Is your computer backed up? With 2T hard disks at around $100, there’s no excuse not to have your computer backed up. At the very least, you should have an external USB Hard Disk with some kind of backup on it. If you haven’t – do it now! This is the easiest way.

As for me – it’s the start of the New Year so I’ve re-evaluated my backup regime. I think it’s working well. Here’s what it is:

Backup 1 – Time Machine.

I have a 2TB external USB hard drive with an automatic time-machine backup. I can go back an ‘undelete’ or find any file I’ve deleted in the past year or so. If my main Hard Drive fails, my data is backed up hourly. How to setup time-machine.

Backup 2 – Manual Copy to USB Drive.

I have a 1.5TB  external USB hard drive that I backup manually with Carbon Copy Cloner each month (well, probably 3 monthly, but I aim for monthly). Backup 1 is not bootable. It’s useful to recover information off, but not to get things up and running in a hurry. My backup 2 is bootable so I can reboot and be running off it in a minute or so. How to make a bootable backup.

Backup 3 – Offsite Copy to USB Drive.

I have another version of my 1.5TB backup – an exact copy of backup 2, which I keep offsite at a friends place.  I swap it every 6 months or so , so that if my computer gets stolen I at least have an off-site copy of all my files that’s reasonably recent. When I go to my friend’s place I occasionally take the new drive and pickup the old one.

Extra Precautions.

I also run my computer’s main Hard Disk in a Pegasus RAID array. This is a bit fanatical for the home user, but worth it if your work is stored on your computer. Basically the data is stored on more than one drive. If one of my hard drives fail, my computer will just keep going, and tell me to replace the faulty drive. When I replace the faulty drive it will repair itself.

What about you?

I’ll say it again, at the very least, you should have an external USB Hard Disk with some kind of backup on it – either a Time-Machine backup OR a manual backup of your entire computer. If you haven’t… do it now!  

Also think about ALL your computers. I had an old laptop I use spasmodically and didn’t bother backing out up. It got stolen recently and the hassle of having to set it all up again is not worth it so back up everything!

If your hard drive fails – it’s too late! I cannot count the number of times people have come to me with a broken hard drive asking if I can get data off it, and they didn’t have a backup.  Think of all the data on your computer: photos, word processing documents, music, etc.  If you lost it all, would it be worth $100 to get it back? If so then get it backed up now!

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.

OR

2. Manually backup your computer 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 takes a few steps longer to set up, but  your backup will be bootable. That means if  you plug your backup drive in hold down Option-Command-Shift-Delete during startup you can boot off your backup drive. 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 how to 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.

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.

Before you format it, check in the bottom right of the window that it says “Partition Map Scheme : GUID Partition Table”. If it doesn’t go to the partition tab, choose ’1 Partition’ choose ‘options’, and make sure it is set to ‘GUID Partition Table’ then ‘Apply’.

Now in the Erase tab check it says ‘Mac OS Extended (Journaled)’ as below, type in the name you would like to call it e.g. “Backup” and press Erase. It will now erase and format your external Hard Drive ready for use and call it Backup.

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).

4. Backup your Hard Drive

Run SuperDuper.

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 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. It’s also 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.

You can now run Disk Utility and erase your main 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.

This article describes how to backup your computer using Time Machine. Apple’s Time Machine is simply the best backup system available for the Macintosh – it’s simple to use and it does everything automatically so you don’t have to remember to back things up. You can use it to go back in time a day, a week, or month to find a file that you’ve deleted or changed, and you can use it to restore your entire system should your Hard Disk go down.

And did I mention how simple it is!  Time Machine is built into OS X  so all you need to do is Plug in an external hard drive, open Time Machine and select your hard drive, and turn Time Machine on! It will automatically backup for you. Here are those steps is a little bit more detail with some pictures to make it real easy, along with some tips on choosing the size of Hard Drive to buy.

HOW TO BACK UP USING TIME MACHINE:

1. Find out how big the hard drive on your macintosh computer is:

- Go to the ‘Applications’ folder then ‘Utilities’ then open ‘Activity Monitor’.

- Select the ‘Disk Usage’ tab and you will see a little chart like this:

- That little number under the pie chart is the size of your hard drive.  In my case it is 1.5 TB.

2. Buy an external hard drive at least as big as the Hard Disk on your mac, preferably twice as big.  In my case I need a 1.5T  drive at least.  I decided to get a 2TB  drive.  The brand doesn’t matter.  It will look something like this:

3. Plug the hard drive into your computer.

4.  Now we need to format your new hard drive. Go  to applications/utilities/disk utility.

Select your new hard Drive – DO NOT SELECT YOUR MAIN HARD DRIVE!

Select your new external hard drive - here it is called spare. My main hard drive is 'boot' - I do not select it.

Click the erase tab,  make sure  the format is Mac OS extended ( journalled)  and type in a name for your backup to be called. Then  press the  erase button.

5. Now  that the hard drive is plug-in and formatted we need to turn on Time Machine.  Go to  System Preferences (in the Apple menu) then Time Machine.

Go to system preferences

Click on Time Machine

Now in Time Machine click ‘Select Disk…’  and select  the hard drive (my backup or whatever you maned it in the step above) from the list. Click on ‘Use for Backup’

Slide the  the time machine slider to ‘On’  and that’s it.

Time Machine will automatically backup your machine every hour, every day and every week.

HOW TO RESTORE!

To restore if your computer crashes, just boot off your original Mac CD, (or in the case of Lion, hold down Command-R while you restart).

When you get to the OSX installer, don’t install OSX. Instead choose  ’Utilities’ and run the Utility called  ’Restore System from Backup’, or ‘Restore From Time Machine Backup’.

Plug in your time-machine backup, and it will appear for you to select.

Apple have more information on this here.

In this previous article I describe   how to backup your computer using Apples Time Machine  and an external hard drive.  Here’s how to do it using a network hard drive.  the advantage of the network hard drive is that you can backup multiple computers to it, great for home situation where you have two or three computers.

Here’s how to get Time Machine going with an external My Book Live network based hard drive.

Time Machine is a piece of Apple software, but you need to have some hardware for it to back up onto.  One option is external firewire or USB hard drive –  a good option if you only have one computer. A second option is to run it on a networked external storage device.  That means that it plugs into your network, via an ethernet cable, and any Macintosh on your network can backup to it.  This is how Apple’s ‘ Time Capsule’  works. It’s a great option if you have more than one Macintosh in your house. There are non-Apple solutions available – this article explains how to set up Apple’s Time  Machine on a Western Digital My Book Live.

1. Buy a My Book Live. I picked up a 2 Tetrabyte one up for  $221 from amazon.com*, shipped to Australia for $317 – compare that to Apple’s Time Capsule at $649, there’s quite a difference. Apple sell the Western Digital MyBook on their website, but not the networked MyBook Live.

2. If you are in Australia bend the power pins with a pair of pliers so they fit in a 240V outlet. The plug pack can take 110-240V so you just need to bend the pins gently so it will fit an Australian plug! Hold the metal plugs about 3mm out  from the plastic when you bend them so it doesn’t bend the plastic at all. (Only try this if you know what you are doing!)

3.   Assuming you already have a network –  some kind of a router connected to the Internet and connected to your home computers - plug the ethernet cable  from the My Book Life into your router,  then plug the power adapter in.

4.  Go to  System Preferences/ Time Machine, or use the menu Go/Applications/Time Machine

Click ‘Select Disk…’

5. There should be a disc  that automatically appears that says on “MyBookLive – backup” –  select this disc and click ‘Use for Backup’.

When it asks you for a password, select the ‘Guest’ option.

Make sure the time machine slider is set to ‘On’  and Time Machine will automatically backup your machine every hour, every day and every week.

6. Go to System Preferences, Spotlight, and click on the ‘Privacy’ tab. Click the plus button and select The My Book Live is a great solution because it comes ready to work with Time Machine out of the box.  All you have to do is plug it into your ethernet router and your computer will find it  as easily as an external hard drive.

It’s quite easy.
You use apple’s built in disk utility (in your utilities folder) to make a disk image of the dvd (select the DVD then select ‘new image’), it copies it exactly. The default options of compressed and none are fine.

You then use disk utility to burn the disk image you have just created back to a dvd. Select the image and choose ‘burn.’

It must be your own dvd, not a commercial one to to this.

This works with data DVD’s as well as movie DVD’s.

Wayne