One way to make real-time versioned FileVault backups

Apr 30, '09 07:30:01AM

Contributed by: Anonymous

There's been a lot of discussion on how to get Time Machine and Filevault to play well together -- see, for instance, these two hints. I don't feel I can put my faith (and my backups) in the hands of any of the workarounds I've read so far.

Here's my advice: forget anything clever and just use CrashPlan. I can't say enough good things about this piece of backup software. I've used it for two years now. It's very easy, and it works perfectly with FileVault. There are a couple of requirements to get it working, though:

Once properly set up, CrashPlan+ looks for changed files on my FileVaulted home folder every two minutes (when I'm logged in), then encrypts those files and sends them to both another computer on my network and to an offsite server. You can also specify how many older versions of a file to keep; I have this set at 10 for my machine.

CrashPlan+ satisfies my desire for security, as the software encrypts my data before it leaves my MacBook. And since it uses a different sort of encryption than Filevault, I feel happier that I've spread my risk of one or the other form of encryption/decryption having a problem.

I hope my experience with CrashPlan helps someone. As mentioned above, it's been around for a few years and I'm amazed it's not better known. It's cross-platform, too. If you've found a better way to back up a FileVaulted machine, please share -- I'm no expert when it comes to computing (I'm a doctor, not a programmer).

[robg adds: I have only the most basic level of knowledge of FileVault, having never even used it. (I use encrypted disk images for those few things, such as financial files and scanned social security cards, that I'm fairly paranoid about losing to someone else.) So if there are other ways to get continuous, versioned backups of a FileVault directory, please share in the comments. I tried searching Apple's support site, but couldn't find anything relevant to FileVault and Time Machine.]

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Mac OS X Hints
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20090428130436167