For years I've been backing up my home computer to dvd's using apple's Backup program. I then exchange backup dvd's with my father-in-law. We are "backup buddies." The dvd's then go into each other's sock drawers were we know we can find them. This is my off site backup, I also have a time machine HD sitting right next to the computer.

The problem is that Apple's Backup program keeps saying "failed" and the log says there isn't enough room on the device. Apparently it is trying to write too much info to the dvd even though it tells me it will split the backup among 8 dvd's.

So I either need a fix for Backup, a new backup program, or I need to backup to media that can hold over 35gb. Thoughts?

A portable external hard drive + SuperDuper! (even just the free version) would be much less labor intensive than backing up to multiple DVDs, IMHO.

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StingMe

Hmm... a pair of USB or Firewire external drives and Time Machine... Or Carbon Copy Cloner since your'e already using TimeMachine for another backup.
Rotate the backups once a month/week/few days?


Probably end up cheaper than two spindles of DVD's for each drive.

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Paul F.
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Good is the enemy of Excellent. Talent is not necessary for Excellence.
Persistence is necessary for Excellence. And Persistence is a Decision.
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"The world makes a lot more sense when you realize most people are stupid." - Zoidberg
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yup, get some cheap/low capacity 2.5" USB bus powered hard drives. They'll be super portable and very easy to plug in and backup when needed. Also take up very little space in your sock drawer.

Burned optical discs have shown to be much less reliable than originally thought. There's a whole section at MacInTouch about this. For example, people who kept top quality CDs in cool, dark storage found that three years later the discs were unreadable.

Whatever you use for backup, I would say you need some sort of redundancy. And depending on how a recent snafu with my RAID turns out, I might suggest that a RAID isn't a good level of redundancy.

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I think I like this idea. Any recommendations for inexpensive usb bus powered drives to do this with? I'll snag two and rotate.

What those guys said. External HD is the easiest, cheapest, least messy way. Another possible strategy is to only do occasional offsite hard backups and use daily online backup (mobileme and many other possibilities) of your most recent files only.

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"Man is a little germ that lives on an unimportant rock ball that revolves about a small star at the outskirts of an ordinary galaxy... ...I am absolutely amazed to discover myself on this rock ball rotating around a spherical fire. It’s a very odd situation. And the more I look at things I cannot get rid of the feeling that existence is quite weird." - Alan W. Watts

I used tape back-up for years.
Tested it in the trial and set-up phases.
5 years later (finally needed ) went to use a back-up and found I didn't have one, and hadn't for quite a while.
I don't trust any media stand-alone any more.

Quote
lazydays
I think I like this idea. Any recommendations for inexpensive usb bus powered drives to do this with? I'll snag two and rotate.

I bought a couple of bare 2.5 SATA drives on LEM swap list for cheap (if you don't need largest capacity, you can often find used bare drives from folks who have upgraded), then put them in a cheap ($10-$15) usb 2.0 metal case I got at newegg. Total was less than $65/drive for either 160 or 250gbs (I forget which). Prices on the drives have almost certainly come down since I bought them earlier this year. if you're not into the DIY route, you can easily pick up 2.5" drives in cases for well under $100 each. They often pop up here:

[dealmac.com]

also check out newegg, amazon and costco for deals that pop up from time to time.

I use two bare drives for rotational back ups and one of these...

[www.newegg.com]

Shop around for the best prices.

USB-powered externals are really slow, though. Make sure to leave it doing its job overnight...

Using SuperDuper and it is set to only update the changes not the entire drive. Depending on how often you UD it can be minutes to hours?