Online Backup

*NEW*

Since I originally wrote this blog post almost exactly a year ago, there has been a great maturing of online backup services. The big advantages of these online services is that you don’t have to remember to connect an external drive to your laptop and you don’t have to worry about losing both the computer and your backup drive if, for example, your place is robbed, flooded, or burns down. However, the big disadvantage of these services is that because it happens over the internet, the backups can be slow. My suggestion to mitigate that factor is to leave your computer on overnight while you do your initial backup and to try to take advantage of the much faster upload speeds of campus WiFi.Once your initial backup is done, the services will just upload updated or new files that you create. So then the subsequent backups will not really even be noticeable.

Now, keep in mind. I suggest that you use both an external drive backup (discussed in sections below) and these online backup services. But if you don’t want to spend the money on both, get the online backup simply for the fact that you are much more likely to use it.

Now, there are three excellent options that have very nice Mac support: BackBlaze, Carbonite, and Mozy. Each of these costs about the same (~$5/month) and will provide you will the same level of service, so it’s really up to you which one you choose. I personally use BackBlaze because I like the interface the best. But, again, any of them will work for you.

If you were to lose your data, you could get it back by a couple of different methods. For small amounts of data (or the cheapskates out there), you can go onto their website and just download everything that you have backed up. If you have large amounts of data backed up, you’ll want to go with the DVD or Hard Drive recoveries. In each case, they will send you physical media (a bunch of DVDs or a Hard Drive) with your files on it. This will cost a bit, but you’ll get your data back faster.

If you are too cheap to even spend $5 a month to protect all your data, Mozy provides a free 2GB account. If you do nothing else, please, please, please take advantage of this to protect your most important 2GB.

External Hard Drive

If you want to back up your data, you’re going to need some place to put it that’s not on your computer.  This is where an external hard drive comes in handy.  There are many types of external hard drives available, but for the purpose of backing up your computer, I suggest a small, bus-powered external.  You will have to have a drive AT LEAST as big as the size of your internal hard drive.

To check the size of your internal hard drive:
1) On your desktop locate your hard drive (Default name is “Macintosh HD”) and right-click (or control+click if you don’t have right clicking enabled) on it.
2) Select “Get Info”

3) On the Info window that comes up, look at the Capacity listed (Round up a bit.  i.e. 185.99GB is actually 200GB)

Since most of you have between 100GB and 250GB, you will all be covered by a 250GB drive.  The best deal right now are probably the Western Digital My Passport Essential drives. (Amazon links to different colors are provided)
WD My Passport 250GB USB 2.0 Portable Drive (Real Red)
WD My Passport 250GB USB 2.0 Portable Drive (Intense Blue)
WD My Passport 250GB USB 2.0 Portable Drive (Artic White)
WD My Passport 250GB USB 2.0 Portable Drive (Vibrant Pink)
WD My Passport 250GB USB 2.0 Portable Drive (Black)

Backup Methods

There are many different methods for backing up.  I’ll go through some of my favorites here.
First,you’ll need to know which version of Mac OS X you are running to decide which methods will work for you.

A handy rule is that if you have bought your Mac after October 2007, you have OS 10.5 Leopard.  If you bought it before then you most likely have OS 10.4 Tiger unless you have explicitly upgraded.  If you are not sure, click on the Apple Logo in the top left corner your screen and choose “About This Mac”  This will display a window that will give your version number as 10.x.x

Method 1:  Cloning (10.4 & 10.5)

Cloning is a method of backup that will make an EXACT copy of your entire drive.  So much so that if your internal hard drive were to fail, you could take the backup drive out of the external enclosure, put it in your computer and you will be back up and running right away.  The disadvantages to this method of backup is that you only have the most recent version of your data and it takes a very long time for each backup.

Programs to use for Cloning:
Carbon Copy Cloner (Free, donation requested) – Allows for basic cloning.
SuperDuper! (Basic Version – Free, Full Features – $28) – Allows for basic cloning operations.  Paid version allows for automatic scheduling, Smart Update (Saves a lot of time), and more nerdy features.

Method 2:  Manual Backup (10.4 & 10.5)
Manual Backup is exactly what it sounds like: You grab the files you want and drag them to your external drive to make a copy.  This method is probably the worst for a comprehensive backup as it is very easy to miss files.

Method 3:  Time Machine (10.5 Only)
Time Machine is the best solution for most people.  It is built into Mac OS 10.5 Leopard.  To set it up, all you have to do is plug your drive into your computer and window will pop up asking if you want to use that drive with Time Machine.
Once you click “Use as Backup Disk” it will begin backing up to that drive.  After that, any time your drive is plugged it (once an hour if the drive is still plugged in), Time Machine will update the backup with the latest versions of the files.  This is where Time Machine’s real strength lies.  Since it incrementally backs up your data, you will still have past versions of your files on your backup drive.  That means as long as you have free hard drive space on your external backup drive, you can keep going back in time to previous versions of your data.

Recovering from a Backup

Hopefully, you won’t ever need this section.  But if your hard drive fails, you’ll need it.  First you’ll need to get a new drive for your computer.  If you within your AppleCare warranty period, you can bring it into the Apple Store and the Genius will help you get a new drive and then transfer your backup onto the new drive.  If you’re out of your warranty, you (or a nerdy friend) will need to buy a 2.5″ SATA hard drive and install it in place of the old drive.  If you have a Time Machine backup, you will be able to choose to recover from that backup when you install OS X from your recovery DVD.  If you have a clone, you’ll have to boot to your external backup and then clone it back to the internal drive.

Remember that all of these methods require that you at least remember to plug your backup drive in once in a while.  Just plug it in when you go to bed if nothing else and run the backup.  You will be kicking yourself real hard if you lose all your data just because you forgot to plug your drive in.

If you have any other questions, feel free to ask me.