[ideaman924]

I use a Mac, Snow Leopard. I want to upgrade to Mountain Lion. Before that, a lot of people say I need to backup. What are the (hopefully free) ways of backing up my Mac online?

[bastion]

ideaman924, on 16 July 2012 - 04:41 AM, said:

I use a Mac, Snow Leopard. I want to upgrade to Mountain Lion. Before that, a lot of people say I need to backup. What are the (hopefully free) ways of backing up my Mac online?

Don't back up your Mac online. It's slow and it's useless if you don't have access - like for example you don't have a working OS. Spend the money to get a real drive and run it local.

[ideaman924]

bastion, on 16 July 2012 - 08:38 AM, said:

ideaman924, on 16 July 2012 - 04:41 AM, said:

I use a Mac, Snow Leopard. I want to upgrade to Mountain Lion. Before that, a lot of people say I need to backup. What are the (hopefully free) ways of backing up my Mac online?

Don't back up your Mac online. It's slow and it's useless if you don't have access - like for example you don't have a working OS. Spend the money to get a real drive and run it local.

Sorry, but I lose stuff quick, so I need a online backup.

[EGM]

ideaman924, on 17 July 2012 - 12:59 AM, said:

Sorry, but I lose stuff quick, so I need a online backup.

Do you mean you lose files, or you might lose the physical disk drive? If you're concerned about losing files, any backup will do. Where it is doesn't matter.

The reason people tell you to have a backup before you upgrade is so you can go back to your previous system if anything goes wrong with the upgrade process. You're not going to lose a disk drive between the time you make the backup and the time you decide you don't need it, though you should still keep it around in case anything goes south later (not likely). This should be a full disk image backup that you can boot your computer from and copy back to its internal drive. It will take ages to do this with an online backup service, to say nothing of probably being large enough to cost $$ for expanded storage capacity.

I'd get an external disk drive and backup software. There's lots of free disk cloning software out there. I use SuperDuper. I paid the $27.95 to unlock all its features, but the free version will do what you need. There's nothing unethical about using it that way forever if it does the job for you.

[bastion]

ideaman924, on 17 July 2012 - 12:59 AM, said:

bastion, on 16 July 2012 - 08:38 AM, said:

ideaman924, on 16 July 2012 - 04:41 AM, said:

I use a Mac, Snow Leopard. I want to upgrade to Mountain Lion. Before that, a lot of people say I need to backup. What are the (hopefully free) ways of backing up my Mac online?

Don't back up your Mac online. It's slow and it's useless if you don't have access - like for example you don't have a working OS. Spend the money to get a real drive and run it local.

Sorry, but I lose stuff quick, so I need a online backup.

I think you missed part of the point of my response. If as a result of this upgrade going wrong you find yourself actually needing the upgrade, it's going to be at best very difficult to use. Online backup is a worthwhile tool for relatively small amounts of important data. It's really not something you want to use for 10s of GB to try to perform a full-disk restore. For the purpose you have, a real local drive is a practical necessity.

[ideaman924]

EGM, on 17 July 2012 - 04:06 AM, said:

Do you mean you lose files, or you might lose the physical disk drive? If you're concerned about losing files, any backup will do. Where it is doesn't matter.

The reason people tell you to have a backup before you upgrade is so you can go back to your previous system if anything goes wrong with the upgrade process. You're not going to lose a disk drive between the time you make the backup and the time you decide you don't need it, though you should still keep it around in case anything goes south later (not likely). This should be a full disk image backup that you can boot your computer from and copy back to its internal drive. It will take ages to do this with an online backup service, to say nothing of probably being large enough to cost $$ for expanded storage capacity.

I'd get an external disk drive and backup software. There's lots of free disk cloning software out there. I use SuperDuper. I paid the $27.95 to unlock all its features, but the free version will do what you need. There's nothing unethical about using it that way forever if it does the job for you.

Okay. Which drive should I buy? A Time Machine? A Hard Drive? And if I buy one, how much size should I consider? My mac hard drive is 230GB!

[bastion]

ideaman924, on 17 July 2012 - 04:35 AM, said:

EGM, on 17 July 2012 - 04:06 AM, said:

Do you mean you lose files, or you might lose the physical disk drive? If you're concerned about losing files, any backup will do. Where it is doesn't matter.

The reason people tell you to have a backup before you upgrade is so you can go back to your previous system if anything goes wrong with the upgrade process. You're not going to lose a disk drive between the time you make the backup and the time you decide you don't need it, though you should still keep it around in case anything goes south later (not likely). This should be a full disk image backup that you can boot your computer from and copy back to its internal drive. It will take ages to do this with an online backup service, to say nothing of probably being large enough to cost $$ for expanded storage capacity.

I'd get an external disk drive and backup software. There's lots of free disk cloning software out there. I use SuperDuper. I paid the $27.95 to unlock all its features, but the free version will do what you need. There's nothing unethical about using it that way forever if it does the job for you.

Okay. Which drive should I buy? A Time Machine? A Hard Drive? And if I buy one, how much size should I consider? My mac hard drive is 230GB!

Time Machine is software. It's a backup program built into the last few versions of Mac OS X that will periodically, transparently, write your files out to a local or appropriate network-attached disk. One caveat: It does *not* make a bootable backup.

Time Capsule is hardware. It's an Apple WiFi base station that's almost identical to the Airport Extreme Base Station *except* that it has an internal hard drive that is suitable for use as a Time Machine target.

Given that you're looking for something free, unless you also want/need a WiFi base station I wouldn't bother with the Time Capsule. Go out to macsales.com and buy a 500GB or larger HD. USB-only if you must, but if your machine has FireWire I'm of the opinion that the performance gain is well worth the extra money. FireWire 400 is generally faster than USB 2 - and 800 even better of course - and at the same time less demanding of the host computer.

To make your bootable backup, you can use SuperDuper as noted by EGM. Carbon Copy Cloner is also quite good. They're both easy to use and reliable. There are other alternatives, but I'm not familiar with them even by reputation.

Personally, I'd prefer the Time Machine backup and a generic OS install disc over the bootable backup, but this is very much a matter of preference.

[padinc]

ideaman924, on 16 July 2012 - 04:41 AM, said:

I use a Mac, Snow Leopard. I want to upgrade to Mountain Lion. Before that, a lot of people say I need to backup. What are the (hopefully free) ways of backing up my Mac online?

There is no such thing as a free full backup, but if you need to just backup a few files, Dropbox is a good option. I would still recommend Time Machine, however.

[macnuke]

any external hard drive is better than online backup.

and last time I looked, CCC was free.
dragging and dropping to your external was free.

[bastion]

macnuke, on 17 July 2012 - 04:38 PM, said:

any external hard drive is better than online backup.

and last time I looked, CCC was free.
dragging and dropping to your external was free.

The external drive itself is not, of course.

I think something people should keep in mind though, when developing a backup regimen, is that your choices are saying something about how much you value your data and your time. The cheapest backup solution is prayer, but it's not very reliable.

[macnuke]

prayer? lol tell that to them on Sunday
man yer gunna burn for that.

but my reference was to using an external drive locally. as I am sure you knew.

[EGM]

bastion, on 17 July 2012 - 06:02 PM, said:

...The cheapest backup solution is prayer, but it's not very reliable.

There are two kinds of people: those who have lost data due to a device failure, and those who will.

If you're not in the first group, you're in the second. Take that to heart.

Back to the topic: Time Machine is great for retrieving old versions of files. It does not address the problem of going back to a previous version of Mac OS because you cannot boot from a Time Machine backup. To do that, you need a clone of your internal hard disk on a second drive. As previously posted, a second drive won't be free, but it needn't cost a lot of money either, and you can get free software to create the clone.

Once you are happy with your upgrade, you can use the same drive for Time Machine. If it's large enough, you can partition it: create periodic clones in a 200GB or so partition, and use the rest for Time Machine. If anything really bad happens, you can boot from the clone and use TM to catch up with data file changes since the last clone. If you start cloning before you go to sleep (or leave the office) every Monday, or whatever schedule you like, it takes no time.

[bastion]

macnuke, on 17 July 2012 - 06:30 PM, said:

prayer? lol tell that to them on Sunday
man yer gunna burn for that.

but my reference was to using an external drive locally. as I am sure you knew.

Absolutely. But in the context of the OP asking for a free solution, if they don't have the drive then that doesn't strictly qualify. However someone who can't spring for $100 or so for that drive is saying pretty clearly to me that their data isn't actually that important to them.

[bastion]

EGM, on 18 July 2012 - 04:08 AM, said:

bastion, on 17 July 2012 - 06:02 PM, said:

...The cheapest backup solution is prayer, but it's not very reliable.

There are two kinds of people: those who have lost data due to a device failure, and those who will.

If you're not in the first group, you're in the second. Take that to heart.

Back to the topic: Time Machine is great for retrieving old versions of files. It does not address the problem of going back to a previous version of Mac OS because you cannot boot from a Time Machine backup. To do that, you need a clone of your internal hard disk on a second drive.

The OP is on Snow Leopard so I assume they have bootable media in the form of the install DVD. At that point, restoring your old state from the Time Machine archive is trivial. The reason I prefer the TM route is that I feel that in general TM is a more useful backup solution (in that it's automatic, history-maintaining and reasonably up-to-date) and in keeping with the OP's desire to go cheap I expect they'll buy a relatively small drive and as a practical matter end up choosing between bootable clone and TM rather than putting both on the device.