Take Control of Mac OS X Backups, Fourth Edition

Appendix A. Unix-Based Backup Systems

Why should you bother with expensive backup applications when you can create your own custom backup program from scratch, for free, using Unix command-line tools that are built into Mac OS X? Simply put, you'll spend a lot of time and effort to produce something that, in most cases, will be less capable than a commercial backup tool. If at all possible, I'd like to discourage you from trying to cobble together a command-line backup solution. I think such approaches introduce unnecessary risk and have the potential to chew up a great deal of your valuable time. In this appendix, I want to explain exactly why the problem is so complex. But some people will surely want to experiment anyway, and for such adventurous ...