The Latest Back-Up Solution

Ever since the "Crash of '99", I have been adamant about keeping a backup of my essential files. A large part of my problems were associated with not having the infrastructure to store a large amount of data in a secure off-site place. Once my family upgraded to OSX in 2001, this wasn't so much a problem anymore, as we suffered far fewer system glitches, but there's always Murphy's Law, whatever can go wrong, will.

In recent years, I have been very lucky with my hardware failures, hat my data has managed to stay intact. But as of late, the fear of data loss is hitting me harder and harder. So a few weeks ago I invested in a 2GB SanDisk Cruzer Micro flash drive so I could store my most essential (and essential) files on my person.

I went looking for a no-cost solution to back up my files, and stumbled across LaCie's Silverkeeper, a simple, free backup utility that would allow me to back up selected folders to my jump drive. It worked, but it was awfully slow. The initial backup took approximately 2 hours -- and I thought that was excessive for backing up about 1 gigabyte of data. Furthermore, Silverkeeper did not make or compress an archive, nor would it encrypt my personal (i.e. private) data. I certainly wouldn't want some schmuck reading my personal data if I ever -- God forbid -- lost my jump drive, or had it stolen. Silverkeeper almost did everything I wanted, but it was cumbersome.

This morning, I discovered on the HawkWings site, a new backup utility was released in the last day. Coined BackityMac, it's a simple utility that will allow you to back up your most essential data, archive it and encrypt it. In addition, it will also run a bunch of maintenance utilities if you so desire (goodbye Cocktail!) It's not acutelexactly freeware -- it's donationware, but from what I have seen in one trial, it is worth plugging the developer's bank account.

I immediately fell in love with the simple GUI. All you have to do is check the directories you want archived, choose a location to save the file, and BackityMac takes care of the rest. You don't have to worry about command-line, or permissions. Even better, is BackityMac has restore capabilities; once again, it does all the work for you.

When I ran a backup of my Documents, Mail, Address Book, Keychain, Bookmarks, and iWeb files, I was surprised at the efficiency and speed the program operated at. What took me 2 hours to accomplish with Silverkeeper was done in about 10 minutes -- compressed, encrypted, and saved to my jump drive. I was immediately sold on the product.

BackityMac is still early in its' development. As of version 1.0.1, it still does not support backing up to optical media (CD-R or DVD-R), but I surmise that may be addressed in the future if demand is high enough.

I do have to admit, that there are a few features I would like to see in subsequent versions of BackityMac. I think many users would appreciate a scheduling function, so the backup could be performed automatically -- likely when the user is away from the computer. I would like to see performance increases, such as incremental backups, though I am not sure if this would be possible with the current archive format (.dmg files). Perhaps the developer could have an Advanced option, which would allow the user to back up applications, or make bootable backups of an entire drive.

Mind you, Carbon Copy Cloner does this quite well already, and I think the author of BackityMac was creating a simple backup solution for the rest of us. Overall, I think this a very solid first effort, and I expect to see great things in the future for this program. Whimsplucky can expect a donation from me for doing such a great job.