Take Control of Backing Up Your Mac: The Online Appendixes

Info about nearly 100 Mac backup products and services!
by Joe Kissell

Welcome! If you want to compare features in Mac backup products and services, you’re in the right place. The content here is free to all, but it is associated with a commerical ebook, written by Joe Kissell and published by TidBITS Publishing Inc. The ebook helps you figure out your best strategy for making backups in Mac OS X, and then it covers all the details of set up, testing, maintenance, and restoration.

There are nearly 100 apps and services you can use to back up a Mac, and the list is constantly changing. In Take Control of Backing Up Your Mac, I go into great detail about developing a backup strategy, selecting media, setting up a backup system, and recovering data when the need arises. I also discuss the criteria you should consider when choosing backup software. But rather than list them all in the book, I’ve moved most of the details to this online appendix for easier updating.

Get Comprehensive Backup Advice!

Read along as backup guru Joe Kissell helps you understand the three components of a solid backup strategy, implement that strategy in a way that meets your specific needs, and understand the hows and whys of what you are doing, taking you far beyond the limited security of turning on Time Machine or copying a few files to a flash drive or cloud service. You'll also find details on testing your backup system, and on how to restore from backup. Whether you're running Mac OS X 10.7 Lion or 10.8 Mountain Lion, you'll soon have a reliable, up-to-date backup system. Bonus! Ebook includes money-saving coupons on ChronoSync, CrashPlan, Data Backup 3, DollyDrive, QRecall, and Retrospect Desktop.

Once your backups are humming along reliably, can we encourage you to help your friends, family, and colleagues improve their backups before they lose data? This ebook includes links to a downloadable one-page PDF handout and to a PDF-based slide deck that you can present on any computer or mobile device screen.

Although the 201-page ebook is organized so you can start backing up without reading every page, the full ebook will teach you to:

Design a reliable backup system. If you’re developing a new backup system, you’ll learn how to make it not only thorough, ensuring that all your data is safe, but also easy to manage and appropriate for your situation. If you’re assessing an existing backup system, Joe discusses how to evaluate it and offers guidance for improving and modernizing it.
Talk like an expert. You'll learn the meaning of terms like “versioned backups,” "delta encoding," “push” and “pull” backups, “duplicates,” “server,” “client,” “incremental,” “hard link,” “metadata,” “mirroring,” and “snapshot.”
Choose backup software. Consider the pros and cons of Apple's free Time Machine and determine whether it's a good match for you—or if you should consider a different program with a better mix of features for your needs. You'll learn about 14 key features to look for in backup apps and find overviews and tips for 8 noteworthy products (an online appendix covers nearly 100 options), plus several suggestions for online backups. You'll also get Joe's recommendations to help you sort through the possibilities.
Shop for hardware. You'll discover the pros and cons of different backup media options such as hard drives (with USB, FireWire, eSATA, or Thunderbolt interfaces—and with or without full-disk encryption), flash drives, optical media, tape drives, RAIDs, Drobo storage devices, Time Capsules, and NAS and SAN devices.
Operate Time Machine. Find out what goes on beneath Time Machine’s simple surface, and how best to make use of Apple’s built-in backup system, including how local snapshots work when your Time Machine volume isn’t available, and how to encrypt a Time Machine backup.
Make backups. No matter what backup software you decide to use, Joe provides a conceptual walk-through of the entire process, offering basic information for people who've never made a backup before and savvy, real-world suggestions for making the backup process as easy as possible.
Deal with special backup needs. You’ll learn what to do about certain kinds of data that may require special backup strategies, such as large media archives, frequently changing files that need special versioned backup treatment, and Windows files and volumes hosted on your Mac.
Recover lost data. Use your backup to recover lost data successfully in the event of a hard disk crash or other calamity. After all, restoration is what's really important.

Take Control of Backing Up Your Mac is a $20 ebook, available in PDF, EPUB, and Mobipocket formats, so you can read it pretty much any device (including Kindle). More details...