A lot of people ask about Mac backup options, here are some of them. First, you may wish to read The Tao of Backup.
Currently I use ShirtPocket Software’s SuperDuper to clone hard drives to external drives, which are kept offsite. Although just this week my backup has failed because the sparse disk image I was backing up to was full, and I haven’t worked out how to expand it past 160Gb yet 🙂
Other options include
- Retrospect – the Mac version seems to be in ‘maintenance mode’, and I don’t really expect to see any significant updates, so it would be difficult to recommend it anymore.
- Tolis BRU – Last time I tried installing this I didn’t manage to get it working, but probably a strong candidate to replace Retrospect.
- Amanda – An open source backup solution originating from the University of Maryland. Another strong Retrospect replacement, but installation seems to currently be a bit of a challenge as IIRC it requires creation of a backup user on each machine.
- CommVault Galaxy – We use this at work, so probably a good choice if you’re looking for Enterprise level solutions. Java admin client is a bit un-Macish though, but still quite usable.
- .Mac online backups – I haven’t used this so can’t really comment, but it seems that my machine would generate a lot more data than I could afford to upload every night, but it might be good for the home users (I guess they’ll be using Time Machine once Leopard’s released)
- Mozy online backups seem to be being talked about by a lot of people. US$4.95/month
- Bandwagon – only for backup of iTunes