What is the best method for backing up a media hard drive?

What is the best method to back up an internal media hard drive to an external fire wire hard drive - drag and drop copying, back-up software included with the FireWire Drive, the program Retrospect or a cloning program?

If I use a cloning program and there is a problem with the drive would I be cloning the problem?

Thanks

Howie

if it's a one-off, id' keep it simple and just drag and drop.

backup software is of you are updating the media on your drive, and need the backup to be regularly updated, too.

cloning is used for system drives, in my experience, and is mainly about getting all the hidden system files across.


nick

another vote for drag and drop - unless you are going to be updating the content on a recurring basis, retrospect is wasted effort, and as nick said - cloning is for system drives.

Safest way to go is to use Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper for a perfect copy of ANYTHING!

You can choose to Clone an entire volume or one folder or one file, if you chioose. Don't forget, MacOS X uses invisible files that can't be dragged and dropped.

If it's just captured media, then drag and drop will be fine. There's not really any need to clone this stuff as there are no invisible files. Only applications and OS stuff needs cloning.