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Use SuperDuper to fine-tune and schedule your Mac backups. With Cliff Joseph.

Apple’s Time Machine is a good example of how the Mac is supposed to work. It takes a timeconsuming tedious chore – performing regular backups of your important files – and just makes it work automatically, so that you can just plug in your backup drive and forget all about it.

Time Machine does have some limitations, though. It automatically backs up files every hour during the day, and then saves daily and weekly backups going further back in time.

But it doesn’t allow you to create your own schedule for backing up your files – such as a regular end-of-the-day backup for important work projects. And, while Time Machine can help to ‘restore’ your Mac if anything goes wrong, it doesn’t allow you to ‘boot’ your Mac from your Time Machine backup drive in case your Mac’s own internal drive develops a fault.

BACK AND BOOT

That’s where other backup apps, such as SuperDuper, can come in really handy. The app is free to download, and provides basic backup options so that you can try it out and see if you like it before paying for the full version (US$27.95).

It’s worth paying the licence fee, though, for additional features such as the ability to create your own backup schedules. And, most importantly, SuperDuper allows you to boot your Mac from your backup drive, making it a really useful diagnostic and recovery tool in case anything goes seriously wrong with your Mac’s hard drive.