Backing Up Files in Leopard: An Ideal Method
With Mac OS X 10.5, Leopard, containing a backup feature called Time Machine, many people have written to ask what I think about it, and whether it’s the best way to back up your files. While it’s an interesting feature, it’s far from perfect, and it’s not my tool-of-choice for keeping my files protected. (Note that I’m a belt-and-suspenders guy when it comes to backups; I tend to back up my backups, just in case.) So, I’d like to share with you what I think the best way is to back up files, combining efficiency and ease of use, but also making it easy to get back to work if you have a problem.
Time Machine is an interesting tool for backing up your documents, but not your operating system. While it stores multiple versions of your files, it does so by recording them with “hard links” (like aliases, but better) to not recopy files that haven’t changed. This means you can have multiple copies of your files without taking up too much space, if they haven’t change, or multiple versions if they have. So, if you’re working on a complicated report that takes a week to write, Time Machine will back it up every hour (if your backup disk is available), keeping each revision as you work. This means that you can, if necessary, go back and find that paragraph that you deleted but really should have kept.I said it’s not good for backing up your operating system, though. Time Machine cannot boot your Mac. Even though Apple initially announced this feature, it is a no-show in the final version of Leopard. So if you do have a serious crash, you need to restart from the installation DVD and restore your system, a lengthy process. To solve this problem, your best bet is to use Time Machine for your documents, and clone your entire startup volume to another disk.
To do this, you first need a separate disk or partition for your clone. You could use the same disk for both the clone and Time Machine; just partition it with Disk Utility. Make one partition big enough for your boot disk with extra space for changes, and another partition just for your documents. In the Time Machine preferences, set your Time Machine backups to not copy the Applications and Library folders. Also select the System folder, and Time Machine asks if you want to not copy system files; it will add an entry labeled System Files and Applications. (This doesn’t cover the Applications and Library folders, though, hence the need to add them individually.)
To clone your startup volume, you have the choice of a couple dozen programs for Mac. I use Intego Personal Backup, which I’ve worked with for years, as it clones quickly and efficiently, copying only those files that have changed each time. So I clone my startup volume once a week, or just before any system update, and always have a bootable backup disk.
Combining these two types of backups will make your Time Machine backups much faster; if you back up your entire boot volume with Time Machine, it can take a very long time. Some people find Time Machine, with its hourly backups, spends more time running than waiting. Backups can take more than a half hour, which means your Mac is constantly working. With my solution, your Time Machine backups will take only a few minutes, and not interfere with your work (or play).
