Need to know: Backup checklist
Backups are like insurance; you hope you’ll never have your Mac stolen or have the kids accidentally break the TV but, if disaster happens, you’ll be glad you paid the premium. Where backups differ is that when you break a TV, you can get a similar one; you can’t do that with your photos or the book you’re writing. Use Time Machine or backup software to make multiple backups.
It’s a very good idea to have a routine (or use an automatic backup system) so that your backups are always up to date. The more important your files, the more frequently you should update; you can’t recover something if you never got round to making a backup copy of it.
2 Redundancy
Your Mac’s data is damaged! Oh no! So is the backup! Now what? If it matters to you, make sure you have more than one backup – and that the backups aren’t stored in the same place. Businesses often have one backup stored on site and another stored off the premises.
3 Online backup
The big advantage of online backup is that it’s stored on servers far, far away – so if heaven forfend something horrible happened to your Mac or worse, to your home or business, your data would still be completely safe.
4 Off-site backup
Having a fast external drive (or other backup media, such as the tapes some big businesses use) that you can bring in when disaster strikes is often a lot faster than restoring from an online backup.
5 Device data
Don’t forget about the important things on your iPad, iPhone and other devices; anything stored on them that isn’t also stored on your Mac won’t be included in your backups, and iCloud’s free 5GB storage doesn’t give you enough room to back up even one iPhone. Upgrading iCloud or getting an Apple One subscription can provide enough space for all your device backups.
6 The 3-2-1 rule
For business data, follow the 3-2-1 rule: three copies of the data, two of them on different media, one of them stored offsite or online, away from the original.