If DVD isn't capacious enough, consider using external or removable hard drives, which store from 80 GB to 500+ GB. Tape still has its place in corporate data centers, but as far as we're concerned, it's obsolete for home and SOHO users. We use top-quality discs (Verbatim premium) and have never had a problem recovering a file. But we converted a couple years ago to using DVD+R and DVD+RW for backups, and we haven't looked back. And we admit that the less robust error correction of optical discs initially gave us pause. Before affordable DVD writers became available, we backed up our own systems every day with Travan and DDS tape drives.
We're belt-and-suspenders types when it comes to protecting our data. If you can't recover the file from the current disc, you'll be able to recover it from the one immediately preceding. Simply back up more frequently and keep your older backup discs. The only downside to writable DVD is that optical discs have much less robust error correction than tapes, which means there's a small chance that a file won't be recoverable from a backup DVD.
#Preventative maintenance for mac full
Writing and verifying a full disc takes only a few minutes, which makes it practical to back up frequently, even several times during a work day. The capacity of a writable DVD 4.4 GB for single layer and 8.5 GB for dual-layer suffices for many systems (we'll explain why shortly). If you have multiple non-networked systems or notebooks to back up, you can use an external USB/FireWire DVD writer to back them all up individually. For $100 or less (possibly much less), you can buy an internal DVD writer and a supply of discs sufficient to implement a comprehensive backup plan. It's easy to meet both those requirements if you have an unlimited budget, but most of us have to compromise one or the other to avoid breaking the bank.įor most home and SOHO users, a DVD writer is the best compromise.
Just as important, the backup hardware should be fast enough to complete a full backup and verify in whatever time you have available for backups. Ideally, the hardware you choose should be capacious enough to store the entire contents of your hard drive or at least all of your user data on one disc or tape.
In addition to cost considerations, you face two issues in choosing backup hardware: capacity and speed. Table 3-1: Important characteristics of backup hardware Table 3-1 lists the important characteristics of the types of backup hardware used for home and SOHO backups. The most significant change in consumer-grade backup hardware has been the introduction of inexpensive DVD writers and external or removable hard drives. CD writers are still reasonably fast and inexpensive, and are a good solution if your data fits on one or two CDs.
#Preventative maintenance for mac install
Consumer-grade tape drives are still expensive and slow, although it's easier to install a modern ATAPI tape drive than it was in the days when tape drives used SCSI or proprietary interfaces. External hard drives were expensive and of dubious reliability. CD writers, although reasonably fast and inexpensive, stored such a small amount of data that many people who used them for backing up were reminded of the Bad Olde Days of swapping floppy disks. Tape drives were expensive, complex to install and configure, used fragile and expensive media, and were painfully slow. In the past, there weren't any really good hardware choices for backing up home and SOHO systems.
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