Backups aren’t particularly sexy until things go wrong and you need to rely on one. If you’ve never faced staring-down-the-barrel at potentially losing all of your data then you probably don’t know how this feels. I envy you and hope that you continue to have such fantastic luck in future. If you have then I probably don’t need to convince you further…
With hard drive space (and particularly external hard drives) being so cheap these days there is no reason why you shouldn’t be investing in one to save you from a nightmare. I personally use the excellent and incredibly portable Samsung M3 1Tb external drive [US Link] and Time Machine on my MacBook Air [US Link]. But doing a quick search around suggests that if you do not need portability then for not much more you can get a 3Tb desktop disk that stays at home [US Link]. Samsung seem to excellent on value for money and have reasonably styled external hard drives too.
Time Machine
For most Mac users Time Machine is the tool to use. Once you have formatted your drive to work with OSX then it really is straight forward. You just make sure that your drive is plugged in and let the OS do the rest. I’d strongly suggest considering Encrypting your backup as in the wrong hands all of your data is potentially exposed to someone with a Mac.
Disk Utility
If you just want to take a clone of your HDD then Disk Utility is the tool for you. It’s pretty easy to take a full backup this way. If you are interested in doing this then have a look at this article.
Super Duper
If you prefer to schedule your backups and get full copies of your Mac then take a look at Super Duper. The slightly daft name hides a very capable backup program that automates the kind of thing that you can do with Disk Utility.
Don’t forget to check
What many people fail to do is test their backups. This is a fatal mistake as the one file you need might not make it onto your backup (for whatever reason). At least once a year you should pick a previous backup at random and check that your key files have been saved.
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