Backing Up Your Mac: Overview
Backups are one of the most important chores for all Mac users. This is especially true when you have a brand new Mac. Sure, we want to relish its newness, explore its capabilities. After all, it's brand new, what could go wrong? Well, it's a fundamental law of the universe, usually wrongly referenced to some guy named Murphy, But Murphy was just reminiscing about what earlier sages and wits already knew: if anything can go wrong, it will.
Before Murphy and his pessimistic buddies descend on your Mac, be sure you have a backup strategy in place.
There are many different ways to back up your Mac, as well as many different backup applications to make the task easier. In this article, we're going to look at backing up a Mac used for personal use. We won't be delving into the methodologies used by businesses of various sizes. We're only concerned here with a basic backup strategy for home users that is robust, inexpensive, and easy to implement.
A Mac. Seems obvious, but it's a good place to start.
A storage device. I recommend an external hard drive, but you can also use other solutions, such as an NAS (Network Attached Storage) box, or if you're a Mac Pro user, an internal hard drive. An external hard drive is still the preferred method, though.
Backup software. Since I'm using my own personal backup method, I'm going to use Apple's Time Machine and Shirt Pocket's SuperDuper. I like using two different backup applications because they fulfill several purposes.
They cover the need to restore individual files or previous versions of files (Apple's Time Machine), restore a complete copy of my hard drive if something catastrophic occurs (Time Machine and SuperDuper), or have a working backup that can be put in place as fast as rebooting my Mac (SuperDuper). There's another bonus of having two different backups: You've got something to fall back on if Murphy pops up when you go to restore your data.
I want to point out that other backup applications beyond the ones I mention here are also good choices. For instance, Carbon Copy Cloner, winner of the Reader's Choice Awards 2010 and 2011 in the backup software category, has nearly the same features and capabilities as SuperDuper. Likewise, you can use Apple's own Disk Utility to create clones of the startup drive.
This won't be a step-by-step tutorial, so you should be able to adapt the process to your favorite backup application. Let's get started.
Published: 3/30/2010
Updated: 2/27/2015
Back Up Your Mac: Time Machine Size and Location
Backing up my Mac starts with Time Machine. The beauty of Time Machine is the ease of setting it up, plus the ease of recovering a file, project, or entire hard drive should something go wrong.
Time Machine is a continuous backup application. It doesn't back up your files every second of the day, but it does back up your data while you're still working. Once you set it up, Time Machine works in the background.
You probably won't even be aware that it's running.
You'll need a place for Time Machine to use as the destination for its backups. I recommend an external hard drive. This can be an NAS device, such as Apple's own Time Capsule, or a simple external hard drive connected directly to your Mac.
My preference is for an external hard drive that supports all three common interfaces (USB, FireWire, and eSATA). I like multiple interface support because I can use the external hard drive to restore not only to my current Mac, but to any Mac I may purchase in the future. Consider the plight of individuals backing up to a FireWire external drive and then having their Mac die. They get a great deal on a MacBook for a replacement, only to discover that it lacks a FireWire port, so they can't easily retrieve files from their backups. There are ways around this dilemma, but the easiest is to anticipate the problem and not be tied to a single interface.
The size of the external hard drive dictates how many versions of your data Time Machine can store.
The larger the hard drive, the further back in time you can go to restore data. Time Machine doesn't back up every file on your Mac. Some system files are ignored, and you can manually designate other files that Time Machine shouldn't back up. A good starting point for hard drive size is twice the Users data space on your Mac.
To find the size of your user data space, open a Finder window.
The size of the Users folder is the value you should double to come up with a starting point for the size of an external hard drive. Why double? Time Machine starts by making a full backup of your user data. That will leave half of the space available on your external for the incremental backups that Time Machine will perform. This should provide anywhere from 1 to 6 months of backup space, allowing you to go back in time to retrieve any file from the backup period. If you need a longer backup window, or you regularly work with very large files, you may need more storage space, but twice the Users data size is a good starting point.
Published: 3/30/2010
Updated: 2/27/2015
Back Up Your Mac: Using Time Machine
Now that you know the preferred minimum size for the external hard drive, you're ready to set up Time Machine. Start by making sure the external drive is available for your Mac. This may mean plugging in a local external or setting up an NAS or Time Capsule. Be sure to follow any instructions provided by the manufacturer
Most external hard drives come formatted for use with Windows. If that's the case with yours, you'll need to format it using Apple's Disk Utility.
You can find instructions in the 'Format Your Hard Drive Using Disk Utility' article.
Once your external drive is formatted correctly, you can configure Time Machine to use the drive by following the instructions in the 'Time Machine: Backing Up Your Data Has Never Been So Easy' article.
Once configured, Time Machine will pretty much take care of itself. When your external drive gets filled up with backups, Time Machine will start overwriting the oldest backups to ensure there is space for the current data.
With the 'twice the Users data' minimum size we suggested, Time Machine should be able to keep:
Hourly backups for the last 24 hours.
Daily backups for the past month.
Weekly backups for the past 1 to 6 months, depending on the size of the drive.
Published: 3/30/2010
Updated: 2/27/2015
Time Machine is a great backup solution, one I highly recommend, but it isn't the end-all for backups. There are a few things it's not designed to do that I want in my backup strategy. The most important of these is to have a bootable copy of my startup drive.
Having a bootable copy of your startup drive takes care of two important needs. First, by being able to boot from another hard drive, you can perform routine maintenance on your normal startup drive.
This includes verifying and repairing minor disk issues, something I do routinely to ensure a startup drive that works well and is dependable.
The other reason to have a clone of your startup drive is for emergencies. From personal experience, I know that our good buddy Murphy loves to throw disasters at us when we least expect them and can least afford them. Should you find yourself in a situation where time is of the essence, perhaps a deadline to meet, you may not be in a position to take the time to buy a new hard drive, install OS X, and restore your Time Machine backup. You'll still have to do these things to get your Mac working, but you can postpone that process while you finish up whatever important tasks you need to finish by booting from your cloned startup drive.
A copy of SuperDuper.
An external hard drive that's at least as large as your current startup drive. Mac Pro users can use an internal hard drive, but for the most versatility and safety, an external is a better choice.
SuperDuper has many attractive and useful features. The one we're interested in is its ability to make a clone or exact copy of a startup drive. SuperDuper calls this 'Backup - all files.' We'll also use the option to erase the destination drive before the backup is performed. We do this for the simple reason that the process is faster. If we erase the destination drive, SuperDuper can use a block copy function that is faster than copying data file by file.
That's it. In a short time, you'll have a bootable clone of your startup drive.
How often to create clones depends on your work style and how much time you can afford for a clone to be out of date. I create a clone once a week. For others, every day, every two weeks, or once a month may be sufficient. SuperDuper has a scheduling feature that can automate the cloning process so you don't need to remember to do it.
Published: 3/30/2010
Updated: 2/27/2015
My personal backup process has a few holes, places where backup professionals would say I could be in danger of not having a viable backup when I need it.
But this guide isn't intended to be the perfect backup process. Instead, it's meant to be a reasonable backup method for personal Mac users who don’t want to spend a lot of cash on backup systems and processes, but who wish to feel safe and secure.
In the most likely type of Mac failures, they'll have a viable backup available to them.
This guide is only a beginning, one that About: Macs readers can use as a starting point to develop their own personal backup process. If you have your own backup procedure, we would like to hear about it. Use the Readers Response link below to tell us about it.
Published: 3/30/2010
Updated: 2/27/2015
Backups are one of the most important chores for all Mac users. This is especially true when you have a brand new Mac. Sure, we want to relish its newness, explore its capabilities. After all, it's brand new, what could go wrong? Well, it's a fundamental law of the universe, usually wrongly referenced to some guy named Murphy, But Murphy was just reminiscing about what earlier sages and wits already knew: if anything can go wrong, it will.
Before Murphy and his pessimistic buddies descend on your Mac, be sure you have a backup strategy in place.
Back Up Your Mac
There are many different ways to back up your Mac, as well as many different backup applications to make the task easier. In this article, we're going to look at backing up a Mac used for personal use. We won't be delving into the methodologies used by businesses of various sizes. We're only concerned here with a basic backup strategy for home users that is robust, inexpensive, and easy to implement.
What You Need to Back Up Your Mac
A Mac. Seems obvious, but it's a good place to start.
A storage device. I recommend an external hard drive, but you can also use other solutions, such as an NAS (Network Attached Storage) box, or if you're a Mac Pro user, an internal hard drive. An external hard drive is still the preferred method, though.
Backup software. Since I'm using my own personal backup method, I'm going to use Apple's Time Machine and Shirt Pocket's SuperDuper. I like using two different backup applications because they fulfill several purposes.
They cover the need to restore individual files or previous versions of files (Apple's Time Machine), restore a complete copy of my hard drive if something catastrophic occurs (Time Machine and SuperDuper), or have a working backup that can be put in place as fast as rebooting my Mac (SuperDuper). There's another bonus of having two different backups: You've got something to fall back on if Murphy pops up when you go to restore your data.
I want to point out that other backup applications beyond the ones I mention here are also good choices. For instance, Carbon Copy Cloner, winner of the Reader's Choice Awards 2010 and 2011 in the backup software category, has nearly the same features and capabilities as SuperDuper. Likewise, you can use Apple's own Disk Utility to create clones of the startup drive.
This won't be a step-by-step tutorial, so you should be able to adapt the process to your favorite backup application. Let's get started.
Published: 3/30/2010
Updated: 2/27/2015
Back Up Your Mac: Time Machine Size and Location
Backing up my Mac starts with Time Machine. The beauty of Time Machine is the ease of setting it up, plus the ease of recovering a file, project, or entire hard drive should something go wrong.
Time Machine is a continuous backup application. It doesn't back up your files every second of the day, but it does back up your data while you're still working. Once you set it up, Time Machine works in the background.
You probably won't even be aware that it's running.
Where to Store Time Machine Backups
You'll need a place for Time Machine to use as the destination for its backups. I recommend an external hard drive. This can be an NAS device, such as Apple's own Time Capsule, or a simple external hard drive connected directly to your Mac.
My preference is for an external hard drive that supports all three common interfaces (USB, FireWire, and eSATA). I like multiple interface support because I can use the external hard drive to restore not only to my current Mac, but to any Mac I may purchase in the future. Consider the plight of individuals backing up to a FireWire external drive and then having their Mac die. They get a great deal on a MacBook for a replacement, only to discover that it lacks a FireWire port, so they can't easily retrieve files from their backups. There are ways around this dilemma, but the easiest is to anticipate the problem and not be tied to a single interface.
Time Machine Backup Size
The size of the external hard drive dictates how many versions of your data Time Machine can store.
The larger the hard drive, the further back in time you can go to restore data. Time Machine doesn't back up every file on your Mac. Some system files are ignored, and you can manually designate other files that Time Machine shouldn't back up. A good starting point for hard drive size is twice the Users data space on your Mac.
Size of User Space
To find the size of your user data space, open a Finder window.
- Navigate to /startup volume/ where 'startup volume' is the name of your boot disk.
- Right-click the 'Users' folder, and select 'Get Info' from the pop-up menu.
- The Get Info window will open.
- In the General category, you'll see the Size listed for the Users folder. Make note of this number.
- Close the Get Info window.
The size of the Users folder is the value you should double to come up with a starting point for the size of an external hard drive. Why double? Time Machine starts by making a full backup of your user data. That will leave half of the space available on your external for the incremental backups that Time Machine will perform. This should provide anywhere from 1 to 6 months of backup space, allowing you to go back in time to retrieve any file from the backup period. If you need a longer backup window, or you regularly work with very large files, you may need more storage space, but twice the Users data size is a good starting point.
Published: 3/30/2010
Updated: 2/27/2015
Back Up Your Mac: Using Time Machine
Now that you know the preferred minimum size for the external hard drive, you're ready to set up Time Machine. Start by making sure the external drive is available for your Mac. This may mean plugging in a local external or setting up an NAS or Time Capsule. Be sure to follow any instructions provided by the manufacturer
Most external hard drives come formatted for use with Windows. If that's the case with yours, you'll need to format it using Apple's Disk Utility.
You can find instructions in the 'Format Your Hard Drive Using Disk Utility' article.
Configure Time Machine
Once your external drive is formatted correctly, you can configure Time Machine to use the drive by following the instructions in the 'Time Machine: Backing Up Your Data Has Never Been So Easy' article.
Using Time Machine
Once configured, Time Machine will pretty much take care of itself. When your external drive gets filled up with backups, Time Machine will start overwriting the oldest backups to ensure there is space for the current data.
With the 'twice the Users data' minimum size we suggested, Time Machine should be able to keep:
Hourly backups for the last 24 hours.
Daily backups for the past month.
Weekly backups for the past 1 to 6 months, depending on the size of the drive.
Published: 3/30/2010
Updated: 2/27/2015
Time Machine is a great backup solution, one I highly recommend, but it isn't the end-all for backups. There are a few things it's not designed to do that I want in my backup strategy. The most important of these is to have a bootable copy of my startup drive.
Having a bootable copy of your startup drive takes care of two important needs. First, by being able to boot from another hard drive, you can perform routine maintenance on your normal startup drive.
This includes verifying and repairing minor disk issues, something I do routinely to ensure a startup drive that works well and is dependable.
The other reason to have a clone of your startup drive is for emergencies. From personal experience, I know that our good buddy Murphy loves to throw disasters at us when we least expect them and can least afford them. Should you find yourself in a situation where time is of the essence, perhaps a deadline to meet, you may not be in a position to take the time to buy a new hard drive, install OS X, and restore your Time Machine backup. You'll still have to do these things to get your Mac working, but you can postpone that process while you finish up whatever important tasks you need to finish by booting from your cloned startup drive.
SuperDuper: What You Need
A copy of SuperDuper.
An external hard drive that's at least as large as your current startup drive. Mac Pro users can use an internal hard drive, but for the most versatility and safety, an external is a better choice.
Using SuperDuper
SuperDuper has many attractive and useful features. The one we're interested in is its ability to make a clone or exact copy of a startup drive. SuperDuper calls this 'Backup - all files.' We'll also use the option to erase the destination drive before the backup is performed. We do this for the simple reason that the process is faster. If we erase the destination drive, SuperDuper can use a block copy function that is faster than copying data file by file.
- Launch SuperDuper.
- Select your startup drive as the 'Copy' source.
- Select your external hard drive as the 'Copy To' destination.
- Select 'Backup - all files' as the method.
- Click the 'Options' button and select 'During copy erase backup location, then copy files from xxx' where xxx is the startup drive you specified, and backup location is the name of your backup drive.
- Click 'OK,' then click 'Copy Now.'
That's it. In a short time, you'll have a bootable clone of your startup drive.
When to Create Clones
How often to create clones depends on your work style and how much time you can afford for a clone to be out of date. I create a clone once a week. For others, every day, every two weeks, or once a month may be sufficient. SuperDuper has a scheduling feature that can automate the cloning process so you don't need to remember to do it.
Published: 3/30/2010
Updated: 2/27/2015
My personal backup process has a few holes, places where backup professionals would say I could be in danger of not having a viable backup when I need it.
But this guide isn't intended to be the perfect backup process. Instead, it's meant to be a reasonable backup method for personal Mac users who don’t want to spend a lot of cash on backup systems and processes, but who wish to feel safe and secure.
In the most likely type of Mac failures, they'll have a viable backup available to them.
This guide is only a beginning, one that About: Macs readers can use as a starting point to develop their own personal backup process. If you have your own backup procedure, we would like to hear about it. Use the Readers Response link below to tell us about it.
Published: 3/30/2010
Updated: 2/27/2015
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