6.8 Backing Up to a Drive

New to the 2.0 version of Backup is the ability to back up to a Drive. This "Drive" can be any of the following:

• An external FireWire or USB drive

• A USB flash memory key fob

• Your iPod (which is essentially a medium- sized FireWire drive that stores and lets you play music files)

• A networked drive, including AFP, NFS, and WebDAV shares

The word "Drive" is used throughout this chapter in a generic form to mean any type of "Drive" to which Backup can back up data.

The main rule that applies to backing up to a Drive is that it must be mounted on your Mac in order for the backup to take place; otherwise , to what location would the data be backed up? This means that USB and FireWire devices must be connected to the Mac, either directly or to an applicable hub that's connected to the Mac, and any networked drives must be mounted on the system using Go Connect to Server ( -K) from the Finder.

The other rule that applies is that you must have read/write privileges on the drive or share to which you're backing up. If you do not have the proper access privileges to write data to a drive, your backup will fail (without fail).

6.8.1 Setting a Drive Location for Backup

When you select "Back up to Drive" from the pop-up menu on Backup's window, you'll notice that a Set button appears next to it, as shown in Figure 6-26.

Figure 6-26. When using Backup to backup data to a Drive, note its specific features.

In order to back up to a Drive, you must first Set (or specify) a Drive and a location on that drive where the backup will be saved. If you haven't backed up to a Drive yet, you'll see the message "Location not set" immediately to the right of the Set button. This is the case with Figure 6-26, so let's set a Drive.

1. Select Back up to Drive from the pop-up menu.

2. Click on the Set button.

3. If you haven't Set a Drive location before, an alert sheet (shown in Figure 6-27) flops out of Backup's titlebar.

   Figure 6-27. This alert sheet lets you Create a new Drive location, or open a previously saved location for conducting another backup.

   
   

4. Click on the Create button to set a new backup Drive location. The alert sheet is replaced by another sheet (shown in Figure 6-28), which resembles an Open dialog and is used to select a Drive to be used by Backup.

   Figure 6-28. Backup's sheet for naming and selecting a Drive location.

   
   

5. For this example, I will be backing up my Home folder (named chuck , after my user account name ) to an external FireWire drive on my home network, which is named Vesuvius. I've named my backup "Chucks Home Folder Backup," and I've selected the drive Vesuvius in the sheet's sidebar, as shown in Figure 6-29.

   Figure 6-29. Assign a name to your backup and select the Drive in the sheet's sidebar.

   
   

6. Click the Create button to create the location for the backup set. The top part of Backup's window will look like Figure 6-30.

Figure 6-30. Notice that the name of the backup set, "Chucks Home Folder Backup" is placed next to the Set button at the top of Backup's window.

Since I plan to back up my Home folder, the backup won't contain any of the default QuickPick packages. So now I need to add my Home folder to the backup list:

1. At the lower-left of Backup's window, click on the button with the plus sign (+). This opens another sheet, shown in Figure 6-31, from which I can select my Home folder.

   Figure 6-31. Select your Home folder in the dialog's sidebar and then click the Choose button to add your Home folder to the Backup Items list.

   
   

2. To do this, click on the icon for your Home folder in the sheet's sidebar, and then click on the Choose button to close the sheet and add the Home folder to Backup's list of Items, shown in Figure 6-32.

Figure 6-32. With my Home folder added to the Backup Items list, it's time to get cracking.

With my Home folder added to Backup's Items list, I can go to the QuickPicks drawer and deselect any items that I don't want to include in the backup. But since I want this to be a backup of everything that's in my Home folder, I won't deselect anything. The only step remaining is to click on the Backup Now button to kick off the process.

When the backup is finished, Backup places a file named Chucks Home Folder Backup.backup onto the drive Vesuvius. Now if I ever need to restore my Home folder after reinstalling Mac OS X, I have a safe backup waiting in the wings on my external FireWire drive. To ensure that the backup of my Home folder is always current, I have it scheduled Backup to back up my Home folder to my external FireWire drive every night at 2:00 a.m.