Alternative Backup Options to Time Machine

by Claire J Rottenberg
CJRTOOLS ebooks

If you use Leopard, you may be leaving all your backup tasks to Time Machine. With Time Machine, backing up can be mindless, but Time Machine has its limitations and it’s not necessarily the best backup option for all Leopard users or for all backup tasks. Some of the shortcomings of Time Machine include the need for a significantly large extra external hard drive, use of the Leopard Install disk to restore a complete system and backups that only occur automatically once an hour, although you can back up manually at any time. And, of course, to use Time Machine, you must be using Mac OS X 10.5. In this article, I’ll describe alternative backup options that can be used with Leopard as well as with older versions of Mac OS X.

Cloning a Boot Drive

Probably the most important type of backup is a complete backup or clone of your boot drive, usually to an external hard drive. The easiest way to create a clone is to download the demo version of SuperDuper! This application makes cloning a no-brainer – just select your source and destination drives, enter your user password and SuperDuper! does the rest. If you purchase the full program for $27.95, SuperDuper! can be scheduled to do automatic incremental backups so you’ll have peace of mind that you always have a perfect bootable backup of your drive.

If you don’t want to use SuperDuper!, you can clone your drive using Disk Utility’s Restore feature. However, I recommend SuperDuper! because Disk Utility’s Restore feature may result in a clone with permission errors. SuperDuper!, on the other hand, has consistently produced perfect clones for me.

Backing Up Specific Files and Folders

In addition to cloning your drive on a regular basis, you might want an easy way to back up specific files and folders, especially if you don’t store valuable data files on your boot drive. Many applications, such as word processors, spreadsheets and databases, include a special option for automatically creating a backup of your work every time you save it. If you use this feature, select a backup location on a second drive so your most important data will always be saved on two separate drives.

Another way to back up critical data is to use a program like Apple’s Backup, available for free for .Mac users. You can schedule Backup to automatically save data files to your iDisk so you’ll know that you always have an offline backup of the data. The full version of SuperDuper! also lets you save selected files and folders to an external drive on a scheduled basis.

Another easy option is to purchase a USB flash drive and manually transfer critical data files to it as necessary.

Backing Up to CDs and DVDs

Some applications, like iTunes and iPhoto, have built-in features that let you back up your valuable data to CDs or DVDs. This is the perfect solution for data files that are very large, such as a photo or music collection.

Large folders of data can also be easily backed up to CDs or DVDs using the Mac OS X 10.5 Finder Burn feature. Simply insert a blank CD or DVD into your computer’s optical drive, move files and folders onto it and click the Burn button on the Finder window Toolbar to create a permanent copy of your data. You can also use free applications, such as Burn or LiquidCD, to create backup CDs and DVDs of your data.

With so many easy-to-use options for cloning your system and backing up your valuable data, there’s no excuse for any Mac user to lose data and precious time trying to recreate or restore original files. And, if you use Leopard, you have the additional advantage of Time Machine.

Resources

SuperDuper!

Shirt Pocket
http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper

Burn
Kiwi Fruitware
http://burn-osx.sourceforge.net/

LiquidCD
Maconnection
http://www.maconnect.ch

Claire J Rottenberg is the author of Easy Guides to Mac OS X software (Safari, Mail, System Preferences, TextEdit) and Course Books on iPhoto ’08, iTunes and Mac OS X 10.4. She is currently completing three new Course Books on Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard). More information on her books is available on the CJRTOOLS ebooks website (http://homepage.mac.com/cjrtools/ebooks).