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:

1. 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.

2. 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.

3. 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.

4. 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!

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