There are two main ways to backup your Apple computer.

1. Use Time Machine to automatically backup. This is the Apple way – the easy way.

2. Manually backup with some other software such as Super Duper or Carbon Copy Cloner.

Apple’s way (Time Machine) is a lot simpler. The big disadvantage  is that the backup is not bootable.  So if your computer crashes you need to insert the original DVD and restore from at the old Time Machine backup. This can take hours.

The second method is more complicated, but the advantage is that your backup will be bootable. If you hold down Option-Command-Shift-Delete during startup you can boot off your backup drive. This means that in an emergency you can plug in your backup and be running from it under a minute. You can’t do this with Time Machine.

This article describes the second method of manually backing up using Super Duper. When I wrote this article originally I used Super Duper, but I use CCC now. I like it better. No reason why.

I  have an external drive that I backup to monthly, so that if worst comes to worst and my entire computer crashes, I can be up and running again in minutes. (I actually have two, and I store one off-site with a friend, alternating each month)

To make a bootable backup you need to:

1. Buy an external hard drive
2. Format the hard drive
3. Download some backup software
4. Backup your Hard Drive
5. Run the backup software often

Now let me explain those steps in more detail.

1. Buy an external hard drive

You need an external hard drive at least as big as the hard drive on the computer you are intending to back up. Eg if you have an 200G hard drive on your imac, you should get at least an 200G for your backups. This way you will always fit your backup on the external drive.

2. Format the hard drive

Plug in your new hard drive. Run Disk Utility (in your Applications/Utilities folder). Select your new Hard Drive in the left pane, and in the Erase tab check it says ‘Mac OS Extended (Journaled)’ as below, type in the name you would like to call it (eg Backup) (here it says Untitled) and press Erase. It will now erase and format your external Hard Drive ready for use and call it Backup.

If you have a large external drive, and you want to backup more than one computer to it, then it is best to ‘partition’ it into two sections, one for each computer. To do this select the disk in the left pane and click on the partition tab. Select ’2 partitions’ and adjust to the size you want. Again, name them, make sure they are both Mac OS Extended (Journaled) and press Partition. In the example below I have partitioned my hard drive into two, one for backups (80G) and one for other stuff!

3. Download some backup software
Go to http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/SuperDuperDescription.html and download the latest version of SuperSooper. It’s free to be able to do a basic backup, or you can pay if you want extra features such as incremental backup (it’s faster, but the end result is the same). Copy Superdooper to your macintosh applications folder.

4. Backup your Hard Drive

Select your Macintosh HD in the left menu, select your new firewire drive in the right one, select ‘backup – all files’. Press copy now, go and have a cup of coffee while you wait a long time for it to copy all your files, perhaps up to an hour or so.

It’s good to select ‘Repair permissions before copying in the options tab, see below. This makes sure your OS X is functioning well before you back it up, otherwise there can be some problems.

5. Run the backup software often
The most important thing about backing up is to do it regularly, I do my main backup  once a month – but Time Machine is also doing it hourly. It’s a good idea to do a backup before you install any new system software in case something goes wrong in the installation so you can go back to what it was when you backed up.

How do I use the backup in an emergency?

• Plug in your external drive. Go to System Preferences, select ‘Startup Disk’, select your external Backup, press Restart.

OR

• Plug in your Hard disk and Press Option-Command-Shift-Delete during startup. This will bypass the primary startup volume and seek a different startup volume such as the external one.

You are now running from your backup, and you just repeat the sections called Format the hard drive and Backup your Hard Drive but treat your Backup as the main one and the main one as your backup. In other words, run Disk Utility and erase your Macintosh HD, then run Superdooper and backup from your Backup to Macintosh HD. When the backup is finished, select Machintosh HD, and restart. You will now be running from your main computer again.

You might want to print these instructions out, so they are handy in an emergency. It’s no use having the instructions on how to boot in an emergency on your computer – you won’t be able to read them. Don’t laugh, I’ve done it!

Here’s an article on how to use time-machine.

Switching to OS X from a PC is a big change. Here are a some of my random thoughts on the transition.

Mentally it’s better to think, “This is new, let’s learn it from scratch” rather than thinking of “changing” from PC to Mac.

There will be lots of times where you will think “How can I do this?”, but you can’t.

Try to resist the disappointment of lack of features, and enjoy the simplicity and integration OS X offers. Try to appreciate less is more.

Forget about Microsoft Office – don’t even install it on your Mac to begin with. Instead, buy iWork and try out Pages and Keynote.

Don’t be tempted to stay with Office because you are used to it. Don’t go back to it after a day of trying out iWork. Use Pages until you are comfortable with it. Use it until you have mastered its text editing, graphics, styles, exporting, text wrap, lists, shadow, charts. Use it till you appreciate the difference between Page Layout and Word Processing. (Think about how much time you’ve spent getting used to Microsoft Word – give Pages a chance) THEN, after you understand Pages, make the decision whether to go back to Microsoft Office or stay in Pages.

Despite the similarities between OSX and XP/ME etc, they are quite different.

I even took while a while to get used to iWork from Word and I am a Mac user.

Avoid the temptation that computer people have to put things in your own directories. OS X likes you to leave things where it puts them.

Eg if you put all your photos in iphoto, they will be available to iwork, idvd, imovie etc. If you decide to put your photos in your own spot, they won’t. OS X very integrated, but it likes you to put photos in iPhoto, music iTunes folder, addresses in address book, calendar in ical, movies into iMovie and so on. It’s best to just jump in boots and all and do it the OS X way.

Don’t be tempted to use Microsoft Office for email for 6 months because it’s easier – you lose the simplicity of the OS X integration if you do this.

Certainly don’t do things like partition a part of hard drive for all your data. The Mac way is to have everything on the boot drive – the way it comes from the shop. If you must, use an external drive for movie files.

Basically don’t fight against OSX, run with it.

Enjoy what it can do, try not to be frustrated by what it can’t do.

If there is a feature you want, email Apple about it and let them know.

Here are some more tips from Apple.

• carbon copy cloner

See the entry on backups, this application allows you to make a bootable backup of your hard drive. Superdooper, a newer program, seems to be a more popular backup program and simpler to use, but it’s not free so I still use CCC.

• skype (voice over IP)

Skype allows you to speak to other skype users anywhere in the world for free over the internet. Simply download skype, create yourself a ‘skype name’, this is your unique skype name, and you are away. You don’t need to pay any money unless you want to make a call to a normal phone number. If you have an imac or a powerbook or ibook you can use the built in microphone and speaker, but for better results use a headset microphone which will stop any ‘echo’ you may experience. Your friends need to have their computer on when you search for them in skype for the first time, or skype will not find them.

• textwrangler

A great little text editor, like textedit, but many features such as search and replace on multiple files without opening them, automatic formatting for html, compare two different text files and show the differences, open and edit text files over ftp, if you’re not sure why you’d need those features, stick with textedit!

• mac the ripper

Allows you to capture a DVD from your DVD drive, then view it in quicktime. Good if you just want to watch one chapter of a DVD, or if you want to watch a DVD in the car without running your laptop battery flat – it uses much less power to watch a DVD from the hard drive than from the DVD drive.

• quicksilver

Fantastic application, hard to explain how to use it and what it does, but I use it probably at least 20 times a day. It allows you to do many things at the press of a key, like a shortcut, but without you having to remember what key does what, because it guesses what you want to do by what you type in, and it learns, very clever. It takes a bit of learning, but the time you save after learning it is well worth it. http://docs.blacktree.com/quicksilver

• combine pdf’s

As it says, allows you to combine multiple pdf documents into a single pdf documents. For example, combine a single page pdf from pages with a pdf printed from a screenshot with a pdf from illustrator all into one document of three pages.

• Cocoa booklet

Cocoa Booklet takes a multi page pdf file (eg 16 pages long), and makes it into a booklet by moving all the pages into a different order so that when you print it double sided and staple it into a booklet, all the pages are in the right order – like Microsoft publisher does on the PC. You can reduce the size too, ie make an a5 booklet from a4 pages.

• Audio hijack

Allows you to record any sound from your computer (skype conversation, itunes song, streaming audio, movie soundtrack etc) to an mp3 file. THIS IS NO LONGER FREE.

• LAME engine for itunes

See separate entry under music, this imports your itunes songs at a better quality than the itunes encoder.

• Online Bible

A free piece of bible software, easily the most simple to use, now available for OS-X as a beta release. Does searches on words in english, or greek/hebrew. A good cross reference system. Allows you to paste bible text into any application (eg Pages) with a hotkey.

• Audacity

A full-featured audio recorder. It can record audio with a level indicator, then process the audio (speed it up, slow it down, raise or lower the pitch, compress, normalise etc) and then export to mp3 or other formats. Stick with the simpler ‘soundstudio’ if you don’t need these features.