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Only one did everything right. It's Data Backup, created by TRI-EDRE, a French company. It costs $49.
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Al Fasoldt's reviews and commentaries, continuously available online since 1983

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'Data Backup' program is ideal for Mac OS X backups


June 4, 2003


By Al Fasoldt
Copyright © 2003, Al Fasoldt
Copyright © 2003, The Post-Standard

   I've been making centralized backups of the Windows PCs in our computing center for many years. When I made room for my new Macintosh last year, I figured I'd do the same thing.
   So I made sure all the computers were able to connect with each other on our local network by installing DAVE, a Mac program that integrates Macs into a standard Windows network. (The PCs think my Mac is a Windows computer. My Mac thinks the PCs are brain-dead Macs. There is a justice, after all.)
   I'd been putting my old Aptiva to work for network backups. It handles Windows-to-Windows backups across the network perfectly, despite the fact that it's old and slow, with a 200 MHz processor and only 48 megabytes of RAM. (It runs Windows 98 and uses an excellent Windows program, Second Copy 2000, from www.centeredsystems.com, for backups.)
   So late last year I decided to add my Mac G4 computer to the backup chores handled by the Aptiva. But after months of trying to get Windows and my Windows backup program to do the right thing, I gave up on the idea and decided to turn it around. I came up with a fast way to back up all the computers from my Mac.
   I bought an external hard drive (a Maxtor) that connects to my Mac using a FireWire cable. It's a giant drive, able to store compressed backups of the important files on every computer on our network.
   Then I hunted around for good Mac OS X backup software. It had to work across a network and it had to know how to make both incremental backups and double-mirror backups. (A standard backup copies all the files. An incremental backup copies all files that are new or changed. A double mirror backup copies all the files the first time, then copies files that are new or changed while saving the original backups under different names.)
   I tried many programs. Only one did everything right. It's Data Backup, created by TRI-EDRE, a French company, and sold in the U.S. by Prosoft Engineering. It costs $49. You can buy it or download a free demo from www.prosoftengineering.com.
   Because Mac OS X is a Unix operating system, it multitasks superbly, and this agility shows up each time I run Data Backup. I can back up my Mac and all the other computers on my network while doing everything else that I handle on OS X Macintosh. (Yes, that means I do backups while making CDs and DVDs, too. Some Windows users might find that hard to believe, but that's because they've never used a Mac with OS X.)
   Restoring files is easy. You can restore a single file or any number of files -- or even everything at once -- with a couple of clicks. Make sure you keep a full, working copy of the backup software on a CD or on the external backup drive so you will be able to run it even if your main drive is damaged.