Backing up a Mac, External hard drive... Options

[soramimicake]

Hello!

I decided that I finally need to have a back-up of the files on my Mac, but I don't really know a whole lot about it. I'm trying to decide both on what kind of an external hard drive I should get and what software I should use to transfer files to that hard drive. So, does anybody have any suggestions on hard drive type or software?

For the external hard drive itself, I'd like a fairly cheap one, but I also don't want to sacrifice cost for quality. I also want it to be small and portable. I've also heard that a Firewire port is important?

For the software, I'm running Mac OS X 10.4.11. Is it worth upgrading to Leopard to get Time Machine, or is there a better software to use?

Thanks!

[batman]

ah fack, i should probably invest in another external harddrive and start actually using time machine. my mac scared me to death last night. it kept staying at the blue screen and refused to do anything else, plus i don't have the install disc on me atm. was about to go to apple store at 2am and remembered i wasn't in nyc T_T

anyway, it suddenly started working this morning, but i figure it's time to back shit up just in case i get another scare.

so how exactly does time machine work? do i get to select what i want backed up and how often? does it compress everything? bc the last time i tried, it said that my external didn't have enough memory (the thing was ancient) :(

wish i wasn't so computertarded

[mipadi]

so how exactly does time machine work? do i get to select what i want backed up and how often? does it compress everything? bc the last time i tried, it said that my external didn't have enough memory (the thing was ancient) :(

1. You should use an external hard drive equal to or greater than your internal hard drive in capacity.
2. Time Machine works by making a clone of your hard drive's contents the first time, and after that, basically copying just changes you make. It backs up every hour; at the end of the day, it saves the latest backup. It saves daily backups for the past month, and then weekly backups until your hard drive is full. The contents are not compressed, but Time Machine is pretty efficient in packing stuff onto a hard drive. For reference, I've been using it for about 2 months; initially I had ~95GB of data to backup, and in 2 months, I've used 155GB of a 1TB hard drive.
3. You can't select what you want to back up, because Time Machine backs up your entire hard drive (except for stuff you don't need, like temporary files and cache files). However, you can select files and folders that you don't want Time Machine to back up.