Click "Edit page" to edit this list.

Welcome to the Typical Mac User Live show. My name is Victor Cajiao and I am your host this evening. My regular Podcast Typical Mac User Podcast can be found at www.typicalmacuser.com and that shows is released weekly on Tuesday nights.

If you are listening to the Talkshoe stream and want to be an interactive part of the show. All you have to do is sign up for Talkshoe at www.talkshoe.com (It's free) and get an ID

The you can Call Phone Number: (724) 444-7444

Talkcast ID: 3097 you will be asked top put in your talkcast ID and then you can put in the number you choose for your talkcast ID.

If it's the first Sunday in May it must be time for Mac Maintenance Sunday with my co-host Steve Stanger who is the host of the Mac Attack Podcast http://themacattack.us/. Steve is a super knowledgeable veteran Mac User alike, and tonight back up solutions.

Backing up your important data should be easy. Set it and forget it, other then testing your back ups from time to time.

If your computer has a CD or DVD burner you have no excuse for not backing up.

The easiest way to back up is to drag and drop your files on to blank media and burn it. OS X makes it really easy to do this.

You don't really need to back up everything on your hard drive, such as system files and applications, but do remember to back up anything that cannot be easily replaced.

Examples of files that you should be backing up:

• Any files you create – Word docs, resumes and reports, saved games, spreadsheets, and slideshows. I think you get the picture. Don’t forget to back up your digital photos too!

• Your email account files, including mailboxes, contacts, and account settings.

• Bookmarks or favorites. Depends on your browser.

• Your mp3’s and music files.

• Financial records.

• Files and folders that live on your Desktop.

Other back up options.

• external Hard drives

• external burner (if you're using an older Mac that doesn't have a built in burner)

• thumb or flash drives

• off site / online back up

• even email (gmail account + gDisk = no cost off site back ups. gDisk is a software that turns your GMail account into a portable hard drive so you can always have your important files accessible accross the Internet.) http://gdisk.sourceforge.net/

Back up software

There are a number of options to automate your backups - from shareware to commercial software. The idea here is to find an application that you find easy to use.

• Retrospect (used to be Dantz Retrospect) - Home and Home office edition. A very robust back up application for your home or small business. They also have versions aimed at larger business available. (used to be the only professional Mac back up option, this app has been sold to so many times the the software has become somewhat bloated and not very user friendly) $ over $100. http://www.emcinsignia.com/products/homeandoffice/retroformacintosh/

• Backup – This software comes with your paid subscription to .Mac (dotMac). Very easy to configure, multiple options for backup to either media or your .Mac account. Backup allows for different back up plans. So you can back up daily to an external hard drive, then be back up to a DVD or CD, then have another plan that backs up to your .mac account. You can have many different backup plans, specific files to specific media or locations. I use this app and like it. I know it's not Victors favorite, why? http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/apple/application_updates/backup311.htm

• ChronoSync – Great, easy to use application for backing up your data but it also allows you to sync data between multiple Macs. $30 http://www.econtechnologies.com/site/Pages/ChronoSync/chrono_overview.html

• Carbon Copy Cloner - A backup/cloning utility for Mac OS X. This application can make a bootable copy of your hard drive. Free / donation-ware. Downside - still runs soooo sloooww http://www.bombich.com/software/ccc.html

• SuperDuper! - Can make a straight copy, or "clone" of your drive — useful when you want to move all your data from one machine to another, or do a simple backup. SuperDuper is very versatile. It’s a full back up system that does archives, backups, restore, carbon copy, bootable backups, “safe” backups. It also has advanced features like letting you install packages on backup, runs shell scripts that you have already written post back up or pre-back-up. In my opinion Super Duper takes what Carbon Copy Cloner does and puts it on steroids. It's pretty much all you’ll need to make sure the data (all of it) on your Mac’s hard drive is safe. $27.95 / try it for free http://www.shirt-pocket.com/

• LaCie Silverkeeper SilverKeeper is a free application available for anyone to use, and also bundled with each drive LaCie sells. Application has a simple, easy to understand interface. You set your source, destination, and schedule when you want it to run. The interface is simple, but not pretty. This application works just fine if you don't want bells and whistles. SilverKeeper lets you setup numerous backup sets from within the application. You can try if for free. http://www.lacie.com/silverkeeper/

• De Ja Vu Deja Vu is a backup application that puts itself in the prefereance pane. It has a scheduler, the ability to produce a bootable clone of your MacOS X system disk, incremental backups, and network based backups. (Victor do you have experience with this software? I tried it out but didn't stick with it) Single User: $24.95 Household: $34.95.You can try if for free. http://propagandaprod.com/

• Decimus Software Synk features include incremental backups, control of file deletions, rules, scheduling, and a log. It also lets you backup your data as the root user. Synk costs $20 for non-profit and $40 for commercial licenses. Again, another app I tried but didn't stick with. http://www.decimus.net/

My recommendations from the above list. Backup if you have a .Mac account, then SuperDuper, but almost tied for second would be ChronoSync because of cost and ease of use. Victor, your picks?

On line / offsite / remote back ups:

In our show prep for this show, Victor raised some great points and great questions about off site backups.

• Storage is getting cheaper and so is bandwith so online alternatives to local back ups are starting to show up everywhere. We need to consider some of the pitfalls of on line storage before we use this at all never mind as our primary storage solution.

• Who are these guys? Do you know the company you are signing up with? What's their reputation?, ethics, longevity?

• Security. How are you sending your data, clear txt, encrypted? How are they storing it? It should always be encrypted!

• Big Brother: What are the implications of hading your data over to a thrird party data storage provider? Is it still private? is it only for your eyes? will it be destroyed lost or subject to different search and seasure laws because of you moving it there? Now that I have scared you all, I do think these types of services can provide stratigic solutions for small scale backups. Some however believe there is a whole lot more to this remote back up thing.

I haven't used Amazons S3, Victor?

• Amazon S3 is storage for the Internet. It is designed to make web-scale computing easier for developers, however it can also be used as an alternative to at least do partical backup (lets say your pictures , all of your music and most critical data, over the internet. We dont' have enough time to go over all the details of S3 however. I just recently got an Amazon s3 account in order to prepare to do some backup there. There is a great article written by Jeremy Zawodny over at http://jeremy.zawodny.com/blog/archives/007624.html. Where he describes some rationale for him using Amazon's s3 as a total backup solution. he goes into the economics and short and long term implication's. Certainly worth looking at.

• Mozy is priced at about $60/year - Mozy allows 2 GB to be stored for free and charges $5/month for unlimited storage. There’s no charge for bandwidth, so you can back-up as often as you need to. To use it you can sign up for the free account, download the mac application. Features include the ability to schedule incremental back-ups and a choice between public and private key encryption. Mozy stores thirty days worth of backups on its server, so if you need previously backed up versions of files, you can access them.

Side note: This is known and 'File Retention' and can vary from a week to 30 days (or longer )depending on the online back up provider you are using.

Some downsides to Mozy - right now the only scheduling option is every day at a set time: you can’t elect to have weekly backups. Also you can’t have backup sets which run independently of each other. Mozy also adds itself to your menu bar without asking permission. It's also a little on the slow side when you open the configuration window because it scans your backup sets. Now one important note here is that the current version only works if you are running on your system with admin privileges. That is not a good thing. I would like to see Mozy work with all users no matter what their system access level is. This is still beta so hopefully the developers are listening to the feed back of the beta testers. http://mozy.com/ $4.95 a month / about $60 year.

The only other Mac freindly backup solutions I have heard of are:

• mediamax - 25GB of storage with its free version but limits bandwidth to 1GB/month and charges $29.95 for a pro account .

• Jungle Disk which uses Amazon’s S3. JungleDisk has no free account and charges $0.15 per GB/month stored and $0.20 per GB transferred. http://jungledisk.com/

• For business off site back ups there is Back-up-right - Only their pro version has a Mac client and they charge almost $60 a month for the service. They do have an express service for home users, but no Mac client... Backupright.com

No matter which back up solution you choose you will always want to check your back ups. You are checking to make sure you are able to retrieve the data you backed up and that you are backing up all the files you need.

SHOW ENDING:

Well I want to thank Steve Stanger from the Mac Attack Podcast http://themacattack.us/ for being with ust tonight. You absolutely want to subscribe to his podcast and listen to each episode and some of the past ones. I sure do.

The Typical Mac User Podcast can be found at www.typicalmacuser.com and that shows is released weekly on Tuesday nights. This show will be release in my sream late tonight. If you haven't subscribed to that show yet, head over to the web site at www.typicalmacuser.com and hit the ONE BUTTON iTunes subscription.

For now this is your Host Victor Cajiao saying, enjoy the rest of your Sunday