How do I keep a second external drive mirrored.

October 5, 2007 11:27 PM

Mirroring external drives on a mac...

I have a mac mini which I use as a media center. For all my music, photos etc I have a large external drive connected. I now have a second external drive, which I would like to use to make a backup of the first.

Rather than drag and drop and let the whole lot slowly copy, what software can I use so that every week or so I can plug the second drive in, click a button or two and have it update the second drive so that it mirrors the first without doing a full copy.

Freeware would be good, but I don't mind paying for good software. Thanks!

posted by tomble to Computers & Internet (8 answers total)

Carbon Copy Cloner
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 11:30 PM on October 5, 2007

Best answer: without doing a full copy

Ah, you'll want to look at something like Chronosync or SuperDuper! for incremental backups.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 11:38 PM on October 5, 2007

My drive came with Retrospect Express.
posted by Gungho at 5:52 AM on October 6, 2007

Response by poster: That looks perfect! Thanks BP!
posted by tomble at 6:37 AM on October 6, 2007

Wait for OS X Leopard. Your solution is integrated into the new OS, robustly. Due Oct. 26 (but don't wait that long to do a manual full backup or use CCC).
posted by spitbull at 6:50 AM on October 6, 2007

rsnapshot is pretty nice. It uses rsync to create snapshots of your drive at various points in time.
posted by chunking express at 7:41 AM on October 6, 2007

jwz recently ranted on this.
posted by fatllama at 9:25 AM on October 6, 2007

Response by poster: Just as a followup, I registered SuperDuper! and it's perfect for what I'm doing. Since I'm not backing up my system files, just the contents of an external, it means I can hook up the second external, click a button, and in a pretty short time the drives are identical in content, rather than the pain of copying ALL the data every time I do a backup.
posted by tomble at 5:37 AM on November 4, 2007