Mac backup DVD software

January 1, 2009 8:28 PM

I need recommendations for Mac backup / archive software to make DVDs that fill each DVD to capacity with files from a group of folders. I'm using a MacBook Pro with OS X 10.5.

I've searched the archives, but I can't find any recent posts on this topic - most of the threads I read were 2-3 years old, or older.

I am a pro photographer, and I have 2 TBs of photos stored on external drives. Periodically I backup data from my laptop to the current external drive, and also make DVDs so I have 2 copies of all files, on 2 different media (DVD, hard drive) which I can store in 2 places (here, and offsite). I need a solution that will take a group of ~10-40 folders, and make DVDs filling up each DVD as it goes. I also need to know what files were on each DVD - a plain text index file that I can write to the first or last DVD in each burn set would suffice.

Bonus if the software is open source or free software. Compression is not important - RAW photo files don't compress very effectively.

I'm NOT interested in using online archive services such as .mac (MobileMe) or Amazon's S3. With 2 almost TBs of data, growing by many GBs every month, the monthly hosting fees for these services are not within my budget.

posted by jcdill to Computers & Internet (7 answers total)

Apple's Backup.app will back up to DVD, not just MobileMe, and does it pretty elegantly. Unfortunately, as far as I know it's only available to MobileMe subscribers. I do happen to have a copy of the .dmg sitting around.

If you are interested in "learning more," MeMail me.
posted by ikkyu2 at 8:37 PM on January 1, 2009

I think you get bash (a unix shell) on OS X right? If so, this should work:

http://www.methods.co.nz/yakup/

Yakup is a tool for managing multi-level backups 
to fixed disk and removable CD/DVD media. Yakup 
can also be used for ad-hoc archiving.

But with your existing and growing capacity needs I strongly recommend investing in a tape system.
posted by ezekieldas at 8:43 PM on January 1, 2009

Response by poster: A tape backup system doesn't work for me. The MacBook Pro has a DVD burner built-in. I can burn DVDs while on the road, and can buy more media anywhere. Tape backups work great for a desktop or server, not so great for someone who needs to travel light.
posted by jcdill at 9:32 PM on January 1, 2009

I have a love/hate relationship with Roxio Toast Titanium 9.x (mostly hate), but one of it's better features is the ability to automatically span data across multiple discs, as well as automatically cataloging the contents of each disc into a CDFinder database (CDFinder is unquestionably the best data/media cataloguing application on the Mac...god knows I've been through enough of them to be able to make the judgement)

While Toast Titanium is a bit overpriced, it does come bundled with CDFinder, so in the end, it's still worth buying (since a CDFinder license is normally $40)
posted by melorama at 11:00 PM on January 1, 2009

Hmm..not sure what I was thinking, but CDFinder isnt bundled with Toast after all. I was assuming that it was, since CDFinder does integrate with Toast for automatic cataloguing.
posted by melorama at 11:03 PM on January 1, 2009

Just in case it gives you ideas (I know this is tangential) but I just wrote an app in VB.Net for my own use on a Windows PC that uses filespec rules (e.g., paths) to select the files to be backed-up or excluded, copies (uncompressed) to a temp folder of a specified maximum size (e.g., 4.2 gig), shells out to ImgBurn to burn an ISO with a vol.name reflecting the date, backup profile and vol.number, then deletes the temp folder and repeats until all files are imaged. I then burn each ISO using ImgBurn (this is because I have tons of disk space, and so that I don't have to be around during the slow first process...burning the ISOs is relatively quick, then I delete the ISO files). After each ISO is burned I import it into the same program which catalogs the files vs. the DVD serial number and volume name to a MySQL database which is backed up nightly and (you guessed it) the backup file is included in one of the backup profiles.

As you can guess I wrote this because I never found software that did something identical.

I also own an MBP but my storage on the laptop is modest (Journler backup, family photos, etc.) compared to the large amount on my file server.

It sounds like the idea I implemented is what you want, but written for OS X and with adjustments so that it does not rely on having so much free disk space, and maybe minus the mySQL part (?).

Maybe some Mac guru will take it as a personal challenge to do on the Mac what I did relatively easily in .Net on Windows, especially given the pseudo-code I just donated. I didn't say that to be snarky (obviously I own both types of machines and love my MBP, it's just that clearly each platform shines more in certain areas than others...so no criticism was intended).
posted by forthright at 10:17 AM on January 2, 2009

I haven't used it, but I've been looking at Intego Personal Backup. Their docs say it can do a backup onto optical media spanning multiple disks.
posted by jaed at 2:53 PM on January 2, 2009