Everyone loses data at some point in their lives. Your computer’s hard drive could fail tomorrow, ransomware could hold your files hostage, or a software bug could delete your important files. If you’re not regularly backing up your computer, you could lose those files forever.
- Best Data Backup For Mac
- Best Mac Backup Options
- Best Mac Backup Software
- Best Data Backup Service For Mac
Backups don’t have to be hard or confusing, though. You’ve probably heard about countless different backup methods, but which one is right for you? And what files do you really need to back up?
The best free data recovery software for Mac available online is described below. These five applications vary in their characteristics. However, all share one commonality, they are free, and therefore useful for the casual user. Disk Drill is the free top data recovery app for Mac OS X. N o one likes to suffer from losing important from Mac computer or storage devices like external hard drive, digital camera, memory card, usb drive, etc. If you’re lucky enough, you’ll be able to recover Mac data from Time Machine backup.
- An online backup service (sometimes called “cloud backup”), which copies your data over the Internet to the service’s servers, offers the security of off-site storage for your most essential files, along with a simple, one-time setup procedure.
- The Best Data Recovery Software for MacOS of 2018 Utilities • Updated on March 12, 2018 N o one likes to suffer from losing important from Mac computer or storage devices like external hard drive, digital camera, memory card, usb drive, etc.
- Best Cloud Backup Services 2018. Acronis True Image 2018 Cloud Backup Review: Best for Power Users. To give the best chance of getting ALL our data back in a crisis. I have found ViceVersa.
It’s All About Your Personal Data
Let’s start with the obvious: what do you need back up? Well, first and foremost, you need to back up your personal files. You can always reinstall your operating system and redownload your programs if your hard drive fails, but your own personal data is irreplaceable.
Any personal documents, photos, home videos, and any other data on your computer should be backed up regularly. Those can never be replaced. If you’ve spent hours painstakingly ripping audio CDs or video DVDs, you may want to back those files up, too, so you don’t have to do all that work over again.
Your operating system, programs, and other settings can also be backed up. You don’t have to back them up, necessarily, but it can make your life easier if your entire hard drive fails. If you’re the type of person that likes to play around with system files, edit the registry, and regularly update your hardware, having a full system backup may save you time when things go wrong.
The Many Ways to Back Up Your Files
There are many ways to back up your data, from using an external drive to backing up those files on a remote server over the Internet. Here are the strengths and weaknesses of each:
- Back Up to an External Drive: If you have an external USB hard drive, you can just back up to that drive using your computer’s built-in backup features. On Windows 10 and 8, use File History. On Windows 7, use Windows Backup. On Macs, use Time Machine. Occasionally connect the drive to the computer and use the backup tool, or leave it plugged in whenever your home and it’ll back up automatically. Pros: Backing up is cheap and fast. Cons: If your house gets robbed or catches on fire, your backup can be lost along with your computer, which is very bad.
- Back Up Over the Internet: If you want to ensure your files stay safe, you can back them up to the internet with a service like Backblaze. Backblaze is the well-known online backup service we like and recommend since CrashPlan no longer serves home users, but there are also competitors like Carbonite and MozyHome. For a low monthly fee (about $5 a month), these programs run in the background on your PC or Mac, automatically backing up your files to the service’s web storage. If you ever lose those files and need them again, you can restore them. Pros: Online backup protects you against any type of data loss–hard drive failure, theft, natural disasters, and everything in between. Cons: These services usually cost money (see the next section for more details), and the initial backup can take much longer than it would on an external drive–especially if you have a lot of files.
- Use a Cloud Storage Service: Backup purists will say this isn’t technically a backup method, but for most people, it serves a similar enough purpose. Rather than just storing your files on your computer’s hard drive, you can store them on a service like Dropbox, Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive, or a similar cloud storage service. They’ll then automatically sync to your online account and to your other PCs. If your hard drive dies, you’ll still have the copies of the files stored online and on your other computers. Pros: This method is easy, fast, and in many cases, free, and since it’s online, it protects you against all types of data loss. Cons: Most cloud services only offer a few gigabytes of space for free, so this only works if you have a small number of files you want to back up, or if you’re willing to pay for extra storage. Depending on the files you want to back up, this method can either be simpler or more complicated than a straight-up backup program.
While backup programs like Backblaze and cloud storage services like Dropbox are both online backups, they work in fundamentally different ways. Dropbox is designed to sync your files between PCs, while Backblaze and similar services are designed to backup large amounts of files. Backblaze will keep multiple copies of different versions of your files, so you can restore the file exactly as it was from many points in its history. And, while services like Dropbox are free for small amounts of space, Backblaze’s low price is for as big a backup as you want. Depending on how much data you have, one could be cheaper than the other.
Backblaze and Carbonite do have one big limitation you should keep in mind. If you delete a file on your computer, it will be deleted from your online backups after 30 days. You can’t go back and recover a deleted file or the previous version of a file after this 30 day period. So be careful when deleting those files if you might want them back!
One Backup Isn’t Enough: Use Multiple Methods
RELATED:You’re Not Backing Up Properly Unless You Have Offsite Backups
So which should you use? Ideally, you’d use at least two of them. Why? Because you want both offsite and onsite backups.
“Onsite” literally means backups stored at the same physical location as you. So, if you back up to an external hard drive and store that at home with your home PC, that’s an onsite backup.
Offsite backups are stored at a different location. So, if you back up to an online server, like Backblaze or Dropbox, that’s an offsite backup.
Onsite backups are faster and easier, and should be your first line of defense against data loss. If you lose files, you can quickly restore them from an external drive. But you shouldn’t rely on onsite backups alone. If your home burns down or all the hardware in it is stolen by thieves, you’d lose all your files.
Offsite backups don’t have to be a server on the Internet, either, and you don’t have to pay a monthly subscription for one. You could back up your files to a hard drive and store it at your office, at a friend’s house, or in a bank vault, for example. It’d be a bit more inconvenient, but that’s technically an offsite backup.
Similarly, you could also store your files in Dropbox, Google Drive, or OneDrive and performing regular backups to an external drive. Or you could use Backblaze to back up online and Windows File History to create a local backup. There are a lot of ways to use these services in tandem, and it’s up to you how to do it. Just make sure you have a solid backup strategy, with onsite and offsite backups, so you have a wide safety net against ever losing your files.
Automate It!
All that may sound complicated, but the more you automate your backup system, the more frequently you’ll be able to back up and the greater the odds you’ll stick with it. That’s why you should use an automated tool instead of copying files to an external drive by hand. You can just set it up once, and forget it.
That’s one reason we really like online services like Backblaze. If it’s backing up to the internet, it can automatically do that every single day. If you have to plug in an external drive, you have to put in more effort, which means you’ll back up less often and you may eventually stop doing it. Keeping everything automatic is well worth the price.
If you don’t want to pay anything and want to primarily rely on local backups, consider using a file-syncing service like Dropbox, Google Drive, or Microsoft OneDrive to synchronize your important files online. That way, if you ever lose your local backup, you’ll at least have an online copy.
Ultimately, you just need to think about where your files are and ensure you have multiple copies at all times. Ideally, those copies should be in more than one physical location. As long as you’re actually thinking about what you’ll do if your computer dies, you should be way ahead of most people.
Image Credit: Mario Goebbels on Flickr
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You absolutely have to back up your Mac. If you don't, one day — maybe tomorrow, maybe next week or next year — you will lose something important and irreplaceable and there will be nothing future you can do but curse at and blame past you. I don't say this to scare you. I say it to save you. Back up. Do it now. And do it like this.
Why do you need to back up?
One copy of your data is no copies at all. That's because hard drives and solid state drives (SSD) fail. They fail all the time. Two copies of your data is basically one copy, since there's a chance both could fail at the same time.
To make sure your data is safe you want to back it up in a way that minimizes the chance you could ever lose it. Realistically, that means a local back up as well as an off-site or online backup.
What's a local back up and how do you do it?
A local back up is literally taking a the data on your Mac and copying it to another drive in your home or office. Both copies are in the same place, so you can easily get to the back up when and if you need it, and either keep it up-to-date or restore from it if something bad happens to the original.
There are a couple ways to do a local backup. The first and easiest is with Apple's built-in Time Machine.
What's Time Machine and how do I use it?
Time Machine is the easiest way to get started with local back ups. Because it's built right into macOS, there's no additional software to buy, you just need an external drive to get started. Time Machine is even supported by popular mass-storage (NAS) devices, so it can scale as much as you need.
If you're really brand new to backups and want the simplest, most set-it-and-forget-it solution possible, you can get an Apple AirPort Time Capsule router. It's literally a Wi-Fi router with a hard drive built in.
Fair warning, the Wi-Fi router part is current-generation fast, but hasn't been updated in years and doesn't use modern networking technologies like mesh. Still, if you're not into or interested in the technology, get a Time Capsule, plug it in, hit start, and you'll be halfway there. (See online backups, below, for the other half.)
Even though I also use the other methods outline below, I have, and use, a Time Capsule as well. That way, even if I forget everything else or something else fails, I know every Mac in my house is still getting a base-level backup every few hours.
What about 'cloning' for local back up?
The big advantage to cloning is that it makes a bit-for-bit copy of your drive which means that, if anything happens to your Mac, you can actually boot from the clone and get right back to work if you need to, before worrying about fixing your main drive or restoring any data.
I use SuperDuper! for this and rotate between two different back up drives. That way, I minimize the chance of losing anything should one of those drives fail. Carbon Copy Cloner will get the same job done, so you have options.
What's off-site backup?
Having a backup or two at home is fine unless there's a fire, flood, or theft that eliminates everything in your home, all at once. Same for the office, if your Mac and backups are all in the same place there as well.
Best Data Backup For Mac
So, to reduce that risk, you take one or more of your backup drives and store them at a different physical location. It should be a place that you trust with your data and is far enough away that any disaster striking your place won't also strike the secondary place. So, not the neighbors, but your parent's or sibling's place across town, your office, even a storage unit or safety deposit box at the bank a few blocks away would all be great.
The most convenient way to manage it is, if you're already rotating between two or more local drives, simply swap the local and off-site drives once a week or once a month, depending on your needs. Take the drive with your latest local back up to the off-site location and bring back the older one to update. Then swap again the next time.
This is also the best option if you have sensitive financial, health, or personal information you simply don't want to trust to an online service no matter how secure.
What about online or cloud backup?
We live in the age of the internet and, while local and offsite backups are a good enough solution to recommend them, there are considerable advantages to going to the cloud.
Similar to Time Machine and Time Capsule, online backup 'just works'. You pay for a subscription, download a utility, start it up, and then it churns away in the background copying your data to giant server farms and updating it as and when needed.
There's typically also an option to send or receive hard drives, if you have a large amount of data, to get you started or in the event you need to recover.
BackBlaze and Carbonite are solid services that have been around for years.
What about iCloud, Dropbox, and Google Drive — can't you just use them?
If BackBlaze or Carbonite are like disk cloning in the cloud, iCloud, Dropbox, Google Drive, and the other storage providers are like copying a few important files over. They're incredibly handy to keep things in sync and to restore a few files here and there if and when you need to, but if you lose your entire Mac, unless you've stored a disk image, you won't be able to simply restore and go back about your business.
That said, most of them have free and cheap plans and are well worth using in addition to an online backup service because you can quickly and easily sync and recover files.
I use all three. iCloud automagically syncs and backups basic Mac files and lets me access them on iOS. Dropbox is where I store all my Mac document folders. Google Drive is what my company uses for documents.
Back it up. Just back it up.
Pick a date. Set a calendar reminder. Every time it goes off, check your backups and improve your strategy as needed. Even though backups always feel like tomorrow's problem, losing your data can profoundly screw up your today. And odds are it will happen at some point, so be ready.
Best Mac Backup Options
Don't let past you destroy future you. Back up now.
If you already have a backup strategy, let me know what it is. If you don't already have one, let me know what you choose!
Updated September 2018: These are still the best ways to back up your Mac and really just sound advice.
Best Mac Backup Software
Backing up: The ultimate guide
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Best Data Backup Service For Mac
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