How to back up your computer

Posted 3 weeks ago at 7:24 pm. 7 comments

To make a backup of your computer that is useful if your computer crashes you need to:

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

Now let me explain those steps in more detail.

2. 1. Buy an external firewire hard drive You need a firewire drive because even though macintosh has USB, you cannot start your computer from a USB drive in an emergency, you can only start it up from a firewire drive.
   You need one 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.
4. 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 store other things on it apart from the backup, such as movies and pictures, then it is best to ‘partition’ it into two sections, one for your system backup, and one for files. 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 the backups (80G) and one for the rest.

   

6. 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.
8. 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.

   

9. 5. Run the backup software often
   The most important thing about backing up is to do it regularly, I do it once a week. it’s good to do a backup before you install any new software - especially system modifications or large 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?

1. Go to System Preferences, select ‘Startup Disk’, select your external Backup, press Restart.
2. OR in a real emergency when you can’t boot onto your normal OS X…
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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!

   Stay tuned for an update on how to use time-machine.