Turn your old Mac into a backup server Page 2 of 2

Dedicated server makes life easier, data safer

by Joe Kissell, Macworld.com

Do Your Recycling

Eventually, your external drive(s) will fill up. And even if it’s quite capacious, Retrospect’s performance can decrease when backup sets get very large. So I recommend recycling your backup sets every few months or so. This erases the set’s contents and starts a new backup from scratch. (If you use multiple drives, stagger the recycling so you always have a reliable copy.) To do this, stop Backup Server and go to Retrospect’s Configure pane. Click on Backup Sets and select the set you want to recycle. Click on Configure, and then go to the Options pane and click on Action. Select Recycle, dismiss all the dialog boxes, and save the script. Choose Run: Start Backup Server. On the next run, your old backup set will be replaced.

Restoring Files

Having a great backup is useless if you can’t recover files when you need them. To restore files, follow these steps:

1. Stop Backup Server if it’s running. In the Immediate pane, click on Restore.

2. Select Restore Files From A Backup and click on OK.

3. In the list at the top of the window, select a backup set (typically the one with the most recent date). The bottom part of the window lists the most recent snapshot (a complete list of files at the time of each backup) for each backed-up volume. (To see previous versions of the files, click on Add Snapshot and select the snapshot with the desired volume and date.) Click on OK.

4. Choose a destination for the restored files and click on OK.

5. After Retrospect compiles a list of all the files in the current snapshot, click on Files Chosen to display them. Select the files and folders you want to recover, and then click on Mark. When you’re finished, close the window.

6. Click on Restore. The selected files will be copied to the destination you specified.

[ Joe Kissell is the author of the Take Control of Mac OS X Backups e-book. His secret identity is Curator of Interesting Things for InterestingThingOfTheDay.com. ]

Using Retrospect’s Configure pane, you can direct the application to erase a backup set’s contents and start a new backup from scratch.

"Turn your old Mac into a backup server" Comments