For OS X, backup solutions that perform just like Time Machine?

Solution 1:

If you're looking for a way to back up OS X to say, another file server system than a "time machine capsule", you can backup time machine to a linux system running AFP via netatalk. The information on doing this is a bit spread out and disorganized in general, and since I'm not a blogger, I haven't put it together in a coherent way. Here's a general overview, and some sites that I used to set it up on an Ubuntu 9.04 server.

Rebuild the netatalk package to encrypt authentication. Leopard requires this, but its not enabled on Debian/Ubuntu by default.
Set up the volumes you want to share on the server and start the netatalk service.
Disable the strict checking for Time Machine volumes on OS X. I don't recall the specific command, but this is easy to find.
Create a sparsebundle file with the HD Util, and copy to the server.
Tell Time Machine to connect to the server.

http://www.kremalicious.com/2008/06/ubuntu-as-mac-file-server-and-time-machine-volume/

http://blog.damontimm.com/how-to-install-netatalk-afp-on-ubuntu-with-encrypted-authentication/

http://holyarmy.org/benjamin/2008/01/time-machine-backup-to-linux-via-netatalk/

Solution 2:

Crashplan is incredibly reliable, free for personal use and cheap for enterprise, it is really customizable and much much more flexible than Time Machine. It keeps full history like TM. For personal use, you can back up between machines for free. I have relied on it after hitting the limitations of Time Machine. We currently back up 60 computers.

I forgot two advantages: it does not slow down your computer and is fully cross plateform (yet, very well programmed!).

http://www.crashplan.com

Solution 3:

A bit of a side note, but as the way to restore data might be as important as the way to backup:

Time Machine not only integrates well with the OS, but also with Time Machine-aware applications like Mail, Address Book and iPhoto. When entering Time Machine while one of these applications is active, you'll see the regular star field with that application (rather than the normal Finder).

This even makes it easy to restore messages from email accounts that you've deleted altogether, without the need to know how Mail uses the file system.

Solution 4:

This is exactly how Time Machine operates. It first creates a complete copy of every file. The next time it backs up, it creates a copy of all files that have change, then creates hard links to all other files.

If you go spelunking through the Time Machine backup directory, it appears as though there are duplicate copies of files, but really there is only one copy of each file linked to from multiple locations.

Solution 5:

I think this will work on Mac OS X. It's what I do on Linux. "DEST" is the current external USB drive (I have a couple in rotation), "PREV" is the location of the previous hour's or previous day's backup, and "HOUR" is the current hour:

echo about to backup allhats2 to hour $HOUR >> $LOG
rm -rf $DEST/allhats2/hour$HOUR/
rsync -aSuvrx --delete / /boot /home /usr /var /backup_2/dbs --link-dest=$PREV/ $DEST/allhats2/hour$HOUR/ >> $LOG
echo $HOUR > $DEST/last_hour