I’ve already had two hard disk failures on my work Mac. The first time was on a PowerBook, but my home directory was recovered after about 2 weeks. The second time was on a new MacBook Pro that replaced the PowerBook as a result of the first failure. It contained much of the data from the first failure, and took about 6 weeks to recover most of my home directory as well as some applications. I think I learned my lesson!
Yesterday, I finally got a nice, 500 GB, FireWire external hard disk so that I can begin to back up both of my Macs. Lovely. But now what? I am researching the best engineering solution to meet my requirements, listed below:
-
Back up of both hard disks
I have a personal PowerBook and a work MacBook Pro. I’d like to back up both hard disks on a regular basis.
-
Consolidate data libraries
I have an iPhoto and iTunes libraries on both machines. Both started from the same copy but have since diverged significantly. I would like to use the external hard disk to keep the libraries synchronized.
-
Granular File Restoration
I would like to have the ability to synchronize, if I wish, a unique set of files to my local machine. For example, I’d rather keep my entire music library on the hard disk and only download a set of playlists that I want to listen to.
-
Sharing Data Between Macs
I want to easily access data that originated from the other Mac. Say I have a license for an application on my PowerBook that I’d like to copy over to the MacBook. I know that I can do it over the network or BlueTooth, but is it possible to use the external HD as an intermediary?
I think that these four requirements pretty much sum it up concisely. Here are various solutions that I am contemplating:
- WD Backup
The software that comes packaged with the hard disk. It seems pretty feature-laden, and I think it will meet Requirement 1, but I’m not entirely sure about the other requirements. - SuperDuper!
A widely-acclaimed disk recovery program. Uses sparse disk images to maintain active backups. It might be able to meet Requirement 2 by the creation of a separate disk image for specific libraries. - unison
An open-source tool for synchronizing multiple file systems. Combines functionality of rsync with SCM features. It seems that with some effort I’ll be able to meet all of the requirements. - In-House Solution with SCM
Write my own backup system that leverages a revision control system to meet all the requirements. I would probably start out with a golden disk that will contain a merge from both hard disks. I would then use some versioning features, such as branching and local checkouts, for granular control (Requirement 3). I would probably use Subversion or Perforce. But then I’d have to deal with scheduling. Besides the fact that this will probably be a pretty involved undertaking.
Some other considerations involve handling of the raw 500 GB of storage. I need to figure out whether I should go with a single partition or multiple partitions. I am considering reserving part of the disk to save movies from my DVR. Also, I’m thinking of setting up a RAID scheme, but that may be overkill.
So does anyone out there have any other suggestions or feedback about how I should go about doing this? I hope that I’ll be able to implement a solution before my hard disk crashes yet a third time!
Technorati Tags: mac, external hard disk, unison, perforce, subversion, backup
