From: "Thomas D. Kearns" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
I have downloaded the new Backup 3 from .Mac and Apple has increased
my iDisk storage but they still seem to say its not big enough for
iPhotos or iTunes music.
Yes, nor is your iDisk intended in ANY WAY as a backup for really
large collections of files.
The total storage available as part of a regular membership is 1GB.
You can opt to buy up to another gig of storage if you want to. This
is a lot if you're storing email, financial documents, wills, credit
card/bank info, the most precious of your family photos and other
hard-to-replace files -- but it's not a lot if you're storing video,
music or lots of photos. It's really not intended for that -- that's
what CD-Rs and DVD-Rs are for.
I haven't had a chance to play with Backup 3 yet (still happy with
SuperDuper and/or Carbon Copy Cloner), but based on my experience
with Backup 2, I would call it a reliable if not quite elegant back-
up system for backing up to other hard drives or CD/DVDs (for .Mac
members). I don't know if using rewriteable DVDs might require you to
have Toast (for erasing) as well as Backup, but I doubt it -- more
likely, you need Apple's own Disk Utility for erasing in addition to
Backup. If you're using "regular" DVD/CDs, you shouldn't need
anything at all beyond Backup.
I am a home user and cost is a factor. Tiger on an
iMac G4 flat screen swivel. If I get Toast and backup on DVD-RWs
will I be able to play them in my DVD player attached to my TV?
No, because these are not "music" DVDs or "video" DVDs, they are
*Data* DVDs. You can certainly use Toast to create "photo" or "music"
DVDs if you want to, but that's not really the same thing as a
backup. Retrieving the data off a "movie" or "photo" or "music" DVD
is more complicated than getting it off a data DVD.
I'm confused as to why you don't simply use Backup (or some other
alternative) to clone your hard drive to an external hard drive. This
is by far the cheapest (long term) and most complete solution. I just
bought a 250GB hard drive for this purpose for $105 shipped, and plan
to put it in a case I got from CompUSA using my FL-MUG discount. I
can create a complete clone of my system -- bootable, even! --
complete with ALL my documents, photos, music, videos, EVERYTHING --
and update it as often as I like. This might be a larger initial cost
than buying some DVDs, but it doesn't take long -- as little as a few
days -- to become economically more sensible, and it's a really
modest investment for what you get -- peace of mind for around $150?
Sign me up!
I use my external HD as my primary backup, and I copy really
important documents (like the aforementioned wills, policy numbers,
financial records et al) to my iDisk as well, as an "off-site" backup
in case both the internal and external HD are damaged by some
accident or catastrophe. Depending on how often I update my backups,
I might in the event of a drive failure lose up to a day's worth of
email, but rarely anything more than that.
I actually had this exact thing happen to me last year -- I was using
an external drive (my internal boot drive in my iBook is only 30GB,
so I stored most of my stuff on an external), when a shelf collapsed,
knocking the external off my desk and destroying the drive. After
cursing my own stupidity for overloading the shelf and checking that
the drive was unsalvageable, I pulled out my backup drive (which was
partitioned to backup both my boot drive AND my external) from under
the desk, plugged it in and continued working. Total loss = a handful
of emails and about 15 minutes of downtown (I had backed it up the
night before).
Backup is a perfectly useable program, and great particularly for
backing up important docs to your iDisk for off-site protection and
for putting your photos/music/iMovies onto DVD, but it's not a
comprehensive solution that can cover EVERYTHING. I'd suggest you
invest in an external HD or two for maximum coverage and convenience
when the inevitable happens, and take a look at "cloning" programs
like SuperDuper ($20) or CarbonCopyCloner ($10) once you have some
spare drives.
Cheers
Chas
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