of time to download. And three, despite being cheap, I decided that CD/DVD’s would be a bit aged for my transition, after all this isn’t Windows anymore. So I figured having them e-mail me my files would consist of the same ones the client found, so I hit restore, choice number one (the one Mozy recommends). Seeing the amount of time it would take to download for files that are patchy at best, I gave up after the first twenty minutes. It wasn’t worth my time to reorganize files that weren’t going to be there. So I fired up my external drive, and migrated my life back over, applications and all.

I know, you’re all thinking well it’s great you now have Time Machine. It might be for some, but I haven’t set it up yet, and still remain a bit apprehensive about it. I’ve been hearing issues arising with it, moreover I feel a possible hard drive plus RAM hog. The alarm bells are ringing, and until I see it in physical action, I think I’ll stick to what I have. Unfortunately SuperDuper! isn’t Leopard ready, and for the record I did eventually opt to buy it and be able to sync only new files, or updated files to the external. For Tiger it was an immense life saver, and once it’s Leopard ready, I believe it will be my go to system. Maybe it’s hard to let old methods die, and maybe I’m taking the long way, but I’ve always been a, “better to be safer, than sorry” kind of guy.

For those who love the idea of uploading to cloud for immediate access wherever you are, I did finally find something worth trying. Box.net offers a 1 gig free account with a good number of features to boot. You can publicly share files, folders, or have a Facebook widget of your files. And so I’ve decided to backup my entire Documents folder to it in case I need to access it globally. But dragging and dropping files can be really tedious, especially if you have to do it one at a time. So thanks to Firefox, and the FileUploader application, I can access my Box.net account and simply drag and drop my entire Documents folder at once for an entire sync. It’s no “back up” system that will automatically retrieve files, and update files, but it is a simple tool provided you keep organized.

LifeBoat, from Martian Technologies, is a really cool idea. Automatically back up particular files to USB drives whenever I plug them in? Oh yes, please! However, in execution – well, it was a bit problematic.

Let me talk, first, about what it does, and does well.

You, the user, plug in a USB key. LifeBoat asks you if you want to update the backup, you tell it yes, and it zips your files right over to the key. (Actually, you just fail to tell it no in less than five seconds.) After it updates, it then pops up a dialog asking if you want to eject the drive or keep working with it. When not in use, LifeBoat perches in the menu bar, convenient and tiny, waiting.

This is great for a certain market. I’ve been trying the GTD thing lately, and I put an Inbox and Outbox on my desktop. LifeBoat is amazing for sucking the contents of those off at the end of the day to take home with me if I’m using a Mac wherever that backup is going.

Which brings me to my big gripe with LifeBoat: it stores its backups as .dmg’s. Last I checked, nothing but a Mac reads .dmg’s. I had this clever fantasy that, when I plugged in my LifeBoat drive, I could slurp off all the files that I needed to take to the mailroom and print, wander down the hall, and print them, simply by making a LifeBoat out of my Outbox file.

Ah, nope.

Oh, and you should really stay away from any LifeBoat that backs up more than 1 GB of stuff, at least if you have any plans to do work on your computer in the next half hour. I know, I know, to some people that’s a really big backup, but I’m a TTD-type person, and I tried to back up my iTunes library to an external drive. Man, was that a bad idea. Of course, so was backing up my Experiments folder, which weighs in at about a gig and a half.

To recap: LifeBoat is great, if you want to back up small amounts of vital data every time you pop in your thumbdrive. Not so much, though, if you need substantial backups or if you want to take your backups to another platform.

I tested LifeBoat on a 2.16GHz C2D MacBook Pro with 2 GB of RAM, running 10.4.10. External drives were a WD myBookPro, using both the FW800 and the USB interfaces, and a 1 GB Verbatim Store’n'Go non-U3 flash drive.