Are you prepared in case your hard drive crashes? Here at Mac Outpost, we see several computers a day come in for hard drive-related service and the customer has no backup, or copy, of any of the files on their computer. All of those photos from that once-in-a-lifetime vacation, all of those hundreds of dollars spent on music and movies at the Apple iTunes Music Store, and all of those hundreds of hours spent working on that thesis. Gone… Not having a backup of your system can be devastating, but it is entirely preventable. Lets take a look at both hardware and software options, starting with Time Machine, Apple’s backup software that has been part of Mac OS X since OS X 10.5 Leopard.
Never again worry about losing your digital files. Time Machine automatically saves up-to-date copies of everything on your Mac – photos, music, videos, documents, applications, and settings. If you ever have the need, you can easily go back in time to recover anything.
Set it, then forget it. Time Machine works with your Mac and an external hard drive. Just connect the drive and assign it to Time Machine and you’re a step closer to enjoying peace of mind. Time Machine will automatically back up your entire Mac, including system files, applications, accounts, preferences, music, photos, movies, and documents. But what makes Time Machine different from other backup applications is that it not only keeps a spare copy of every file, it remembers how your system looked on a given day – so you can revisit your Mac as it appeared in the past.
Every change, every hour. Following the initial backup of your entire Mac, Time Machine automatically makes incremental backups every hour, every day, copying just the files that have changed since your last backup. And it does this all in the background, so you can continue working while Time Machine is busy copying your files. Time Machine saves the hourly backups for the past 24 hours, daily backups for the past month, and weekly backups for everything older than a month.
Let’s take a look at some hardware options. The simplest solution is a USB or FireWire external hard drive that simply plugs into your Mac. As soon as you plug in a new drive, the system will ask you if you want to use the drive for your Time Machine backups. All you have to do is click ‘Yes’ and you’re set – the computer will backup your entire drive and when this is complete, it will will backup every hour any files that have changed in the past hour or since the last backup. Of course, backups will only happen if you remember to connect the drive to your computer! Added security? We also offer RAID solutions that will makes copies of your backup to multiple drives so that you can take a copy off-site – a neighbour, a safety deposit box or any other safe place. Your backup strategy changes depending on the importance of your data to you. If you lose a few emails from grandma you may not be too upset. A few years of business records is another matter.
Come and see me at Mac Outpost and discuss which route would be best for you and your data. You will be glad you did!
Paul Tucknott
