Best transfer Software & back up - not TimeMachine

Scrivener Scrivener for macOS
1

Please help me.
You people always seem to have the answers.

I want to move most of my writing & videos (I have created) from my iMac to a separate drive.
I have a 3T MyBook that I purchased last week.
I have an iMac (March 2011), MacBookPro (June 2010 - Apple replace one I purchased Aug 2009) & MacBook Air (Jan 2011) Plus an iPad
OS Lion
I use dropbox - 50 gig - but I want stuff off my machines except when I want it there.

What is the best transfer (& backup) software for iMac, MacBookPro & MacBook Air - that is NOT TimeMachine/Time Capsule. I’ve had it with TimeMachine & Time Capsule. I’ve lost too much over the last few years --including irreplaceable photos-- because of disappearing or corrupt sparse bundles and malfunctioning time capsules. Plus failed backups. Apple replaced my Time Capsule in 2010 and I bought a new one in 2011.
Actually the first iMac I purchased @2006 had to be replaced 3 weeks after I bought it because it crashed daily.
I am magnetic – which may have something to do with it … Those of you who’ve used wind up watches will understand.

What I need at this point is some mechanism to transfer my movies & writing from my iMac & iPad to my 3T MyBook.

Right now this has priority over my writing because my husband had a major stroke last Oct- still in rehab-- & I’ve made videos of his therapy sessions – SLP,OT,PT. Plus I’ve created a Scrivener Project. I do not want to lose this! However, the movies are taking up 800+ terabytes of my iMac and I have no backup!

I want to pull most of the movies & photos & my writing projects onto my 3T MyBook.
Tried drag & drop just to free up a bit of space but evidently that was stupid because everything kept hanging up. Time Machine gets hung up in backup.

Once I do this I can get back to my novel - so close to being finished that it hurts to have it just sit there.

Andrea

2

I’m no expert, but the first thing I’d say is that if you want to archive stuff, put it on CD ROM or DVD. Remember that the whole concept of backup means having AT LEAST two copies – I’d say three is a minimum. If you copy something to another hard disk and then delete the original, you haven’t made a backup, you’ve created an archive, and you don’t want that on a hard drive, because they fail. DVDs can also fail, but it’s much less likely. I’d say that anything important needs to be on at least one CD / DVD as well as in other places.

As for software, you could try SuperDuper or CarbonCopyCloner. Look for them on MacUpdate.com. I don’t have that much experience of using them, but they are popular applications. Others may well have better suggestions.

Best of luck, and hope your husband does well,
Martin.

BTW, I had a 1TB MyBook that died just a few weeks ago. It lasted two years, so you might want to take that into account.