Realizing more and more that just saving my Mac Powerbook G4 (OS X 10.3) Entourage data file, folder of documents (Word, Excel, PDF docs) and Safari bookmarks, etc. to a CD or two every couple of months is not the best backup solution for me. More and more travel means potential loss or fatal damage to my laptop and the abovementioned solution does not cover other essentials, such as iPhoto and iTunes libraries, keychain passwords, software preferences, software itself (MS Office, other purchased programs).

Looking for opinions on backup software and a question about the "size" of the backup file. Opinions of software most appreciated. On the size of the backup file, are we talking about a couple of CDs (hopefully) or having to go out and buy some sort of mini-drive (how big?) to hold this new larger backup.

Would also appreciate knowing if any of these programs allows me to mirror selected folders of files (not the purchased software, I know) to copy them over to a new Mac.

I have about 20GB of my 80GB hard drive filled and am running OSX 10.3.9

Thanks and cheers!

My recommendation is to buy a USB 2.0 or Firewire external hard drive of equivalent (or larger) size as your PowerBook's. They're so cheap these days. An 80GB hard drive won't set you back more than $50. Double that amount and you could even get a pocket-sized external hard drive that you could bring along in your travels.

Then, once a week or so just copy your home folder over to the external hard drive. No need for any kind of backup software.

the answer that bp888 posted it is a good solution, but if you want a software to do backup, I do recommend Carbon Copy Cloner here

My problem it is that my powerbook it is always almost full

Highly recommend getting a FireWire external drive and cloning your entire internal drive to it every so often. You can use the above-mentioned Carbon Copy Cloner or another utility called SuperDuper which is maybe a little nicer http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDup...scription.html

The added benefit of cloning the entire drive (and using FireWire vs USB) is that the resulting backup can boot and run your PowerBook in the event of a failure of its internal drive, thus getting you immediately up and running with all your nomal stuff. The software mentioned above can clone the system even while it's running and produce a bootable backup.

How good is Backup software from .mac ? The one with the umbrella icon.

I use IpodBackup to back up my home directory to an encrypted disk image on my Ipod. It's free, and works very well. It won't give you a full restore of the system, though, so if that's what you need you'll have to look elsewhere.

I was using Carbon Copy cloner under Panther to back up my Music and Pictures folder to my 40 GB iPod photo. Yeah, it seems redundant for the music, but at least with the backup, I could access it directly if I ever needed to recover the music. For other stuff, I used .Mac syncing plus the Backup utility. That covers address book, iCal, bookmarks, etc. The syncing stuff is really great if you have multiple Macs, like I do now (bought an iBook two weeks ago)

I love Dantz Retrospect. Seems a little pricey, but I really love it and it has saved me many times. It backs up 3 computers (2 on network) and works really well.

You can download a trial version and it should entitle you to a discount if you want to purchase it.

Good luck,

DC.

there are deals out there where you pay a little more than the bare drive/external closure, but you get Dantz bundles in.

One that say was with an external DVD-R Neptune from One world computing.

If you want to get Dantz, save money and get it in a HD/DVDR bundle

I believe but could be mistaken that the Dantz software that comes with the bundle is a light/restricted version.

This is how I heard of Dantz, in a package with an external hard drive. I decided to spend the money on the full version with network support and I do not regret it. After a few hard drive crashes (SMART did indicate one coming) and a few reinstallations to do, I am very very happy with it.

DC.

I'd be very wary of anything from Dantz, their Retrospect software used to be the king of backup software back in the OS9 days, then they got bought out by another company and the quality of their software has been lacking ever since. You need to be able to *trust* your backup!

I highly recommend that you consider ChronoSync software for OSX backups. It's what I use with an external 200 GB hard drive.

Another tip: upgrade to OSX 10.4, and transfer your entourage database to Apple Mail app. After using MS outlook express/entourage for many years, suffered through a nasty crash of their buggy database limitations (you know that beyond a 2GB database size, you're liable to crash, and crash hard), I am much happier with Apple Mail, and the latest version that comes with Tiger satisfies all my emailing needs, along with a better spam filter capability! Plus it stores email in a standard text format, not a proprietary humungous database file format, an extra safety net should the inevitable happen.