Backing up with an iPod?

[w00tmaster]

I am going to be selling my 933Mhz G4 384 meg iBook real soon in order to buy a powerbook. This will leave a small gap where I won't have a computer. That's ok, but it makes backing up a bit more difficult. I have a 30 gig iPod photo, and I was wondering what the best way of going about backing up files is. I could just do a complete hard drive transfer, but that seems a bit wasteful. I really need help in backing up my mail, I used the export function previously, but mail refused to import the file I backed up I lost a few months worth of messsages.

Thanks!

 

[Doctor Q]

You should be able to use any firewire drive with enough room to save a copy of your files. The disk in your iPod is one choice.

I use Carbon Copy Cloner to copy most or all of a disk, but I don't think you'll need to copy everything on your disk. If you can reinstall your applications from their original CDs and set your system preferences from scratch on the new PowerBook, then you may not have to back up the whole iBook disk, but instead just your home folder(s), i.e., subfolder(s) of the Users folder.

Exporting and later importing your data one application at a time should work in theory, but you've already found that it's sometimes not that easy. You shouldn't have to do that, however, if you can simply copy and restore your entire home folder.

After restoring, you might have to do steps to make sure that the user you define on the PowerBook is the owner of all of the restored files.