I'm looking for recommendations for backup software to run under MacOS 
X 10.4.x on a Power Macintosh G4 MDD.  I want to be able to backup my 
entire hard drive to DVD-Rs, and preferably be able to produce a 
bootable DVD from which I can boot, if necessary, to do a full restore 
from these backups?

  I've already figured out that Retrospect Express 5.1 doesn't seem to 
work very well at all on this system, perhaps because it is too 
obsolete.  Before I consider paying for an upgrade to Retrospect 
Express, I'd like to know what other, possibly better choices there are.

-- 
Our enemies shall talk themselves to death, and
we will bury them with their own confusion.
--
Remove "HatesSpam" and ".invalid" from email address to contact me.

On Wed, 4 Jul 2007 19:13:30 -0400, Bob Blaylock wrote
(in article 
<BobHatesSpam-0CA82B.16133004072007@newsclstr02.news.prodigy.com>):

>   I'm looking for recommendations for backup software to run under MacOS 
> X 10.4.x on a Power Macintosh G4 MDD.  I want to be able to backup my 
> entire hard drive to DVD-Rs, and preferably be able to produce a 
> bootable DVD from which I can boot, if necessary, to do a full restore 
> from these backups?

You can back up to DVD, no problem. Many apps, including the current version 
of Retrospect, and Apple's own Backup, can do that. What you're not going to 
be able to do is boot from those backups.

If you want to boot from a DVD, you might want to look here: 
<http://www.index-site.com/bootcd.html>

If you want a _complete_, bootable, backup of everything, I'd not use DVDs. 
I'd do what I do, indeed, do: I'd dig out Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper! 
and a FireWire external hard drive as big or bigger than the internal drive, 
and make a complete clone to that drive. I used to use CCC, but I've found 
that SD! is a lot easier to handle.

Please note that given the price of DVDs (about $50/pack of 100) vs the price 
of a new hard drive (about $150 for a 500 GB unit) the DVDs are cheaper... 
but the hard drive is much more flexible. And you can boot from it. And there 
ain't nothing which says you can't buy a few DVDs and back things up _twice_ 
and have some insurance.

Note also that if you back up to a hard drive, you can set the backup and 
walk away and come back later and all will be done; if you back up to DVDs, 
someone (guess who) gets to sit and feed new DVDs into the drive every ever 
so often. You can get DL DVDs instead of regular DVDs, but where a regular 
DVD is about 4.5 GB and costs 50� each, a DL DVD is about 8.5 GB and costs 
$1.30 each. This does not seem economic to me. YMMV.

> 
>   I've already figured out that Retrospect Express 5.1 doesn't seem to 
> work very well at all on this system, perhaps because it is too 
> obsolete.  Before I consider paying for an upgrade to Retrospect 
> Express, I'd like to know what other, possibly better choices there are.

SilverKeeper is free, if you have a La Cie drive, and I'm pretty sure they 
give it away on their website even if you don't have a La Cie drive. Apple's 
Backup ships with the OS; to use it to its maximum you need a .Mac account. 
CCC is free. SD! is semi-shareware; if you only use the low end stuff, it's 
free. If you want the high-end stuff, such as making bootable systems, pay 
up. There are many, many other backup solutions. Me, I got SilverKeeper with 
my La Cie drive, and I paid for SD!, and use 'em both.

> 
> 



-- 
email to oshea dot j dot j at gmail dot com.

In article
<BobHatesSpam-0CA82B.16133004072007@newsclstr02.news.prodigy.com>, Bob
Blaylock <BobHatesSpam@Blaylock.to.invalid> wrote:

>   I'm looking for recommendations for backup software to run under MacOS 
> X 10.4.x on a Power Macintosh G4 MDD.  I want to be able to backup my 
> entire hard drive to DVD-Rs, and preferably be able to produce a 
> bootable DVD from which I can boot, if necessary, to do a full restore 
> from these backups?
> 
>   I've already figured out that Retrospect Express 5.1 doesn't seem to 
> work very well at all on this system, perhaps because it is too 
> obsolete.  Before I consider paying for an upgrade to Retrospect 
> Express, I'd like to know what other, possibly better choices there are.

SuperDuper is excellent. And yes go ahead and backup to an external
hard drive. I use it with my G5 iMac and once it is set up (very
simple) you hardly know it is there. Cost is $27.95 which is worth
every penny.

Frank
fmgtech@cox.net

Is there anything that can just backup file 1, 2 and 3 without 
anything else?  I've used Retrospect and Silverkeeper.  Neither seems 
to do that.  Did I miss something?

On Wed, 4 Jul 2007 21:58:14 -0400, The New Guy wrote
(in article 
<replytogroup-7F0411.20581404072007@news.lga.highwinds-media.com>):

> Is there anything that can just backup file 1, 2 and 3 without 
> anything else?  I've used Retrospect and Silverkeeper.  Neither seems 
> to do that.  Did I miss something?

Retrospect can be set to back up whatever you want. SilverKeeper can back up 
an individual folder, just select the right folder.

-- 
email to oshea dot j dot j at gmail dot com.

 Frank Graves <fmgtech@cox.net> wrote:

> SuperDuper is excellent. And yes go ahead and backup to an external
> hard drive. I use it with my G5 iMac and once it is set up (very
> simple) you hardly know it is there. Cost is $27.95 which is worth
> every penny.

I thoroughly concur.

SuperDuper! does everything I want easily, quickly, and 
unobtrusively on my PPC iMac.

-- 
Alec McKenzie
usenet@<surname>.me.uk

In article 
<replytogroup-7F0411.20581404072007@news.lga.highwinds-media.com>,
 The New Guy <replytogroup@here.thanks> wrote:

> Is there anything that can just backup file 1, 2 and 3 without 
> anything else?  I've used Retrospect and Silverkeeper.  Neither seems 
> to do that.  Did I miss something?

Well, you can always just drag and drop those files to another drive, or 
burn them to a CD or DVD.  No backup software needed.  Where backup 
software comes in handy is doing automatic incremental backups on a 
daily basis but not necessary to just make an archival copy of a file.

The New Guy wrote:
> Is there anything that can just backup file 1, 2 and 3 without 
> anything else?  I've used Retrospect and Silverkeeper.  Neither seems 
> to do that.  Did I miss something?

You can open a terminal and command `tar cjf backup.tar.bz2 file1 file2 
file3`, without the backslashes... This will create a bzip2'd 
(compressed with bzip2) tar package. If You omit j it will only tar it 
without compressing and if You swap j with z it will create a gzip'd 
(compressed with gzip) tar file.

Read tar(1) (aka read tar's man page, `man tar` in a terminal).

Sorry if I spelled things too simply, but I don't know Your level of 
expertise with Unix commands :-)
-- 
marko [dot] vihoma [at] pp1 [dot] inet [dot] fi

In article <timmcn-0BF900.09011705072007@news.iphouse.com>,
 Tim McNamara <timmcn@bitstream.net> wrote:

> In article 
> <replytogroup-7F0411.20581404072007@news.lga.highwinds-media.com>,
>  The New Guy <replytogroup@here.thanks> wrote:
> 
> > Is there anything that can just backup file 1, 2 and 3 without 
> > anything else?  I've used Retrospect and Silverkeeper.  Neither seems 
> > to do that.  Did I miss something?
> 
> Well, you can always just drag and drop those files to another drive, or 
> burn them to a CD or DVD.  No backup software needed.  Where backup 
> software comes in handy is doing automatic incremental backups on a 
> daily basis but not necessary to just make an archival copy of a file.

   Interesting. So I do mainly magazine articles for a living. I keep 
copies of my in-process stories on the HD and on a flash drive. About 
every 10 days or so, I get around to buring a DVD of the mission 
critical stuff, mainly my documents folder and e-mail folder. I also 
have the non-standard programs (VLC, NewsWatcher, etc) on my flash 
drive. I figure that I can use the DVD and the original disks to rebuild 
stuff if teh HD starts going bonkers.  
     Would you say this is a good strategy given what I want and my 
assumptions? Should I be saving other things to either the DVD or the 
flash drive?

On 7/5/07 3:39 AM, in article find-C172BA.09393205072007@news.aaisp.net.uk,
"Alec McKenzie" <find@sig.below> wrote:

>  Frank Graves <fmgtech@cox.net> wrote:
> 
>> SuperDuper is excellent. And yes go ahead and backup to an external
>> hard drive. I use it with my G5 iMac and once it is set up (very
>> simple) you hardly know it is there. Cost is $27.95 which is worth
>> every penny.
> 
> I thoroughly concur.
> 
> SuperDuper! does everything I want easily, quickly, and
> unobtrusively on my PPC iMac.
And it seems like SD tech support responds within minutes, no matter what
day it is.

On 2007-07-05, Kurt Ullman <kurtullman@yahoo.com> wrote:

>    Interesting. So I do mainly magazine articles for a living. I keep 
> copies of my in-process stories on the HD and on a flash drive. About 
> every 10 days or so, I get around to buring a DVD of the mission 
> critical stuff, mainly my documents folder and e-mail folder. I also 
> have the non-standard programs (VLC, NewsWatcher, etc) on my flash 
> drive. I figure that I can use the DVD and the original disks to rebuild 
> stuff if teh HD starts going bonkers.  
>      Would you say this is a good strategy given what I want and my 
> assumptions? Should I be saving other things to either the DVD or the 
> flash drive?

It sounds fairly reasonable. Personally I back up the whole of my
home directory fairly regularly (not as regularly as I should) by
rsyncing it to an external hard drive which I connect to the system
only while I am actually doing a backup. I don't bother backing up
anything else. In the event of an internal drive failure it would
take me the best part of a day to install Mac OS X on a replacement
drive, rsync my home directory from the external drive, and read
through my notes, downloading and installing applications that I
need.

At some point I should burn a copy of my home directory to DVD and
keep it off site.

Ian

-- 
Ian Gregory
http://www.zenatode.org.uk/ian/

In article <5f4hpgF3b2f8mU1@mid.individual.net>,
 Ian Gregory <foo@bar.invalid> wrote:

> At some point I should burn a copy of my home directory to DVD and
> keep it off site.
> 
> Ian

    Excuse my ignorance (or not as long as answer the question-grin) 
what constitutes the home directory?

In article 
<kurtullman-71B857.11460805072007@customer-201-125-217-207.uninet.net.mx
>,
 Kurt Ullman <kurtullman@yahoo.com> wrote:

>    Excuse my ignorance (or not as long as answer the question-grin) 
> what constitutes the home directory?

In OS X it's /Users/warren (in my case). Or /Users/you, in your case. In 
Linux it's something like /home/warren or /home/you. It's where, in a 
Unixish system, individual users keep the stuff that's specific to their 
accounts.
-- 
W. Oates

In article 
<kurtullman-71B857.11460805072007@customer-201-125-217-207.uninet.net.mx
>,
 Kurt Ullman <kurtullman@yahoo.com> wrote:

> Excuse my ignorance (or not as long as answer the question-grin) 
> what constitutes the home directory?

The home directory is the directory/folder inside the users folder that 
corresponds to the currently logged-in user.  It's icon is that of a 
house.

-- 
Support the troops:  Bring them home ASAP.

In article <michelle-3ADE9F.10360605072007@news.east.cox.net>,
 Michelle Steiner <michelle@michelle.org> wrote:

> In article 
> <kurtullman-71B857.11460805072007@customer-201-125-217-207.uninet.net.mx
> >,
>  Kurt Ullman <kurtullman@yahoo.com> wrote:
> 
> > Excuse my ignorance (or not as long as answer the question-grin) 
> > what constitutes the home directory?
> 
> The home directory is the directory/folder inside the users folder that 
> corresponds to the currently logged-in user.  It's icon is that of a 
> house.

   Thanks to all for this information.  Is it safe to assume that this 
will (or will not) fit on a DVD? Do I still need to get an external HD?

In article <timmcn-0BF900.09011705072007@news.iphouse.com>,
 Tim McNamara <timmcn@bitstream.net> wrote:

> In article 
> <replytogroup-7F0411.20581404072007@news.lga.highwinds-media.com>,
>  The New Guy <replytogroup@here.thanks> wrote:
> 
> > Is there anything that can just backup file 1, 2 and 3 without 
> > anything else?  I've used Retrospect and Silverkeeper.  Neither seems 
> > to do that.  Did I miss something?
> 
> Well, you can always just drag and drop those files to another drive, or 
> burn them to a CD or DVD.  No backup software needed.  Where backup 
> software comes in handy is doing automatic incremental backups on a 
> daily basis but not necessary to just make an archival copy of a file.

Exactly.  I'll have to review Retrospect and Silverkeeper.  Maybe I 
was asleep at the wheel.

> 
>    Thanks to all for this information.  Is it safe to assume that this 
> will (or will not) fit on a DVD? Do I still need to get an external HD?

In a Finder view, click on the house icon, then type command-I (Get
Info).  Read the size.  Compare that to the size of a DVD.  This will
vary a lot, depending on what you have put there.

In article <l97ji.133$dJ2.8@read3.inet.fi>,
 Marko Vihoma <marko@where.ever.invalid> wrote:

> The New Guy wrote:
> > Is there anything that can just backup file 1, 2 and 3 without 
> > anything else?  I've used Retrospect and Silverkeeper.  Neither seems 
> > to do that.  Did I miss something?
> 
> You can open a terminal and command `tar cjf backup.tar.bz2 file1 file2 
> file3`, without the backslashes... This will create a bzip2'd 
> (compressed with bzip2) tar package. If You omit j it will only tar it 
> without compressing and if You swap j with z it will create a gzip'd 
> (compressed with gzip) tar file.
> 
> Read tar(1) (aka read tar's man page, `man tar` in a terminal).
> 
> Sorry if I spelled things too simply, but I don't know Your level of 
> expertise with Unix commands :-)

Very lame, very lame.....:)  Its like a different language.

In article <050720071456303971%doozy@earthling.net.invalid>,
 Philo D <doozy@earthling.net.invalid> wrote:

> > 
> >    Thanks to all for this information.  Is it safe to assume that this 
> > will (or will not) fit on a DVD? Do I still need to get an external HD?
> 
> In a Finder view, click on the house icon, then type command-I (Get
> Info).  Read the size.  Compare that to the size of a DVD.  This will
> vary a lot, depending on what you have put there.

   Says 8.9 GB and the DVD says 4.7. I am assuming that this has no 
function to spread it across multiple  DVDs (g). Bummer.

In article 
<kurtullman-407C74.15192605072007@customer-201-125-217-207.uninet.net.mx
>,
 Kurt Ullman <kurtullman@yahoo.com> wrote:

> In article <050720071456303971%doozy@earthling.net.invalid>,
>  Philo D <doozy@earthling.net.invalid> wrote:
> 
> > > 
> > >    Thanks to all for this information.  Is it safe to assume that this 
> > > will (or will not) fit on a DVD? Do I still need to get an external HD?
> > 
> > In a Finder view, click on the house icon, then type command-I (Get
> > Info).  Read the size.  Compare that to the size of a DVD.  This will
> > vary a lot, depending on what you have put there.
> 
>    Says 8.9 GB and the DVD says 4.7. I am assuming that this has no 
> function to spread it across multiple  DVDs (g). Bummer.

This is why I used Impression (at least until the author gave up and 
abandoned it, only to have a software company buy it and do nothing with 
it).  It could create file-by-file DVDs (single or dual layer depending 
on the drive) over multiple volumes.  It also could do a pax-archive.

Retrospect will also allow you to backup across multiple DVDs using it's 
own format.

Otherwise, looks like you're going to a local disk based backup system...

-- 
DeeDee, don't press that button!  DeeDee!  NO!  Dee...

In article <vilain-F22012.12232405072007@comcast.dca.giganews.com>,
 Michael Vilain <vilain@spamcop.net> wrote:

> In article 
> <kurtullman-407C74.15192605072007@customer-201-125-217-207.uninet.net.mx
> >,

> Otherwise, looks like you're going to a local disk based backup system...

  I can live with that. Thanks again to all. 

K

In article 
<kurtullman-6BD76D.14441505072007@customer-201-125-217-207.uninet.net.mx
>,
 Kurt Ullman <kurtullman@yahoo.com> wrote:

> > The home directory is the directory/folder inside the users folder 
> > that corresponds to the currently logged-in user.  It's icon is 
> > that of a house.
> 
>    Thanks to all for this information.  Is it safe to assume that 
>    this 
> will (or will not) fit on a DVD? Do I still need to get an external 
> HD?

It all depends on how much data you have stored in your home folder.  
Except for some default folders, sample files, and application-created 
preferences and stuff in the library folder, everything in the home 
folder is what you put in it.

-- 
Support the troops:  Bring them home ASAP.

Kurt Ullman wrote:
> In article <050720071456303971%doozy@earthling.net.invalid>,
>  Philo D <doozy@earthling.net.invalid> wrote:
> 
>>>    Thanks to all for this information.  Is it safe to assume that this 
>>> will (or will not) fit on a DVD? Do I still need to get an external HD?
>> In a Finder view, click on the house icon, then type command-I (Get
>> Info).  Read the size.  Compare that to the size of a DVD.  This will
>> vary a lot, depending on what you have put there.
> 
>    Says 8.9 GB and the DVD says 4.7. I am assuming that this has no 
> function to spread it across multiple  DVDs (g). Bummer.

So compress it, dear lisa, dear lisa...

On Jul 4, 7:13 pm, Bob Blaylock <BobHatesS...@Blaylock.to.invalid>
wrote:
>   I'm looking for recommendations for backup software to run under MacOS
> X 10.4.x on a Power Macintosh G4 MDD.  I want to be able to backup my
> entire hard drive to DVD-Rs, and preferably be able to produce a
> bootable DVD from which I can boot, if necessary, to do a full restore
> from these backups?
>
>   I've already figured out that Retrospect Express 5.1 doesn't seem to
> work very well at all on this system, perhaps because it is too
> obsolete.  Before I consider paying for an upgrade to Retrospect
> Express, I'd like to know what other, possibly better choices there are.
>
> --
> Our enemies shall talk themselves to death, and
> we will bury them with their own confusion.
> --
> Remove "HatesSpam" and ".invalid" from email address to contact me.

One backup program for CD/DVD not yet mentioned is DropDMG.
http://c-command.com/dropdmg/

DropDMG is great at what it does, but for backups over then network or
external hard drives, just use the UNIX underpinnings available
through the terminal.

In article 
<BobHatesSpam-0CA82B.16133004072007@newsclstr02.news.prodigy.com>,
 Bob Blaylock <BobHatesSpam@Blaylock.to.invalid> wrote:

>   I've already figured out that Retrospect Express 5.1 doesn't seem to 
> work very well at all on this system, perhaps because it is too 
> obsolete.  Before I consider paying for an upgrade to Retrospect 
> Express, I'd like to know what other, possibly better choices there are.

I suggest you use either Parallels or BootCamp. Or BootCamp or 
Parallels. Carefully.

-- 
David J Richardson -- davidj@richardson.name
http://davidj.richardson.name/ - Dr Who articles/interviews/reviews
http://www.boomerang.org.au/ - Boomerang Association of Australia

In article 
<kurtullman-6BD76D.14441505072007@customer-201-125-217-207.uninet.net.mx
>,
 Kurt Ullman <kurtullman@yahoo.com> wrote:

> In article <michelle-3ADE9F.10360605072007@news.east.cox.net>,
>  Michelle Steiner <michelle@michelle.org> wrote:
> 
> > In article 
> > <kurtullman-71B857.11460805072007@customer-201-125-217-207.uninet.net.mx
> > >,
> >  Kurt Ullman <kurtullman@yahoo.com> wrote:
> > 
> > > Excuse my ignorance (or not as long as answer the question-grin) 
> > > what constitutes the home directory?
> > 
> > The home directory is the directory/folder inside the users folder that 
> > corresponds to the currently logged-in user.  It's icon is that of a 
> > house.
> 
>    Thanks to all for this information.  Is it safe to assume that this 
> will (or will not) fit on a DVD? Do I still need to get an external HD?

Kurt, I've set Apple's Backup to backup my home directory every night 
and to burn to CD/DVD once a month.  I've always skipped the DVD burn, 
though.  First time the monthly thing came up, Backup said I would need 
something like 23 CDs or 2 DVDs for the data.

A few months ago I bought a 320GB Fantom external drive for about $150 
from my local Mac specialist.  
-- 
-Barb, Mother Superior, HOSSSPoJ
http://www.jamlady.eboard.com - story and
pics of Ronald McDonald House dinner posted 6-24-2007