Re: Backup question

Melba's Jammin' wrote:
In article <2007062915164750073-xxx@yyyzzz>, gtr <xxx@xxxxxxx> wrote:

On 2007-06-29 13:51:11 -0700, Bill <bbcollins@xxxxxxxx> said:

In article <barbschaller-3C9A30.15193229062007@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Melba's Jammin' <barbschaller@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Don't laugh and don't try to hit me. I lack confidence.

I back up my home folder nightly. I've got a bunch of backups going
back two months (incremental changes).

Last night I did a new full back up "to a different location."

Is there any reason I cannot clear the two months worth? It would free
up 20GB on my external drive.

TIA.
Matter of judgement.

The most recent backup protects you against machine failure.

An old backup may protect you against human failure, specifically having
deleted a file you later find you need.
Right. I say keep a few.

Thanks. Next question: You suggest keeping a few. So, from that first batch (beginning EO April) do I keep the original, full, backup and then, say maybe one from every week (I'm arbitrarily grabbing here)? Thanks. This is interesting. :-)
I'm not sure if what follows is relevant to your exact concern about backup, but I'm new to Mac's and have been toying around with the best method to handle my own backup situation which is basically data and images.
What I'm doing is using a pair of USB flash drives in combination with my DVD drive backing up in duplicate (same thing on both drives)to the flash drives each day and watching the file size as it grows. This allows me to work and rework files on the flash drives freely without the hassle of the multi-session scenario associated with the DVD drive. Then when I have the amount on the flash drives required for a full DVD disk, I burn the contents of one of the flash drives to a matched pair of DVD's for archiving.
This system gives me duplication throughout the backup in case I lose a flash drive or a DVD disk.
I'm sure there are better ways to back things up but this system works flawlessly for me so far.
I used to use an external HDD, but I had one go down on me and I've never relied on a single backup source since. Paranoid I guess, but so far I haven't lost anything. It's cheap too. I use 2gig flash drives and the DVD's are inexpensive as well.
It all depends on your exact situation and how deep you want to go into backup software and hardware.
You can of course do multisession burning with applicable software or your Utilities, but I have found those flash drives to be extremely stable and dependable as an interim step to burning that allows rewriting and editing of files with media that is OFF the system.
All the best,
Dudley Henriques
.

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