Relaxed in the sense, you might have to spend dollars to repair the hardware, hard drive or may buy a new Mac (if it’s stolen), but surely you won't be buying new data. Instead, you will easily copy the data from your backup source to your Mac machine.
For example, at the advent of OS X Mountain Lion I created clone copies of my Mac start-up disk and assured data safety even if an unfortunate event strikes during OS upgrading.
Likewise, there lies plenty of other scenarios that prompt you to create backup copies of your Macintosh HD and volumes. Collectively, Mac is good at assuring backups and there are good back-up options available to meet our needs.
To begin with, we have Mac's very own
1. Disk Utility – This application assist the user in executing variety of Mac OS X related tasks including creating an image of the data. Disk Images are virtual files that hold you vital data and have to be mounted when you need them.
You can image your files, folders, as well as volumes to same or another source with the help of imaging option. Imaging still remains a great boon in case you wish to create copy of a CD/DVD/BD.
2. Burning data to disk with Finder: How many of us know that using Finder tool we can burn a file/folder to a disk? Yes, go to File Menu to find this out. Moreover, you create a burn folder and move the desired data to the folder to back them up.
3. Time-Machine: Apple created Time Machine application to take you back in time and restore a file that got deleted in the present. Time Machine, which sounds fantastic, backs up files/folder/volumes incrementally. It has ability to backup the file with changes and give you the much updated backup whenever required.
4. Clone Tools: This is one backup utility that have been popularly used on all sorts of platforms. With PC I started to clone all important files to a safe location which still continues with the Mac OS X.
The best thing about the clone application is you are able to create a bootable copy of your machine which is not even provided by the time machine. The clone copy of the Mac can run on that machine or on similar machine with equal hardware/software configuration.
5. Clouds: Online backup services are good to have & mostly recommended for official purposes. When you can't carry your Mac to the office, you can afford to upload your important official files, documents and presentation to the services like Dropbox etc. and access anytime, anyplace.
Backup is the need of hour for all Mac users who don't dream to recreate their precious data rather than securing it with the help of plenty of tools available.
VishalAbout the Guest Author:
Vishal is a Mac user and loves to experiment on various software. This time he is laying emphasis on need of Mac hard drive backup with the help of best available options.