Best Backup Options Mac OS X Extended

But you cant beat it as a way to keep you running while you get the internal fixed.

But the data that was on its hard disk or SSDthose precious photos, that carefully amassed iTunes library, that work, that novel The best case scenario is that you pay hundreds, maybe thousands of dollars to a data recovery specialist to try to get some back, and the worst case is that its gone for good.

We all know this, but understanding the different ways of backing up, and picking a backup strategy thats right for youso that you can rest easy knowing that its extremely unlikely that youll lose any of your filescan be tricky.

At least, it would be, but for this guide Here were going to talk you through the pros and cons of different ways you can back up your Mac, giving you the information you need to make an informed decision about protecting your data in the way that suits you best.

If you do nothing else, do this Buy a hard disk, plug it into your Mac and then, when prompted to use it for Time Machine backup, accept.

If you dont see that prompt, just launch System Preferences and pick the hard disk in the Time Machine backup pane.

Best Backup Options Mac OS X Extended

If its the wrong format, your Mac should offer to reformat it for you; if not, launch Disk Utility, repartition the drive as a single partition using the GUID map, and Mac OS X Extended format.).

If you stop reading here and do this rather than nothing at all, youve done a good job.

A good, safe backup strategy To give your data the best chance of surviving a range of problems, and to minimize your down time if disaster strikes (which is especially important if you rely on your Mac for you livelihood), you should do three things.

Plus, as well as their individual strengths, you also have three copies of your data, which is great if one or more fails.

For more on all these as well as some other options, see below.

Time Machine to a disk connected to your Mac There are other apps that can back up your files to an external hard disk, but Time Machine is simple, built-in, sure to be supported, and offers file versioning as well as simple backup; that is, older copies of your files are stored alongside the current one so that you dont have to restore the most recent version, but can step back through time to grab older drafts.

For this reason its a good idea to buy a hard disk thats two or more times the size of your internal driveso you have space to store lots of versions.

Its all handled automatically for you.) Hard disks are cheapa little over a hundred bucks for a 4TB drive, at the time of writingbut if you have a laptop with an SD card slot you could also consider fitting an SD card (even a Micro SD card inside a Nifty MiniDrive so that its nice and flush) to use as your Time Machine drive for extra convenience.

Good because: Set-it-and-forget-it easy, cheap, built-in, likely to be supported for a long time.

Takes a snapshot of your files every hour, and makes it easy to retrieve deleted and overwritten files with its versioning feature.

But be aware that: You need to have the disk connected for back ups to happen (fine on a desktop, but not guaranteed with a laptop), its slow to restore from if you replace a failed internal hard disk (you cant boot from it), and it offers no protection against theft or local disasters such as fire.

Time Machine to a disk connected to your network Alternatively, you can use Time Machine to back up to a disk that is connected directly to your network rather than to a specific Mac.

This means its available to all the computers on your network so you can have them backing up centrally, and best of all, they back up completely automatically over the network every hour (either via Wi-Fi or ethernet, depending on how they connect to it).

This is great for laptops especially: now you dont have to remember to connect your backup disk; it just does it automatically whenever the Mac is awake.

Indeed, they can offer other features besides; see Fire- and waterproof disks, below.

Good because: All the advantages of Time Machine, but more convenient, especially for laptop users, since backups happen automatically over your home network.

But be aware that: Backups are a little slower (or indeed can be much slower, depending on the speed of your network or the bandwidth of the method by which your Macs connect to it) and restoring is even slower still.

Cloning your disk to another connected to your Mac Apps such as SuperDuper and Carbon Copy Cloner let you mirror the contents of your internal disk to an external drive, and can set schedules so that this happens, say, daily at 3 a.m.

If your internal disk fails, you can just boot from the external clone and continue as if nothing had changed.

Obviously, you dont want to rely on this solely, or be doing it for long; it might be slow, and it means youre a level of redundancy down, so that if the external clone fails, youre in big trouble.

Best Backup Options For Mac