TOPIC: BACKUP

I had a scary thing happen a few days ago, you know one of those moments when your heart sinks.  I was working away on my Mac G5 tower (awesome machine) when it started acting strange so I re-started the machine and the dreaded folder icon with the ? appears on the screen.  The hard drive just crashed, thankfully for a program on the mac called "time machine"  I was able to restore my system to a new hard drive.

The moral of this story is to make SURE to BACKUP your system or data to an independent drive.  Can you imagine loosing all your Reports and photos?

Although I do backup consistently I sure did not expect a hard drive crash.

Happy Inspecting 
www.tomcampinspectionservices.com

Disc imaging software is a best solution in my opinion.  Image the entire HDD to a separate drive.
Most backup software only back up docs, images, and files... not software, operating systems, or programs you may use on a daily basis.  A HDD crash in full will put you days behind in trying to recover lost software and programs.  Whereas an image of your HDD can have you fully up and going in minutes.  Otherwise docs and files are useless until you restore the needed software.

I run carbonite from carbonite.com which backs up all my files online 24/7 after each save. I also backup to an external drive locally.

You both are definitely right. Full hard drive images are the best thing to do as you can restore your entire drive exactly as it was.

Bill, I should have explained the program "Time Line" better.  It comes with Mac OS 10.5 and you can program it to back up as often as you like or turn it off and back up manually when you like.  It backs up your full system or as Dominic says "a full hard drive image" you can go back in time 6 months and restore your complete system or restore a single file you may have inadvertently deleted or may have become corrupted.
All in all a great FULL BACKUP tool, Carbonite is good too but there is a monthly cost.

Tom Camp
www.tomcampinspectionservices.com
Colorado Springs Home Inspector
"Inspections Done Right"

Very nice Tom.  Sounds like Mac has you covered in more ways than one and is great that software is included!  I kind of figured it may have been with your ease of recovery.

I now use Acronis True Image which has several nice features.   I also duplicate my files on a separate HDD as well as 2 computers.
I learned the hard way after a HDD crash just how difficult it is to recovery fully when you "thought" you were protected.  I never will be able to recover everything.  I have backup files that are completely useless (long story) and the original software is no longer supported (company bought out and merged).