“If, tomorrow, something goes wrong with your Mac or if it gets stolen or damaged, replacing the hardware itself is technically very easy to do; it just takes money,” Christopher Phin writes for Macworld. “But the data that was on its hard disk or SSD—those 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 it’s gone for good.”
“And that’s why, today, you should back up your Mac,” Phin writes. “We all know this, but understanding the different ways of backing up, and picking a backup strategy that’s right for you — so that you can rest easy knowing that it’s extremely unlikely that you’ll lose any of your files—can be tricky.”
“Here we’re 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,” Phin writes. “But because that detailed information might be a bit intimidating, we’re going to start with two simple scenarios: the “if you do nothing else, do this” setup that is easy, cheap, and will give you some basic protection against data loss, and then our recommendation for a good mix of backup methods that should in most situations ensure your data can withstand almost any catastrophe.”
Read more in the full article – highly recommended – here.
MacDailyNews Take: Back up, back up, back up!
I got a docking station for bare hard drives and use four drives, each one living in an inexpensive silicone sleeve. There is also another external drive in an enclosure which is kept somewhere else when not in use.
Time Machine does most of the work automatically. My drives are labelled A,B.C and D. Every night I slot in the next drive in the sequence. Every time that A drive comes around, I do a full back up of the built in hard drive to the cased external one using Carbon Copy Cloner, which automatically runs when it detects that drive being plugged in.
If any of those bare hard drives fail, I would clone one of the other drives to a new drive and use it instead of the failed one.
I’ve used Time Machine for many years and a few years ago had a back-up drive fail. I wasn’t able to get that data back, but as it happened, I could manage without it, but it did prove to me how important it was to have more than one back up. After that I adopted this system and it’s worked very well for my relatively simple requirements.
I know a very dear, sweet lady who lost four years of photos of her grandchildren she copied onto her laptop. The HD died in a most awful way with screeches and yowls, indicating major damage to the disk itself. (Not a Mac, FYI) No backup of course.
Valuable advice of course. The problem is when Apple’s solutions simply do not work as advertised. I recently went through a big headache also experienced by other users when my iCloud backups wouldn’t initiate because I supposedly didn’t have enough storage space. Based on what I was backing up (contacts, calendar, settings, that’s it) it should have been no problem.
After reading numerous threads I took the drastic step of deleting my 2-week old backup only for iCloud to tell me a new backup failed to complete! Finally after resetting my device and iCloud numerous times and upgrading to Apple’s 50GB plan, did a backup begin (not right away but hours later). I suspect the problem is that Apple is including the photo library in backups even when it is explicitly de-selected.
The cynic in me sees this as Apple’s way of forcing users into their recurring payments business. Another, equally unpleasant opinion is that Apple has become so big and unwieldy that no one person or group has a real handle on how their hardware and software (especially) work.
The threads I read through gave many examples of users being bounced through multiple levels of customer support up to engineers, who still couldn’t resolve their problems. I ended up making a full backup on iTunes (which unfortunately doesn’t allow the de-selection of photos/videos so I had to clear 50GB of space for it) and may just keep it because iCloud in my experience is not ready for prime time.
In trying to resolve this issue I also ended up with duplicate calendar entries for absolutely everything. The various prompts alone for turning off iCloud were stress-inducing since it wasn’t clear what was being deleted, how your iCloud data tied into what was on your phone, etc.
Absolutely back up your work. Use Apple’s services as a matter of convenience, but don’t trust Apple as a primary backup. I recommend a minimum of two external hard drives to save data redundantly from your phone and computer. Sorry for the long comment, but when the system that you trust with protecting your data fails miserably, it needs to be said that it can’t be fully trusted. Save yourself hours of frustration and anxiety wondering what will happen by having non-Cloud-based backups.
The word “backup” needs to be removed from all data-related conversations. That is so last decade. Syncing is what everyone on the planet should be doing. Backups are events. Restoring is an event. Those take time. Syncing is automatic and constant. Syncing has so many benefits over backup and restore. It’s time that old notion went the way of the dodo…
Not quite, there’s the notion of syncing, backing up and archiving.
Syncing:
Having a system in place where files are replicated across devices or servers. The use case here is something like iTunes Match. It’s not meant to be a backup, and there’s certainly no archiving. That’s not to say there’s anything wrong with syncing, as it is a fantastic way to access the same files across multiple devices. It’s just important to realize that a flaw in a file may be propagated throughout the system as it’s syncs.
Backing up:
Maintaining copies of files or system separate from the system in use such that if anything happens to the files or system, they can be retrieved from the last point of backup. The use case here is what was described in the article, such as cloning your system using something like Carbon Copy Cloner (which I highly recommend). Backup up as defined as such, doesn’t offer (easy) syncing, nor is it by definition, archiving. The strength in it comes from quick recovery in case of a whole system failure.
Archiving:
Maintaining versions of files or system. Time Machine does this very well, but there are others. Like backing up, this is an option that doesn’t lend itself to (easy) syncing. Unlike a cloned backup, it usually also doesn’t lend itself to rapid recovery of a whole system loss. The advantage it offers is rapid recovery of any version of a file from any previous point in time (as long as that version is available).
None of these 3 are inherently “better” than the other, just different. However, it should be noted that most sync services/systems aren’t meant for backup and most don’t offer archiving.
Those are IT focused terms. Not necessarily consumer oriented. Even in business there is no more need to backup and restore client data. Client data should be synced. On the back end that data can be backed up and restored and archived.
I’d be happy to rewrite the definitions in consumer terms for you:
If you sync your iTunes collection to an iPad, iPod, or iPhone and then something happens to your iTunes collection, you’ll face issues getting that music back on your computer, since those syncs are not backups.
If you use iTunes Match to sync music and playlists across your devices, and an error occurs, you may not be able to fix it unless you have a backup
“Even in business there is no more need to backup and restore client data. Client data should be synced. On the back end that data can be backed up and restored and archived.”
That will be the stupidest thing I will have read online all week.
I wish that Apple had affordable online space and a configuration for Time Machine that allowed for a simultaneous local and online backup (local is faster if you have, like me, over 2 TB of data; online gives you protection against catastrophic events such as fire that destroys both your Mac and your local backup). There are some services such as Backblaze that are very affordable (month by month at $5 for unlimited space, even cheaper if you buy 1 or 2 years service at once). Unfortunately, Time Machine can’t point both to the online service and my local drive, and, therefore Backblaze does not offer a Time Machine compatible backup – they have their own backup software. I would love an online sync service for the Mac (including applications, etc… – it is a hassle re-installing all your applications with serial numbers if you have a lot of them and your local backup and hard drive both fail), similar to the iPhone. Most backup software seems to built on the premise that it is easy to install all your applications, so there is no need to back them up.
I paid $248 for a used aluminum Mac Pro to back up my Mini (64lbs! yes! a quality TRUCK, we need those!) added 3 hard drives for about $150, Time Machine backups to one, Carbon Copy Cloner on another, and a manual backup of really important work project stuff on another. At whatever point one of the 3 drives is full and if I absolutely have to have the contents, I will just open up the side of that wonderful truck, pull that drive and store it and get another. Simple, and I am in control of the situation, yes I am a control freak and proud of it, life really is better that way.
If you think I am not too trusting of off-site automated services, you would be correct.