What is the ultimate home backup setup?
Adam Turner thinks he's found the ultimate backup setup for both Mac and PC, that will have you back up and running in 10 minutes after a hard drive failure.
If you don't have a thorough backup system, you could lose everything before you finish read this blog post. Tax records, school assignments, family photos, home movies. Everything. Gone.
I've suffered a few hard drive failures over the years, but I've never lost much thanks to a paranoid approach to backups. Since I moved to Mac at the start of this year I've never been completely happy with my backup arrangements, so I've just overhauled the way I do things.
I was somewhat inspired by a colleague's tale of woe. He was burgled this week and, along with money and jewellery, the thieves made off with a notebook and his iPhone.
Not only do they have access to his address book but also his email and calendar, forcing him to cancel his upcoming appointments in case the thieves plan a return trip when he was scheduled to be out of the house. With that in mind, my backup overhaul has looked at security as well as data protection.
My Windows XP Backup plan
When I was a Windows XP user, my backup system looked something like this;
- Divide hard drive into OS and DATA partitions
- Move My Documents folder to DATA partition, redirect folders using Tweak UI
- Use Norton Ghost 2003 to image the OS partition to the data partition
(This made it easy to restore the OS without losing recent changes to documents. Unlike other versions, Ghost 2003 doesn't require you inserting the original disc to run a restore)
- Use Handy Backup to backup My Documents to a network drive daily.
- Use Handy Backup to backup active documents to SD card every 10 minutes and FTP every 30 minutes, keeping the last 100 versions or so.
- Burn My Documents to DVD weekly and store it offsite
Sounds extreme, but takes only 10 minutes to recover from any hard drive failure
Admittedly this all sounds kind of extreme, but it meant a hard drive failure would never cost me more than 10 minutes work, and fire or theft never more than 30 minutes. It also ensured my kids will still have baby photos when they're 21.
What do you do on a Mac?
When I considered moving to Ubuntu late last year I couldn't find anything offering the flexibility of Handy Backup. When I decided to go Mac, I still wasn't happy with the backup tools on offer.
Instead I decided to write my stories in Google Docs, which offered auto-saving and previous versions with the added bonus of allowing me to hot-swap computers and pick up where I left off.
Falling mobile broadband prices made it practical to use Google Docs on the road. I realise I'm at the mercy of Google and I'm looking for a decent offline backup feature for Google Docs or Zoho Writer(the offerings so far haven't impressed me).
This week I've finally reinstalled Leopard on my MacBook and started using a system restore tool so I can wind back time if a new app causes me problems or the OS goes pear-shaped. Neither Time Machine nor SuperDuper completely met my needs, so I've decided to use a combination of the two.
My new Mac backup regime
My new Mac backup regime is still a work in progress, but it looks something like this;
- Divide hard drive into OS and DATA partitions
- Move User folder to DATA partition, redirect folders using System Preferences
- Use SuperDuper to image the OS partition to the data partition
(Again, this makes it easy to restore the OS without losing recent changes to documents. The full version of SuperDuper will let me run daily incremental backups, so I can always roll back to the day before things went wrong)
- Write stories in Google Docs and then save finished copies on my MacBook as text files.
- Use Fastmail's 6GB online inbox for IMAP email, mirrored on the MacBook in the Mail app.
- Use MobileMe to backup my calendar and contacts online, which is also synced to my iPhone.
(I've also put a 4 digit passcode on the iPhone in case it falls into the wrong hands)
- Use Time Machine to back up User files to my Apple Time Capsule network drive, which keeps multiple versions
(I exempted the OS partition and SuperDuper folder on the DATA partition from Time Machine so it just backs up my documents on the DATA drive. I might need to exempt some of the folders in my Library, such as the cache, but I need Time Machine to back up my application preferences if I want to restore the OS and all my settings. Backing up using Time Machine makes it harder for thieves to access my documents if they steal the network drive. The problem is that the Time Machine backup will eventually consume my entire 1TB Time Capsule. You can't partition the TC's drive, and you can't limit the space TM consumes, so I'm experimenting with connecting TM to a 200GB mounted disc image on the TC.
UPDATE: TM refused to see the mounted disc image. Another solution is to hand a USB drive off the TC for TM backups, which is bloody annoying when you've already paid good money for a network drive. Typical Apple products, beautiful to look at but lacking basic features offered by the competition)
- Use Jungle Disk to back up User files online.
(Jungle Disk works with Mac/Windows/Linux and lets me get into my backup archive via a browser from any computer)
- Use SuperDuper to create bootable OS backup on an external FireWire drive
A few extra tricks you can add
I'm also going to take a few extra security precautions. For a start I'll set all my computers to demand a password when booting or waking. I'll also add a Master Password to Firefox on all my computers.
These should be enough to deter the average burglar from trying to read my files. If I decide to continue with offsite DVD backups, I'll also encrypt them.
Again, this all sounds extreme but it protects me against almost any eventuality. My computers, network drives and phones can be lost or stolen and no-one else can easily access my data. I can also sit down at any online computer and access my active files (Google Docs), email and voicemail (Fastmail and mBox), calendar and contacts (MobileMe) and online backup archive (JungleDisk). It's all backed up to my Time Capsule as well, except my active stories in Google Docs.
If you think that's overkill, I know a guy who uploads his massive SuperDuper disc images into Jungle Disk as well. Now *that's* extreme.
You might think I'm crazy, but what are you doing to protect yourself against fire, theft and hard drive failure?
Other Blog Entries written by Adam Turner:
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