To BackUp or to Duplicate?

[jreffner]

When running Retrospect Desktop in OS X & 9, what is the more intelligent choice? Backing Up or Duplicating? I'm currently duplicating 2 OS 9 drives and an OS X drive to a single external Firewire drive.

 

 

 

Any suggestions will be appreciated. Thanks, Jim

[Gandalf465]

Backup tends to be the more common choice since it will only backup new or changed files since the last time the disk was backed up. This saves on data storage if you are wanting to keep all your data for a period of time like a year or more.

 

 

 

If you are simply wanting to have an emergency recovery approach duplication is not a bad idea since you reuse the same storage media over and over by not keeping archived files (only what is on your disk at the current backup).

 

 

 

All in all it comes down to customizing your backup approach to your needs.

[jreffner]

Thank you for your help. I think I'll go with the Duplicate approach since I only really need an emergency backup.

 

 

 

Many thanks,

 

 

 

Jim

[aleigh]

Jim,

 

 

 

Both forms of backup are valuable for emergencies. I HIGHLY reccomend that you do both..

 

 

 

Here's why incremental backups are vital:

 

1. CORRUPTION: normal (incremental) backups are your protection against corrupted files, databases.

 

 

 

Say for example your contact database has corrupted, or your Word "Normal" template's been infected with a virus, more often than not, you won't even notice the problem until it's way too late.

 

You'll not only be able to retrieve the most recent version (which may already be bad), but also earlier editions.

 

 

 

2. BAD "UPGRADES": Similarly, if you've upgraded some System component or hardware driver, only to discover the new version is incompatable with something vital it's often difficult or impossible to get the older version unless you've got it on a backup. If you'd run your duplicate script before recognizing the problem, it would be to late to retrieve the file.

 

 

 

3. HUMAN ERROR: What about the file you accidently deleted.. Or, suppose you you prefer an earlier version of some graphic that you were working on. If your duplicate was done post screw-up it's gone forever.

 

 

 

4. GARBAGE BUILDUP PROTECTION: OK, this one might be just my hoarding nature, but until I began doing regular incremental backups, I tended to keep multiple versions of files (hey one day I might want the older version one day) on my local drive. What a waste of disk space, what confusion.... Now, I'm comfortable throwing out versions 1 - 30. They're permanently backed up.

 

 

 

This is not to diminish the value of duplicates. It's much easier to locate individual files, or restore from duplicates -- (you don't even need retrospect just drag the file(s) back). Definitely do a duplicate anytime you're about to make a major change on your hard drive, as well as just a regular easy backup method for a quick emergency fix.

 

*** Just bear in mind you've lost any changed or deleted files -- permanently.

 

 

 

Lastly, I should mention incremental backups are fast (REALLY FAST - using retrospect) (It takes me minutes to backup my 3 internal drives -- which total over 100GB's of data to my Ecrix drive (a really fast tape format drive)

 

 

 

Personally, I wouldn't be without either form of backup. Of course, that's just my humble opinion. YMMV.