Filed under: Software
Mars Needs Backups
Since backing up is the computing equivalent of a dentist visit -- sure you should do it, but it seems to slip down the priority list somehow -- we all end up looking for the WaterPik of backup to reduce the pain and aggravation. With SuperDuper!, Retrospect and others crowding the pool and Time Machine looming in the near future, here come our little green friends at Martian Technology. The LGM seem to grok the problem of triggered backups, where an external storage device may come and go; the desired behavior is for the backups to happen when the storage is there, and not when it's... well, not.Martian Lifeboat is out now for $14.99 with free demo, allowing you to define separate LifeBoats to back up whenever your target device is ready and willing. The license is good for every Mac in your collection... no more excuses! If you try it, let us know your results.
Thanks Greg!
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
manish jain said 12:20PM on 11-29-2006
any ideas on incremental backups?
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Adrian said 12:32PM on 11-29-2006
I use iBackup for my incremental backups.
http://www.grapefruit.ch/iBackup/
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Mike Rose said 12:47PM on 11-29-2006
This was a recent post:
http://www.tuaw.com/2006/11/02/versomatic-uber-backup-archive-and-on-the-fly-file-versioning-u/
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Josh said 1:26PM on 11-29-2006
Nice use of the word 'grok'. A little known word that should have much more widespread use.
Now if people would use 'peruse' properly, and if my gf would pronounce 'bagel' properly, I'd have a much happier holiday season.
Sigh. My life is sad. I think I need to head to Target and buy a new one.
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Mike Rose said 1:20PM on 11-29-2006
Thanks, I thought it unseemly to post about Martians without saying 'grok.'
For the curious... just how is your girlfriend pronouncing 'bagel' incorrectly?
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J said 1:13PM on 11-29-2006
Chronosync can also fire up a backup when a device appears. It can also execute applescript after the backup. I set this up on my wife's iBook with an external drive. Once a week, she plugs the external drive into the iBook. Chronosync notices the proper backup device has appeared, starts in the background and does the heavy lifting. After completion, a simple applescript ejects the backup drive and pops open a message window reporting that the backup is complete. Works quite nicely.
As for incremental backups, Chronosync works well too. Chronosync keeps a mirror of the specified directory (say the users home directory) on the external disk. If any files have been deleted or replaced, they get moved to a special Archive folder. For my backups, I keep up to 5 older copies of files for up to 6 months. These options are all user definable.
I've been using Chronosync for a while now and it works great for backing up user data. The archival functionality is very nice. The backup procedure itself is also very flexible, complete with applescript support, emailing reports, and handling removable media/network drives. I haven't used the Martian thing, so it may have similar features, but I can't imagine a situation that Chronosync isn't robust enough to handle.
Hopefully, Time Machine will do a lot of this, especially in the realm of a laptop with external backup media that may or may not be there. Chronosync has certainly set the bar pretty high.
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Matt said 3:41PM on 11-29-2006
What's wrong with a little rsyncbackup? http://rsyncbackup.erlang.no/
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serge said 2:52PM on 11-30-2006
haha grok... what a wicked book
everyone should read "stranger in a strange land" by Robert Heinlein
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Mike Rose said 3:35PM on 11-29-2006
Chronosync is quite powerful and justifiably well regarded. I think the Martians were aiming for simplicity.
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Sam Beaven said 4:59PM on 11-29-2006
Urgh. Awful app - no way to cancel a backup once it's started, and it compiles the folders and everything on the startup disk even after I specified an external drive. Plus, even after I quit the app it carried on copying stuff into this big fat 'tmp.dmg' file until I ran out of disk space, regardless of whether the app was running or not (background processes I know, but still annoying). I'm sticking with backuplist+ for now, might move on to Chronosync though.
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Urbanose said 9:24AM on 12-04-2006
There's also Lifeboat, but from MojaveShade : http://www.mojaveshade.com/lifeboat
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Brady J. Frey said 6:55PM on 11-29-2006
We've used Chronosync for a while on our servers, and subsequently our desktops - I second (third?) the vote for chronosync, but I'll give this guy a shot.
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Jesse French said 7:16PM on 11-29-2006
Hot damn, thank you very much for the Marathon reference! Old school, baby!
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Mike Rose said 7:47PM on 11-29-2006
#8 -- nothing wrong with rsyncbackup, I've used it myself. It's a little... spare... in the ol' UI department.
#9 -- thanks for the feedback, you may want to pass that along to the Martians directly.
#10 -- I'm tempted to get a Chronosync license myself at this point. We're going to need it shortly to consolidate a server volume full of aliases back into actual files.
#11 -- Did I make a Marathon reference? I thought I was making a Heinlein reference... but maybe I checked Marathon by accident. :-)
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sloppy joe said 7:31PM on 12-01-2006
I use Déjà Vu for my backup needs, works quite well and backs up daily/weekly/monthly/manually
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Derek said 9:48PM on 11-29-2006
...anyone going to mention that there was already a very similar application named Lifeboat?
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Steven S said 11:17PM on 11-29-2006
There are already tons of apps that do this, but I gotta say this looks pretty good for the price.
I have been using BackupRight for a year very happily. It backs up to my Firewire drive and to their online storage - all encrypted. It is nice having the remote backup and the local too. Its set to run at 2:00 am every day and I have not had to think about my backups for a long time.
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