Backup files automatically with Transmit

Yeah. The hard way...

If anyone spots a 15" PowerBook floating around Doha International Airport in Qatar, drop me a line? :(

By enabling FTP service on your own machine you can use Transmit to connect to localhost and then an external backup drive. Using the Synchronize feature set to Update (or Mirror if you're really sure about deleting those files this morning...) you have about the easiest way to make backups. I never can understand backup programs, I just don't trust them either, I've had to many user-error instances where things didn't happen the way I thought they were going to.

I'd never thought to use iCal and Automator to do this automatically. Definitely gonna try it out.

Every time I read something like this, I think "neat, but that could be done better with shell and cron" and this is no exception. Besides being less convoluted, cron-triggered shell scripts don't require you to be logged in. Also, they don't have this little problem: "The only thing that feels a little strange is that when iCal triggers the event, the current application I was working in loses focus, switching to AddressBookBackup.app. Frustrating, but a small price to pay." Oops. Score one for the CLI. :-)

Very good tip. You could use this to back up more and bigger files to a local server as well. Kind of a budget version of Retrospect.

Transmit rocks. I may try this.