Mac Backup software

[Quackers]

Whats the best way of backup up Mac Laptops?

 

With our Windows based ones we just use offline files to a server and backup from there.

 

Is there a free piece of software or method to make the Mac OS X laptops act in a similar way? or something to keep the local folders in sync with the SMB share , even if its just manual. Been looking at apple script but i aint great with programming.

[pantscat]

TimeMachine? Maybe doesn't scale terribly well though...

[Quackers]

Was looking at the time machine but don't really want to backup the whole mac just the user data really and i was under the impression the Time Machine keeps making images? or am i wrong as i don't have one to understand how they work.

[maark]

We use a qnap nas - this can emulate a time machine at a lower cost and you can put 4 x 4GB sata disks in.

You can choose folders to sync to time machine so can have just user data.

[pantscat]

You can configure TimeMachine to exclude certain folders - so in effect it will only be backing up the "users" folders.

[3s-gtech]

Been asked to look at Silverkeeper here - it's not half bad really and free.

[Chris_Cook]

How about Crashplan? Its free if you have another computer to backup to.

[Arthur]

Was looking at the time machine but don't really want to backup the whole mac just the user data really

The following article explains how to backup just the /Users folder in Time Machine.

 

Mass Deploying Time Machine « Krypted

 

In Time Machine, all data is backed up by default. Therefore, rather than define what the source is, you define what the source is not. Once a target location has been defined, the next thing many Time Machine users do is define any data that is not to be kept in the Time Machine backups. This is done with the addexclusion verb. These exclusions are defined using the Options button of the Time Machine System Preference pane as well.

 

To use the addexclusion verb, simply define a list of items that are not to be backed up as arguments separated by spaces. The tmutil command will then use those items as an array.

 

tmutil addexclusion /System /Library /Applications /var /etc /Developer /Groups /Incompatible Software /Volumes /bin /cores /usr /tmp /temp /opt /net /home /Shared Items /Network /Groups

 

I was under the impression the Time Machine keeps making images?

Maybe you are thinking of DeployStudio? TM doesn't create images.

[Gerk]

Carbon Copy Cloner (which is basically just a front-end for rsync with some added bells and whistles) can do this. It's not free any longer but it's inexpensive. You can pick exactly which dirs to backup and the location to back them up at and schedule backups.

[Gerk]

Oh and _never_ trust time machine. I've seen it fail so many times it's ridiculous ... even when it looks like it's working you can sometimes end up not being able to actually get your data back out of it when you need to. Go figure, a bad hack using all kinds of hard links on an unsupported filesystem. What could possibly go wrong?