It may seem odd, but ever since the introduction of Leopard, we at the MacDoctor have started to use Backup with our machines in the office and not Time Machine. With the introduction of Leopard, Backup 3.1.2 was released and we’ve found it a little more flexible and robust than the early incarnation of Time Machine.
For starters we can use it with an Airport Disc or Network drive. Secondly we have no data specific issues in terms of the backup data. Thirdly we don’t need to have drives equal or larger than the actual hard drive of the machine in question, especially as we use this day to day backup for Home Folder’s only. And finally, the interface in terms of including / excluding data to backup is much clearer than Time Machine’s at present.
We’re not down on Time Machine, we think it’s a great idea, but may have a little development ahead of it. It’s a little too simplistic in many ways and quite a pain to amend.
We’re by no means relying on Backup as our sole safety, it’s simply one of three things we do. All machines in the office create a complete disk image of themselves on a weekly basis using Disk Utility on to a Airport Disc. All the machines have time critical data; mail, address book, invoices, documents, spreadsheets etc backed up in the background throughout the day to the excellent Mozy service, and then finally Backup provides a daily backup of all users complete Home Folders to a second Network drive.
Each to their own of course, but this sudden conversion to the .mac bundled Backup software has taken us a little by surprise and we thought we’d see if anyone else was traveling a similar road?
Happy backing up whichever way you swing hombres!
