Backup Help Please!

[The Moose]

I'd like to set up a new backup setup for 2 of my Macs. The requirements are:

Mac 1 - 250GB on main HDD, 300GB on Ext HDD 1, 250GB on Ext HDD 2 (the second HDD isn't the end of the world if it isn't backed up but would be preferable).

Mac 2 - 250GB on main HDD

It looks to me that Carbonite wouldn't be a bad option (only 1 external HDD but I can live with that), however if you don't have an external HDD connected for over 30 days, those files aren't backed up any more. I need longer than that.

What are the best options please PH Computer Gurus?

[marshalla]

Define "best", please ? How often are you likely to need to restore ? How much data are you generating/changing how often ? How many other local backups do you have ?

[The Moose]

marshalla said:

Define "best", please ? How often are you likely to need to restore ? How much data are you generating/changing how often ? How many other local backups do you have ?

To work out 'the best', requirements:

Frequency of Restore - hopefully (!!) infrequently

Data Generation - not a huge amount. Maybe 2GB of data uploads per month

1 Local backup (another external HDD), absolutely 'mission critical' stuff is also backed up onto DVD as and when

Cost - this is not a key factor. I'm not looking to spend hundreds a month

[mikef]

As well as the obvious Apple Time Machine for painless rollbacks, I'm using Acronis True Image for Mac to back up to a mixture of attached disks, NAS and Aconis Cloud ("unlimited" cloud backup storage)

I don't need to back up any attached drives, but I'm pretty sure Acronis will handle that

[The Moose]

mikef said:

As well as the obvious Apple Time Machine for painless rollbacks, I'm using Acronis True Image for Mac to back up to a mixture of attached disks, NAS and Aconis Cloud ("unlimited" cloud backup storage)

I don't need to back up any attached drives, but I'm pretty sure Acronis will handle that

Thank you very much - I'll look up Acronis

[Craikeybaby]

That's a lot of data for an initial upload to a cloud service! I used to use Mozy, but found that the uploads were taking way too long, so switched to hard drives kept away from the house, with only key files in the cloud.

My set up for my macs is below:

iMac + external drive with 300GB data
External harddrive is partitoned to be 50% Time Machine drive and 50% image catalogue. This drive is always connected to the iMac, so Time Machine takes an incremental backup without any intervention from me. If I need to restore data Time Capsule is my first port of call.
As easy as it is to restore from this it isn't a full back up, so I have a couple of extra hard drives which are kept away from the house. "Clone" is a full bootable clone of the iMac's internal harddrive, done using CCCloner. If the worst happened, I could take this drive to my Dad's house, and boot his Mac from it and have access to all my files etc. The second drive also uses CCCloner to clone the image catalogue on the external drive attached to the iMac. Using a different back up application for the secondary back up minimises the risk of problems being replicated on all copies of your data.

I run the CCCloner tasks every week, the application nags me to make sure it gets done, or after completing a big bit of work.

MacBook
Most of what I do on the MacBook tends to be in the clound anyway, so I'm less fussed about losing data. I have a hard drive which I connect every so often and let Time Machine take a backup.

I used a Time Capsule with my last MacBook, but my new one gets used away from home too, so wanted a back up I could take with me on longer trips. If your Macs mainly stay at home the Time Capsule is a great way of doing one of your back ups.