There are two main ways to backup your Apple computer.
1. Use Time Machine to automatically backup. This is the Apple way – the easy way.
2. Manually backup with some other software such as Super Duper or Carbon Copy Cloner.
Apple’s way (Time Machine) is a lot simpler. The big disadvantage is that the backup is not bootable. So if your computer crashes you need to insert the original DVD and restore from at the old Time Machine backup. This can take hours.
The second method is more complicated, but the advantage is that your backup will be bootable. If you hold down Option-Command-Shift-Delete during startup you can boot off your backup drive. This means that in an emergency you can plug in your backup and be running from it under a minute. You can’t do this with Time Machine.
This article describes the second method of manually backing up using Super Duper. When I wrote this article originally I used Super Duper, but I use CCC now. I like it better. No reason why.
I have an external drive that I backup to monthly, so that if worst comes to worst and my entire computer crashes, I can be up and running again in minutes. (I actually have two, and I store one off-site with a friend, alternating each month)
To make a bootable backup you need to:
- Buy an external hard drive
- Format the hard drive
- Download some backup software
- Backup your Hard Drive
- Run the backup software often
Now let me explain those steps in more detail.
1. Buy an external hard drive
You need an external hard drive at least as big as the hard drive on the computer you are intending to back up. Eg if you have an 200G hard drive on your imac, you should get at least an 200G for your backups. This way you will always fit your backup on the external drive.
2. Format the hard drive
Plug in your new hard drive. Run Disk Utility (in your Applications/Utilities folder). Select your new Hard Drive in the left pane, and in the Erase tab check it says ‘Mac OS Extended (Journaled)’ as below, type in the name you would like to call it (eg Backup) (here it says Untitled) and press Erase. It will now erase and format your external Hard Drive ready for use and call it Backup.
If you have a large external drive, and you want to backup more than one computer to it, then it is best to ‘partition’ it into two sections, one for each computer. To do this select the disk in the left pane and click on the partition tab. Select ’2 partitions’ and adjust to the size you want. Again, name them, make sure they are both Mac OS Extended (Journaled) and press Partition. In the example below I have partitioned my hard drive into two, one for backups (80G) and one for other stuff!
3. Download some backup software
Go to http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/SuperDuperDescription.html and download the latest version of SuperSooper. It’s free to be able to do a basic backup, or you can pay if you want extra features such as incremental backup (it’s faster, but the end result is the same). Copy Superdooper to your macintosh applications folder.
4. Backup your Hard Drive
Select your Macintosh HD in the left menu, select your new firewire drive in the right one, select ‘backup – all files’. Press copy now, go and have a cup of coffee while you wait a long time for it to copy all your files, perhaps up to an hour or so.
It’s good to select ‘Repair permissions before copying in the options tab, see below. This makes sure your OS X is functioning well before you back it up, otherwise there can be some problems.
5. Run the backup software often
The most important thing about backing up is to do it regularly, I do my main backup once a month – but Time Machine is also doing it hourly. It’s a good idea to do a backup before you install any new system software in case something goes wrong in the installation so you can go back to what it was when you backed up.
The most important thing about backing up is to do it regularly, I do my main backup once a month – but Time Machine is also doing it hourly. It’s a good idea to do a backup before you install any new system software in case something goes wrong in the installation so you can go back to what it was when you backed up.
How do I use the backup in an emergency?
- Plug in your external drive. Go to System Preferences, select ‘Startup Disk’, select your external Backup, press Restart.
OR
- Plug in your Hard disk and Press Option-Command-Shift-Delete during startup. This will bypass the primary startup volume and seek a different startup volume such as the external one.
You are now running from your backup, and you just repeat the sections called Format the hard drive and Backup your Hard Drive but treat your Backup as the main one and the main one as your backup. In other words, run Disk Utility and erase your Macintosh HD, then run Superdooper and backup from your Backup to Macintosh HD. When the backup is finished, select Machintosh HD, and restart. You will now be running from your main computer again.
