Let’s face it, it’s really not about your computer. It’s about your files! Your email, your pictures, your documents, your music, your movies…those are what’s really important. If you have a proper backup, even if your computer is lost, stolen, destroyed, or self-destructs, your data is safe if you have a backup. For that reason, everyone should back up their computer
Kinds of backups
Mirror backups initially back up your entire internal drive, and subsequent backups copy whatever is necessary to make the backup identical to the internal drive at the time of the backup. If you have added or modified files on your computer, the new files or later versions of files will be copied to the backup, replacing earlier versions. If you’ve trashed files or folders on the computer, they will be deleted from the backup. The upside of a mirror backup is that it’s bootable and identical to the drive in your computer as of the last backup. If your internal drive fails, you can boot up your computer, or any other computer from your backup, and lose nothing except whatever work you’ve done since the last backup. The downside (or limitation) of a mirror backup is that if need to recover a file you deleted a day, week, or month ago, there is no way to recover it…if it was deleted from your computer, it was deleted from the backup too.
Archival backups also initially back up your entire internal drive. Subsequent backups copy whatever has changed since the previous backup…without deleting the older or deleted files. The upside of an archival backup is that you can recover files or folders you trashed. The downside of an archival backup is that its not bootable…if the drive in your computer fails, you’d have to do a complete restore before you can boot up, which takes time.
Backup Software
Time Machine, which is built into all versions of MacOS since 10.5, is excellent archival backup software. There is nothing to buy…it initially backs up your entire computer, and then updates the backup hourly as long as the backup drive is connected. It literally runs itself on auto-pilot.
For mirror backups, you must use third party software. Our favorite is Carbon Copy Cloner. You can set Carbon Copy Cloner to do recurring backups…daily, multiple times a day, weekly, monthly…whatever works for you.
Backup Locations
An external drive is the most common place for your backup. The drive directly connects to your computer by USB, Thunderbolt, or for earlier Macs, FireWire, and they can be used for either mirror or archival backups. If you’re going to use an external drive for a mirror backup, it’s capacity must at least match the capacity of the drive being backed up. If you’re using the drive for an archival backup, the drive should be at least twice the size of the drive being backed up…to leave room for the deleted and older versions of files to remain even when they’ve been trashed on the internal drive. The upside of using an external drive is that it remains in your possession all the time. The downside is that if you keep the backup drive where the computer is, and there is a catastrophe like a fire, flood, or theft, the backup drive will be damaged or lost just like the computer.
A bloud-based backup company. There are companies that specialize in providing space on their servers to which you can backup your entire computer…via the internet. We prefer, recommend, and use BackBlaze. Cloud server backups are archival backups. BackBlaze is our favorite. BackBlaze for a single computer costs $99.00 per year for unlimited storage space, and it will back up not only your internal, but also your externally connected drives. Of course the initial backup may take a while, depending on how much data needs to be copied. Thereafter, since only what’s changed since the last backup must be copied, and the backups take place frequently and quickly…as long as you’re computer is connected to the internet.
If you need to recover one or two folders, or a few files, from your BackBlaze backup, you can log into your BackBlaze account in any web browser, select what you need to restore, and click the button to restore it to your internal drive.
If you need a lot of files and folders to be recovered, BackBlaze has a separate Restore application that copies the files faster than a web browser.
If you need to restore your entire computer, or recover gigabytes of data, BackBlaze will send your backup on an external drive…overnight.
The upside of the cloud backup is that all your files are stored safely away from your computer…which means that even after a catastrophic loss of your home or office, you can still get your backup and restore to a new computer and be back up and running as of the last backup.
Backup strategies
Simplest: Do regular mirror backups to an external hard drive. You’ll have your data even if your internal drive fails completely, or your entire computer fails or is stolen. If your internal drive fails, you can even boot your computer from the backup drive and keep working until the internal drive can be replaced. If your computer fails or is stolen, you can restore all your data to a replacement computer, or even boot up a spare, friend’s, or relative’s computer from the backup drive and continue to work. However since the backup drive remains where the computer is, a fire or flood will destroy both the computer and the backup drive.
Benefit from both mirror and archival: We use this method for clients that want the ability to boot up from their backup (like a mirror backup), but also want to safety of being able to retrieve older versions of documents. Get an external drive at least 3 times the size of the drive you’re backing up. Partition the backup drive as two partitions, one the size of the drive you’re backing up, and one at least twice that size. Do a mirror backup to the smaller partition, and a Time Machine backup to the larger.
Even safer: User two backup disks rather than one. Keep one on premises for daily backups, and keep the other at someone else’s premises, or in a safe deposit box or vault at the bank. Rotate the drives once a week. That way the off-premises backup drive is never more than a week out of date, but at least you’ll recover most of your data in a catastrophe. We use this method often with clients who don’t want to back up to an internet server.
Safest and our favorite choice: Keep an on-premises mirror and archival backup disk, and also back up to BackBlaze. You can boot up from the mirror backup if necessary, retrieve older version of documents and folders from the Time Machine backup on the same drive, and in case of a catastrophe, the internet backup provider will send your entire backup overnight on a hard disk, allowing you to restore everything to a replacement computer. All of this for the cost of an external hard drive, and $99.00 a year for the internet backup. Time Machine, the archival backup program, is part of MacOS…it’s free.