Backup solutions shootout

I use SuperDuper to basically copy drives, and the smart update usually works very well. SmartUpdate is a paid feature. Sometimes it will run out of space on the backup drive though, because it might add files to the backup before it removes files deleted from the primary. I like that it basically makes a fully functional backup that I can boot from. It helped me a lot when I had a bad drive or if I want to make sure a new program or update doesn't cause problems.

Adding a voice for SuperDuper.

My old PowerBook refused to boot and within a couple hours I was working off the backup of my system I'd made a day before. Lost nothing of value and didn't have to go through the hassle of reinstalling everything. An EXTREMELY good investment.

i use ibackup and i love it.

What about carbon copy cloner? I use that to take full backups of my disks, supposed to sync them up to, but have never tried it. Its UB now too.

Surprisingly the one that's missing from this as Apple's built in "Mobil User" functionality for portables on an OSX Server network. This not only allows you to back up your machine easily, but log into your machine from any other workstation in the office, and it will synch things up later.

It's very dependable. The only problem I've found so far is when I'm using an application such as iPhoto on 2 different machines, and one of the new machines has a slightly newer version of iPhoto. It gives me some data alerts...

Minor complaint though, and not much they can do about it.

Jason
www.gravityswitch.com

I'm a big fan of Bacula, but it works best if you've got sysadmin knowledge and a big Linux (or similar) server somewhere on the 'net with big disks. Both of which, I personally do. It backs up my remote linux box, my mac mini, my wife's macbook, to a raid5 linux box in the garage, nightly, with incrementals, etc. Really a nice piece of opensource!

I bet you could get it to run locally on a single Mac, too. But really, that new FS in Leopard wth the snapshot ability will be totally the cat's meow... probably integrated into Time Machine, too (or maybe that's how Time Machine is implemented?)

SuperDuper is king for local backups, but I recently started using Mozy for automated incremental offsite backups. It can take a while to do a backup offsite but for me, it's totally worth not needing to worry if one of my hard drives fail. $5/month gets you unlimited backups, or you can test drive 2gb of storage for free.

Also great is the recovery option...you can download as little or as much of the backup (and any version) at any time, for free. If you need a quick recovery, though, for around $50 you can get a dvd (set) overnighted to you with all of your schtuff.

My current backup solution involves iBackup to a network drive and then Mozy-on-up any changes to that network drive every 90 minutes. I also keep my SVN repos on that drive, so EVERYTHING gets thrown back on Mozy.

you hadn't heard of crashplan before this? i could have swore i read about it here at TUAW...

Yeah back-up. At somepoint I'm going to get around to doing that.

SuperDuper all the way. It can be frustrating if you want to do anything other than full-drive backups, but it performs its primary mission perfectly - back up your data without missing anything, metadata, permissions, and all that jazz. Very, very few programs can legitimately claim this.