Time Machine Alternative with Apple Backup and Dropbox

Nowadays, hard drive technologies has been improved a lot; you might not see a as many defective hard drive as a couple years ago. However, what if you are the unlucky one who is lazy in backing up your data and lose them all after you wake up one day? The Time Machine function came with Leopard and Snow Leopard let you back up your files with ease. When your Mac is connecting to the external drive that’s been set to as a Time Machine drive, your Mac will automatically backup the files for you. Basically, once you set it up, you don’t need to do anything but having a peace in mind.

There are a couple ways to use Time Machine:

• Add one more partition to your system hard drive with HFS+ format (Mac OS Extended (Journaled)), and use it as Time Machine partition, but using this method, you won’t have a peace in your mind because if you hard drive fail, you Time Machine crashed at the same time. I don’t recommend this method to backup your data;
• Get one external hard drive to connect your computer, format it as HFS+. This is the “traditional” way to use Time Machine.
• Get a Time Capsule. A Time Capsule is a device that back up almost all Mac within the same network, but to me, Time Capsule is bit expensive.

Besides Time Machine, a lot of people might not know that, Apple actually has another software called “Backup” that’s available only to MobileMe users (previously .Mac users). If you are already a MobileMe user, you can get the software under your “iDisk–>Software”. If not, then you can get the software by clicking here. The most updated version is 3.1.2; it says support up to 10.5, but I have tested it and it works fine under Snow Leopard, 10.6.1.

Here is what Apple says about Backup 3:

Now Backup 3 lets you create multiple backup plans for backing up your most important data, such as your home folder, your essential personal data files, and your iLife content (photos, movies, and music). And, you can schedule backups to any destination so you never forget a backup.

Basically, you can schedule different plans to back up your machine. Like, if your system files won’t change much, then you can back them up once per month, while you will have frequent change to your document folders, then you can schedule backup every hour or so.

However, basic backup back to your own hard drive won’t help at all when your hard drive is failing. You have two solutions:

1. External hard drive. when you schedule your back up plan, you can choose an external hard drive as your destination.
2. Network space. I will say it’s relatively safe to back up my files to those network space provider as most of them has RAID system structure and the chance of loosing my data is smaller than an external hard drive by theory. However, you can only do that when you are able to connect to internet.

In this post, I will tell you the second method, the easy and free way with DropBox.

First, you will need to download Dropbox, then install the application; it’s quite straight forward, just mount up the .dmg file and drag the application to your Applications folder, I am not going to go too detail here.

Then launch your Dropbox:

If you have already gotten an Dropbox account, you can just use your account to sign in, or else, you can just create a new account, it’s very easy.

When you are signed in, you need to choose your plan in Dropbox. Dropbox provides 2GB free network space to you if you don’t want to pay, but just keep in mind that 50GB and 100GB is available for $9.99 and $19.99 per month.

The last step is to choose your Growl notification and folder location:

I have no problem with the default location, so I just go ahead and click Finish. You will see the Dropbox folder was added:

Alright, now Dropbox is setted-up, let’s move to start schedule our backup plan.

1. Launch Backup you installed a while ago, you will see this interface:

2. Click on the “+” sign, you can choose the data backup plan you want:

I have to admit that, Backup is actually originally for .Mac users (or now MobileMe users), so if we would like to use Dropbox, we need to select “Custom” option to choose different destinations:

3. Name your backup plan, I name it “Dropbox”:

4. Now you can select your Backup items by clicking the “+” sign to add more items into the backup plan, I chose only my documents folder:

5. You will need to also choose your backup destination. This is where we could link up Dropbox and Backup, I choose the folder created by dropbox:

6. Once you are done with the above steps, you can see your plan become this:

7. When you click on “Bac Up Now”, your Backup will automatically back up to your Dropbox folder:

In order to verify whether your items are being backed up or not, we can check your dropbox folder on your computer or logon to your Dropbox online account:

OK, I can see my files are in Dropbox’s network space and I have two copies now. So whenever your hard drive is damaged or you accidentally lose a file, you can grab the backup file and use “Backup” to restore it:

Post Note:

If you have MobileMe account, you can use your whole 20GB to do the backup job; if you are a MobileMe trial user, it’s limited to 100MB backup. Using Dropbox, you can grab the backup files whenever you can access internet; it’s somehow better than Time Capsule in my point of view, but for small files only because you have only 2GB to use for the free back up.

If anyone can find a network space provider with larger space and it’s reliable, mind leaving me a message?