Backup

new stuff in a backup folder till you verify everything is working correctly. ...

I know I should have a backup but have no external hard drive but need to get one. ...

External harddrives aren't that expensive anymore, and one of the main reasons you want to upgrade to Leopard should be TimeMachine, which without a backup harddrive doesn't make much sense. ...

Similarly, my backup software that runs at night will wake the computer. ...

I'm all for backup, then clean install and bring only back what you really need. :) Like a good spring cleaning.

I think you can fix this without reinstalling, but if you really want to reinstall, you can: a. Backup everything, install OS X with a "clean install" b. reinstall OS X with "Archive and install"

I'd personally use LaCie SilverKeeper, a free backup tool. It'll try to copy everything but won't choke if single files won't get copied, it'll just inform you in a log about what didn't get copied. ...

of how it moves. Fans would be more of a constant, rotational sound, and the disk drive wouldn't make noise without media, usually. It may be nothing, but buy a backup drive if you don't have one.. and Time Machine. You could also buy a new drive, but it looks like you may be able to get some use out of this one. ...

th the drive, but I ascertained I was able to manually burn a folder to the DVD without a problem. I then further ascertained that I was able to burn the entire backup to DVD without incident if I excluded the mail folders from the creation of the .dmg file. ...

If the app is configured to duplicate the drive, it will duplicate the whole drive every time it does a backup. Is there an option to set for it to only back up files that have changed when doing a backup? I got Retrospect Express free with an external drive, and my opinion of it is less than stellar - it was a total complicated PITA to configure and even then was still...