Joe Kissell - Take Control of Backing Up Your Mac

Welcome to Take Control of Backing Up Your Mac, Second Edition, version 2.0, published in June 2013 by TidBITS Publishing Inc. This book was written by Joe Kissell and edited by Jeff Carlson.

The data on every Mac should be backed up to protect you against theft, hardware failure, user error, and other catastrophes. This book helps you design a sensible backup strategy, choose and configure the best backup hardware and software for your needs, and understand how to make your backups as painless as possible.

If you want to share this ebook with a friend, we ask that you do so as you would with a physical book: lend it for a quick look, but ask your friend to buy a copy for careful reading or reference. Also, you can .

Copyright 2013, alt concepts inc. All rights reserved.

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Here are a few basic concepts that will help you read this book:

• Links: All blue text in this ebook is hot, meaning you can click (or tap) it, just like a link on the Web. When you follow a link to a different part of the ebook, you can return quickly to where you were by using your ebook readers back feature, if offered. For example, if you use iBooks in iOS to read the EPUB version of this ebook, you can tap the Back to link at the lower left of the screen. Or, if you use Preview on a Mac to read the PDF version, you can choose Go > Back or press Command-[.
• Menus: Where I describe choosing a command from a menu in the menu bar, I use an abbreviated description. For example, the abbreviated description for the menu command that creates a new folder in the Finder is File > New Folder.
• Contextual menus:Contextual menus appear when you Control-click various elements on a Macintosh screen, including Dock items and files in Finder windows. To describe opening a contextual menu, I usually I tell you to right-click (Control-click) an item on the screen. If your mouse offers a right-click option, or if you use a trackpad or other means of opening a contextual menu, you should feel free to use the method you prefer.
• Finding System Preferences: I sometimes refer to settings in System Preferences that you may want to adjust. To open System Preferences, click its icon in the Dock or choose Apple > System Preferences. When the System Preferences window opens, click the icon of the pane whose settings you want to adjust. I refer to these panes using a brief notation such as the Network preference pane.
• Path syntax: This book occasionally uses a path to show the location of a file or folder in your file system. For example, Mac OS X stores most utilities, such as Terminal, in the Utilities folder. The path to Terminal is: /Applications/Utilities/Terminal.

  The slash at the start of the path tells you to begin at the top level of the disk. Some paths begin with ~ (tilde), which is a shortcut for the current users home directory. For example, if the person currently logged in has the username joe and wants to install fonts that only he can access, he would put them in ~/Library/Fonts, which is just another way of writing /Users/joe/Library/Fonts.

• User Library: The library folder mentioned in the previous paragraph, ~/Library, is normally invisible in Lion and later. To see it in the Finder, hold down the Option key and choose Go > Library.
• Big cats: I frequently mention details specific to a particular version of Mac OS X, which Apple usually refers to by a big cat code name:
  • Mountain Lion: OS X 10.8
  • Lion: Mac OS X 10.7
  • Snow Leopard: Mac OS X 10.6
  • Leopard: Mac OS X 10.5

Note: Apple has announced that OS X 10.9 will be called Mavericks, thus abandoning the big-cat nomenclature of the previous nine versions of Mac OS X.

Its been nearly two years since the last update to this book, and a lot has changed in that timea new version of OS X; many new or updated hardware, software, and online tools for backups; and, as always, further refinements in my thinking about how best to tackle backup problems. Here are the biggest changes in this edition:

• Several chunks of content were moved to Online Appendixes (with summaries and pointers left in the book) so that I can more easily keep them up to date. In particular, most of the content for these topics has been moved to the Online Appendixes:
  • , including hardware-encrypted drives, driveless enclosures, portable drives, and NAS devices
  • , which can serve as a backup of sorts for photos and videos
• My table of backup software, which provides feature comparisons for nearly 100 Mac backup apps, remains in the Online Appendixes, and has been freshly updated with the latest factsand a new, much prettier interface. Ive also split online backup and storage services into a separate area of the appendixes for easier reading.
• The erstwhile Retrospect Primer, which was formerly online and which covered the use of Retrospect Desktop 6.x, has been retired, since that version is now so far out of date.
• Added a sidebar called that covers ways in which syncing your data to the cloud using a service such as as Dropbox can simplify restoring backups.
• Updated the sidebar , to address Apples changing policies about re-downloading purchased media and the use of iTunes Match.
• Thoroughly revised the chapter to cover changes in hardware, software, online services, and the ways in which digital media is used.
• Downgraded my previously enthusiastic endorsement of Time Machine by listing a number of problems that Apple seems reluctant to address; see .
• Changed my earlier term sub-file updates to the more common expression .
• Dropped Synk from the list of recommended apps for versioned backups (due to long-standing bugs and an extended period without updates), and added DollyDrive; see .
• Combined two chapters from the previous edition (Pick a Hard Drive and Consider Other Hardware Options) into a new chapter called .