Should I buy backup 3 and become member of .mac?

[bernhard]

Hello,

I found that there exists a really interesting program for backing up data. It's called backup 3.

Apparently, I can only get it by becoming member of .mac, am I right?

If so, what do I have to pay for .mac and is there any extra fee to pay for backup 3? And do I have to pay only once or do I have to pay montly for the membership? It sounds silly, but I didn't found out answers to these questions yet on apples' website.

Best,

Bernhard

P.S.: I wonder if "timeline" from the new mac os x leopard is just backup 3 with some enhancements

[oceanicitl]

I believe it's an annual fee for .mac. It used to be about £90 a year but not sure what it is now. However they are offering a 3 month free trial.

If you're thinking of .mac purely for backing up I think it would be cheaper to buy an external firewire drive or burn your data to cd/dvd.

[bernhard]

Thanks for your reply, oceanicitl. So it's 90 Pound per Year, quite a lot if the only thing I am interested in is this cute program Backup 3.

'Till now, I always used your proposed possibility of backing up data: Put blank DVD in the drive and burnt down important data. But as Backup 3 does offer such fine things as e. g. "incremental backup" (only changed data is being backuped) or backup of the address book and mails!, and as it reminds you to backup (I am very very lazy , this would be worth some bucks. Any chance to get it without .mac?

Yours,

Bernhard

[oceanicitl]

I think Backup 3 is only sold as part of a .mac account.

[fryke]

Get a free replacement for Backup.app instead. I use LaCie's SilverKeeper. It works. -> http://macupdate.com/info.php/id/7646

[dmetzcher]

I would not buy a .Mac membership just to get Backup 3. If you wanted something that did incremental backups, SuperDuper is a better investment. You can clone your whole drive to another drive, and boot from it, if necessary.

There is also Cabon Copy Cloner (free), which is free, but I don't know if it does incremental backups. Someone else can answer that one.

[macworks]

Agrreed! SuperDuper works great paired with an external hard drive that matches or exceeds the size of your Mac's hard drive.

I have a MacBook Pro with 120 GB hard drive, so I bought a 120 GB external laptop sized hard drive and a MacAlly 2.5" firewire enclosure. I downloaded and registered SuperDuper and that's all there is to it. I do incremental backups once a week or so and it only takes a few minutes.