I set up my computer to do backups using Apple’s Time Machine a while ago. The good news is that it appears to be working just fine. The bad news is it seems to fire up my external USB drive far more than I would like, especially during the evenings. Since my iMac is right in my bedroom, the spinning, chugging drive doesn’t make my sleep situation any better. If I can’t find a way to dial down how often it does a backup, I might have to look at getting a quieter drive.
http://www.klieme.com/TimeMachineScheduler.html
I found the same thing Duane. In my case the noise wasn’t an issue (the computer is in a dedicated office) but I still didn’t like how the drive would never seem to go to sleep so I decided to just eject the drive and now only do backups every once in a while. Definitely a more manual process, but still better than any other backup strategy I had in the past - which was nothing.
I guess another option would be to go with the Time Capsule…