Make your backups leaner

If you need your backups to be a little more svelte, here’s how to do it

The idea of making backups leaner might

seem odd. After all, surely the aim with backups is that you’re backing everything up, in case of disaster? Well, sort of. It ultimately depends how many backups you’re making, where you’re making them to, and what information you ultimately care about.

For example, if your iTunes media never gets updated because you now only do streaming, and it’s on some stashed backup drives in a drawer, you probably don’t need it cluttering up your daily backup drives too, which could be better put to use dealing with important current content.

Be a little wary, however, on streamlining backups, as per our do and don’t tips elsewhere on this page. And remember, for a fully robust system, to twin the likes of Time Machine with a cloud-based backup (see the opposite page).