Backing Up Your Mac

The Definitive Guide to Mac Backups

Your Mac contains valuable and sometimes irreplaceable files-family photos and videos, business documents, your unfinished novel... not to mention personal data such as email, contacts, and calendars. Without great backups, all of that data could disappear in an instant. We don't like to think about theft, fire, and natural disasters, but these things happen. So do hard drive crashes and other malfunctions (not to mention user error).

Your best insurance against losing data forever is a thorough, carefully designed backup plan. You don't have to spend a ton of money or be a technical whiz to back up your Mac. This book helps you design a sensible backup strategy, choose and configure the best backup hardware and software for your needs, and understand how to make your backups as painless as possible. Learn Joe's simple, three-prong strategy for bulletproof Mac backups. Decide whether Time Machine is right for you-and if so, learn how to use it for backing up and restoring data. Discover alternatives to Time Machine for storing multiple versions of your files. Find out why and how to create a bootable duplicate (or clone) of your Mac's startup volume. Choose the best hardware for backing up your data. Learn about offsite storage, including cloud backup services. Know exactly what you'll need to do if disaster strikes. Deal with special backup needs, such as large video files, backups while on the road, and backing up a small network.