Backup basics: what do you need?

In order to back up your Mac, you need a nifty mix of hardware and software

The simplest way to back up your Mac is to connect an external USB drive and let Time Machine regularly back up your files. If that drive is an SSD, it’ll be so quick and quiet you won’t even notice it’s happening unless you happen to see the spinning Time Machine icon in the menu bar.

We wouldn’t recommend trying it with a USB flash drive, though; they’re usually far too small. SSDs are the best option for most, but if you need really huge amounts of storage then hard drives are cheaper for really massive storage capacities.

Another option is to use networked storage, such as a dedicated NAS drive or an external drive that’s connected to your network router. That’s a particularly good option when there are multiple Macs to back up, such as in an office; all the backups can be stored in the same place.

Keep some distance

As good as that is, it’s important to have a backup that isn’t in the same building as your original data. There are two ways to do that. You can use an online storage service such as Backblaze, or you can use an external drive that’s kept somewhere else. It doesn’t need to be anywhere fancy provided it’s safe and accessible, so if your mate Dave’s house meets those criteria then that’s fine; alternatively you could keep a copy of your work backup at home, or your home backup at work.

For online storage, we’d strongly recommend a dedicated backup service rather than just a cloud storage service.