What backup systems do you use?

[ChairmanAgnostic]

I like time capsule, automatic, fast, and has multiple levels of prior versions. I don't use it often, but, damn, when needed it is great.
I also back up to an external drive, a large Iomega drive, that holds more than enough I ever need, (I could even use it as an external drive, but no need so far. Between the two I will not be stuck where I was a few years ago, crashed computer, dead in the water, without an oar to piss on. A drop to drink? Without any backup. That was tough.

So what do you use?
External HD?
TimeCapsule?
some cloud based backup system?
DVDs?
Nothing?

PS, if it nothing, you need to change your ways.

[NV Whino]

1. I use Time Machine for my entire hard drive

I also use an external for client files and finances and upgrade backup. I have another external for photos and one that I used to use for time Machine that I need to clean off and use for something else. I dunno, do you think I have enough backup?

[Stinky The Clown]

2. I use two. Time Machine and Carbon Copy Cloner

I use Time Machine in the usual way. I like it because I can recover a single file I may have hosed. I also used it to restore to a new (replacement) hard drive and lose nothing.

I also do two more backups once every 24 hours. I back my 1TB main hard drive to another 1TB drive using Carbon Copy Cloner. It creates a totally bootable drive. As both my boot drive and this back-up drive are in my MacPro, a drive failure would be nothing more than a minor annoyance and maybe loss of a day's work at most. Then Time Machine can fill that gap so my max exposure is really no more than 15 minutes' work!

I then do a second CCC backup across the ethers to my partner's office about 60 miles away. That's my disaster backup. I was also backing up the very same data to a 320GB drive, but it is now too small. This involves a VPN (I think). Someone set it up for us and it was way over my head.

We just bought a business account (100 GB) from SugarSync, but it is too small to be a total cloud storage solution. We only keep active files that we all need to access up there. It isn't a good back-up solution, in my view.

I am interested in these external 1TB and 2TB drives that allow access from the internet and wirelessly. That sounds like a really good solution. For disaster, put the actual drive in another physical location and back up over the internet.

[onehandle]

3. Time Capsule for casual backup and SuperDuper for a bootable backup...

...whenever I remember to do it. I think my current one is a couple of months old.

I'm looking into total cloud backup. Hoping that iCloud is expanded greatly with Mountain Lion. If it's not robust enough, I'm thinking of Carbonite (offer code: Stephanie - as in Miller).

[ChairmanAgnostic]

4. As I prepared a CLE course for lawyers, I researched the cloud based stuff

Just before my talk, the FBI "attacked" a smaller provider in New York, which hosted storage, websites, and cloud computing for a variety of businesses, including small lawfirms. Instead of viruses or technology, they were armed with subpoenas. The FBIes TOOK EVERY SERVER, including all backups, shutting down the entire host without warning. They had a rumor that one user was using the system to transfer info and/or money from/to Iran.

Imagine being a lawfirm (or any company) that relies on Cloud, only to find this big black empty pit where your data used to be.

[onehandle]

5. I would never rely on the cloud 100%.

Anything I put out there is local as well.

[REP]

6. Heh. You don't want to know.

[klook]

7. Time Machine + Data Backup + SuperDuper

I use Time Machine to an external drive, but I'm rethinking that since I don't keep that drive powered up at all times. I have an array of internal drives (Mac Pro user), so I may create a partition on one of those for frequent Time Machine backups. I haven't had to recover anything from TM backups yet, but I like the idea of being able to easily roll back to an earlier state if needed.

I use Prosoft Data Backup (which came bundled with the external drives from OWC), to back up my non-boot internal drives to external drives on a daily basis.

SuperDuper! (similar to Carbon Copy Cloner) is for making daily clones and backups of my boot drive, so I can recover in case of catastrophic failure. (Never happened yet in 7 years of using Macs, but of course the first day I let down my guard is when disaster will strike!)

A couple of things on my to-do list: 1) make a bootable disc with the Lion OS on it and 2) update my emergency bootable thumb drive (haven't done this since going to Lion). I also need to get back to storing backups of key files off site -- I was keeping up with that at one point but let it slide. I'm too paranoid to use cloud-based backups for most files, so in case of fire, theft, or other major home disaster, I need to get a good off-site backup strategy in place and keep up with it on a regular basis.

All this stuff is for personal and hobby use (so far), but it really would be terrible to lose the material I have on this machine and backup drives -- so I take this seriously.

Thanks for the topic, CA! This is a reminder to me to get my own digital house in order.