Choose
Your Method
Incremental Backups
Bootable
Backups
(Clones)
Written
By: Adam Rosen
This article was published in the Adam's
Apple column on Low End
Mac
Choose Your Method
Everyone
knows they need to backup their data, but most people don't do so regularly
(if at all). Backups are confusing and annoying, who has time? Well,
your perspective may change during a post-crash enlightenment; most
people become religious about backups after their first catastrophic loss of data! The best Mac
Maintenance you can do is to have current backups of all your files.
The
key is to develop a backup strategy before that major disk crash, and pick methods that
are easy for you to do and repeat, so it becomes a habit. Backup important
personal data on a daily or weekly basis. A basic data backup simply
involves copying important files and folders to other media. You can
use any of the following items as backup destinations:
- copy to a 2nd hard drive (internal or external)
- copy
to networked hard drive or fileserver
- copy
to removable legacy storage drives (Zip, Jaz, SyQuest, etc.)
- copy to removable USB flash memory drives, or your iPod
- burn
files to optical disc (CD-R, CD-RW, DVD-R, etc.)
What
are these important files and folders? They're anything that you use
on a regular basis, and would cause problems if you lost. Under Mac OS X
most of your important files should be located inside your Home directory,
in one of these folders:
Desktop, Documents, Movies, Music or Pictures
Just
copy these entire folders to a backup disk on a regular basis. You may
also wish to backup your Application Preference files; these are very
useful to have if you need to reinstall any software. Preferences are
also located in your Home directory, inside the Library folder. Copy
the whole Preferences folder along with your backups.
Incremental Backups
Once
you have a backup of your data, you can use Incremental Backups
keep the data up to date. An incremental backup copies only new or changed
files since the last backup, leaving identical files alone. This is
faster than running a full backup and easy to do on a weekly basis.
Simple
incremental backups can be done manually - just recopy to your clone
any items you've worked on since the last backup. View folders containing
your important files in List View in the Finder, and click on the Date
column to sort by date; this makes it easy to find recent files. Or
just drag the whole folder(s) full of your important files to your backup
disk, that's very simple and still usually faster than a complete backup.
For
more complex needs (or for those of us with bad memory), utilities such
as File
Synchronization, Carbon
Copy Cloner, SuperDuper, or Data
Backup can help automate this process. These synchronization
utilities allow you to specify one or more folders to copy, and the
computer does the hard work of determining what files have changed since
the last backup. For ultra-configurable incremental backups of multiple
computers and across networks, the best choice is Retrospect.
Subscribers
to Apple's .Mac service can also use the Apple Backup
application to save backups online, or to local & networked drives;
see Apple's .Mac website
for full details.
Bootable Backups (Clones)
Bootable
Backups
or Clones are full backups
of your entire startup drive that provide full redundancy for your data
and the Operating System. Once you make a clone of your hard drive you
can restore files from this drive when needed or boot off clone in case
the primary drive fails. With hard drive prices falling all the time,
this is one of the fastest and most convenient ways to backup your system.
You
need to have a 2nd internal hard disk (IDE or SATA) an external FireWire
drive, or an external USB2.0 drive (Intel Macs only) in order to make
a bootable clone. My preference is to use external FireWire drives since
they can be used with all Macs, stored on a shelf or offsite and easily
moved between computers.
Several
utilities are available to help make the clone, including Carbon
Copy Cloner, SuperDuper,
and Data
Backup. The process erases the destination drive, copies
all files from the source drive, then makes the cloned drive bootable;
the procedure varies slightly among these programs. so read the instructions/help
files before proceeding.
When
complete, make sure to test that your cloned drive works to boot your
Mac. It's not fun to find out you have a bad backup months later when
you need it most. Just go to System Preferences --> Startup Disk,
select your clone as the boot drive, then Restart your Mac. Once you're
sure it works, repeat the process to set your internal drive back as
the startup disk. You now have a full bootable backup of your computer
ready when needed.
Once
you have a working clone, Incremental Backups can be used to
keep the clone's data up to date. I like to use File
Synchronization to keep my home directory current between the
primary and backup drives, I run this once/week or as often as necessary
after changes to my sysem. Carbon
Copy Cloner and SuperDuper
can be used to automate full or partial incremental clone updates, but
be sure to allow enough time (typically overnight) for this process
to finish.
I suggest
making full clones of your computer every 3 to 6 months, and before
you install any updates to Mac OS X or major applications. If something
then goes wrong during an upgrade, you can use your clone to revert
back to the older install and keep working, or just work off the clone
itself.
Whatever method(s) you choose, get started now and do so regularly.
Different backup strategies and media can be combined; there's no harm
in having too many copies of your data. Consider keeping a copy of important
files offsite in a different location (at work, in a safety deposit
box, with a friend) in case of fire or other damage to your home.
Also
purchase the major applications you use regularly, and keep copies of
any downloaded installers. Besides being the right (legal) thing to
do, if you have a hard drive crash or otherwise lose an important program
you can easily reinstall your software from the original disks or installers.
Remember:
the best Mac Maintenance you can do is to have current backups of all
your files!
Adam
Rosen
