Wednesday, August 09, 2006

Mac backup software reviews

I was needing to backup my computer and these are my quick notes on the different solutions

  • Carbon copy cloner (donation-ware)- . It only works for people with administrator privilege. can't be canceled. folder selection method makes sense in terms of common actions but is non-intuitive. It doesn't remember your selections. Support is supposed to be very good.
  • rsyncx- I could not install
  • rsyncbackup- just a script
  • synk (Full use for thirty days)- This has a nice looking interface. One useful feature is that it shows how many files were moved. One annoying part of the process was that adding folders to be copied had to be done one at a time.
  • sync pro x (Full use for 7 days, $99)- The software seems nice. It would be useful if I needed to do syncing. Here's a useful review.
  • superduper! (crippleware, $28)- This software had good reviews including on Macworld but not many downloads. It was recommended to me by a friend as doing the best job of preserving metadata. Unfortunately it's crippleware.
    • The only method of copying it will let you do is to completely erase everything and then copy. Being made to delete my data is wrong.
    • It's not possible to see how well it does at doing a differential backup especially in terms ofspeed.
    • The available functionality is less then I'd get doing a drag using the finder.
    • I emailled these concerns to the developer points to the developer. Here's his response: "A single folder is a single folder, and can be dragged and dropped. We're more useful when you have a more complicate situation..."

No comments: