Best Backup Software For Mac

Paseko – November 13, 2017

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You already know that you should back up your Mac regularly. You probably already did. But is your backup strategy proven to be a bomb? Will it get you out of trouble after even the least likely to lose data disaster?

In this article, we describe the best tools available for the job. Some backup apps and services here make incremental backups, others allow you to clone your entire boot drive, and the third group stores your data securely on a dedicated data backup server.

They all have free trials or demo versions so you can try before buying them, but if you want to continue using them you have to buy a license or pay for a subscription. When it comes to protecting your data, however, the price here is more than worth it.

Time Machine

Installed as part of Mac OS X / MacOS Leopard and later

Time Machine is brilliant for incremental backups that allow you to recover deleted data. It's also great to recover from accidents that result in data loss, or even make the need to re-install the OS on new drives and start at zero.

The problem with Time Machine, however, such as one destination backup strategy, is that if your Time Machine drive is in the same location as your Mac, it's vulnerable to the same disaster event as your Mac.

If your office gets flooded, you will lose your Time Machine and Mac drive. If there is a lightning strike and your Time Machine drive is plugged into the power socket at that point, then go into your backup.

You can reduce this to some extent by saving your Time Machine drive in a location separate from your Mac, but it costs one of the best Time Machine assets: convenience.

It's best to have a dual strategy - which gives Time Machine the ease but adds an extra layer of security. To do that, you need to backup regularly to different destinations, be they external hard drives or cloud storage services in addition to Time Machine backups.

Super duper!

Price: £ 23.90

Download now: Shirt Pocket

Super duper! is another tool commonly used to clone Mac OS X disks. Like Carbon Copy Cloner, it can make a bootable copy of your startup disk if that's what you need. It can also copy the folders you specify to the destination you like. Helping, SuperDuper! comes with several pre-configured tasks that you can choose from the drop-down menu once you specify the source and destination. It also tells you exactly what to do before it starts, in a series of bullet notes, and explains what has been done afterward.

One neat touch is the SuperDuper! offer to fix permissions before clone your drive. This is not a problem at El Capitan, where Apple claims fixing permissions is no longer required, but it is useful if you are running an older version of OS X.

Features that attract many users to SuperDuper! however, is sandboxing This feature lets you make a bootable copy of your Mac startup drive to another disk, then boot from that disk and then update it with a new version of the OS. Then share apps and other data with the native OS. This means you can test the new version of the OS without risking your main startup disk, and since the data is shared, you work on the application files and original documents and any changes will be preserved when you return using the original startup disk.

Carbon Copy Cloner

Price: £ 32.25

Download now: Carbon Copy Cloner

If you've ever done a clean mac os installation or deleted a Mac hard drive before selling it, chances are you'll find Carbon Copy Cloner. The simplest, it lets you create a clone of your Mac boot disk. That makes it very useful if you need to copy every bit of data from your Mac before deleting it clean. It also allows you to boot from it in case of a disaster.

Carbon Copy Cloner can do more than that. You can use it to back up only the folders you specify and assign them as 'assignments'. Tasks can be scheduled so that it runs at the time you set; and when a task runs, only the files that have changed since the last task is executed are modified. Tasks can also be edited at any time, and you can choose to receive email notifications when the task is run.

Tasks can also be chained so you can, for example, back up your Home folders to a local drive and then restore them again, this time to a network drive. And if that is not enough, Carbon Copy Cloner can also run shell scripts before or after the task is executed.

ChronoSync

Price: $ 49.99 (or £ 22.99 for entry-level ChronoSync Express)

Download now: Econ Technologies (or Mac App Store for ChronoSync Express)

ChronoSync is three tools in one. Like Carbon Copy Cloner and SuperDuper !, this can create a bootable copy of your startup disk or run backups of files and folders you have specified.

The tool that gives ChronoSync its name, however, is that it performs two-way synchronization between two locations. That means that if a file has been modified on both drives, the file will be updated on another drive, regardless of where the primary drive and your work and which are backed up.

ChronoSync lets you create filters or 'rules' for syncing. It works in a way similar to the intelligent search in the Finder. You click '+' to add a rule and then choose from filters and attributes. There are three different modes - simple, medium and advanced - that offer different levels of complexity. And rules can be combined with Boolean operators.

If you have multiple Macs on the network, you can 'push' backups to the server - where each Mac has its own rules and schedules, or 'pull' them from a Mac client, where the server determines the schedule. You can also configure backups over the internet while you're on the go with a Mac, using a VPN or secure internet connection.

There is also a free iOS app that lets you sync files between your iPhone or iPad and Mac.

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