I decided recently (was about time) to finally get serious about my data. Until now, I would do a sloppy backup once in a while and a full one every two months in average. And that’s mainly because of some recurrent laziness and memory deficiency regarding my computer stuff. And it’s not that I haven’t been warned in the past. I indeed had hard drive failures on all my powerbooks (except for my titanium still used daily by my wife). May be because I’m getting older, I thought it was time to take action.

First, the software:
I used Carbon Copy Cloner in the past but decided to go for the best this time and I’m from know on a happy user of SuperDuper! why? because (mainly) of the smart update option. Basically, what you do is a full backup (bootable) the first time you run the app and then you schedule a smart backup (once a day at lunch time for me) and SuperDuper automagically updates the data which takes about 10 minutes (for 80gb of data) each time. Great stuff! On top of that, I thought I was gonna use Time Machine when Leopard is out but I heard that the backup solution from Apple can’t make the external drive bootable (which is really convinient when something really wrong happens) which confirms that SuperDuper is the way to go.

For the hardware:
I went for a great external HD. The chief of IT at the lab had some good deal on the Lacie d2 Quadra 320 Go. This one has a very fast and quiet drive with USB2, Firewire 400 and 800 (and that’s what I use.. fast, very fast).
Conclusion, with a bit of time (and money) it’s really easy to feel safe in your digital life.