The Practical Guide To Mac Security: Part 13, Alternative Backups

Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Here's Part 13 of my course The Practical Guide to Mac Security brought to you thanks to my great Patreon supporters. Go here to find out more.

So a backup is a must have for any computer user. But what if you want to go beyond that. Well, there are three steps you can take to go just beyond the basic backup. The first is simply to have a second Time Machine backup. This is actually extremely easy. You just add another hard drive to your Mac. Set is up as a Time Machine backup just like the first one and it will backup to both places. As a matter of fact it will backup to whatever is available. So, for instance, if you have a MacBook that you move between home and work you can have one Time Machine backup in one location and one in another. Then when you put it on the desk at either location you plugin that backup drive and Time Machine will automatically backup to that drive. So you can go back and forth between two locations and have two backups. Or simply have two backups sitting at one location. Have one plugged in for a period of time. Unplug it and plug the other one in and the one that isn't plugged in could be at another location. Maybe you store that at a family member's house and you swap it out every week. It's so easy to do. There's really nothing to show. You just have both backups and plug in whichever one or both at a time and have it backup and it just works. 

Now another type of backup you may want to do is using another piece of software. These are usually called Clone Backups or Cloning your drive because typically they take your drive and make an exact copy of it. But not necessarily. Sometimes the software can do more advanced things like including incremental updates so it's only updating what's new and maybe then keeping multiple versions around. Two pieces of software that have been around, literally, for decades for Mac are Carbon Copy Cloner and SuperDuper! Both of these basically compete against each other. I have used them both in the past. They both work really well. If you wanted to have a second backup that wasn't Time Machine but was doing something else these two pieces of software you can get and set them up so that they do backups to another drive. 

Another way to backup is doing an online backup. The problem with a backup that's local is sometimes the disaster that befalls your Mac can also befall your other equipment. For instance, somebody steals your Mac they may also steal other equipment around including your backup. If there's a disaster, like a fire or flood or something, both your Mac and your backup could get destroyed. But an online backup will store your backup somewhere else. Now in order to use an online backup, of course, you have to have a fast internet connection because it's going to be backing up all of your data. So as long as you have a modern, fast internet connection you should be fine. Of course the first backup you do to backup all of your stuff that may take a long time. Days, or maybe even more than a week, to basically back everything up. But then from that point on, hopefully, it only has to send little bits of information as you update files, add new files, and things like that. The one service that I use and I can recommend is Backblaze. It's a fairly popular service. It's not the only one out there but it's the one I use. 

So my personal backup solution is to have a Time Machine drive sitting near my Mac. It is backing everything up. Then in addition to that I pay for a subscription to Backblaze. I have that installed on my Mac. You simply install their software and that runs automatically. This then backs up over the internet and all my files are backed up elsewhere. So if I were to lose my Time Machine drive and my computer's hard drive at the same time I could get a new Mac and I could go to the Backblaze service and I can either download everything I wanted to or they even have a service where they will ship you a drive as an emergency to get all your data back.