The silly season is on it’s way!
It’s the perfect opportunity to get out of the office (for those lucky ones) and spend some time with family and friends.
But please ensure there’s a proper and up-to-date back up sorted first.
There are a few methods, some more suitable for different situations than others, but it’s definitely a good thing to have something in place. The more data you have, the more difficult and expensive it can be to be backed up as the software and hardware used becomes more complex.
First thing: a backed up file is a file that lives in more than one location. This may be an external hard drive, tape storage or a cloud solution (bear in mind that internet based storage can take a long time to restore from – not to mention the cost of downloading and uploading the data).
Here are some different ways to back up your data:
The Basics: The first port of call for back up on a Mac is Apple’s own Time Machine.
It’s a set and forget method of backing up most of the important stuff to an external HDD. These days you can set it to back up more than one drive to more than one external drive and it will alert you when you’re low on space, clean outs occurred or it haven’t backed up in x amount of days.
It is only for one computer unless you use Time Capsule (see below) and you’ll want to make sure you have a quality external Hard Disk Drive with enough space to grab everything plus some.
Read this knowledge article for more information on how to set Time Machine up.
Time Capsule
Time Capsule is Apple’s WIFI base station that contains a Hard Disk Drive and acts as a Time Machine location for the whole family. They require only a little setting up and can add some range and power to your WIFI set up easily too. They’re a great product for offering peace of mind to the household.
Larger backup, or business solutions.
Creative projects can take a great deal of storage and as such can be tricky with regard to backing up. Whether it’s a team of 2 of 30, a regular back up is key to retaining data and so typically a software solution is deployed to offer a schedule with rotating drives and offsite back ups for ultimate redundancy.
Additionally you may not want all your data forever, but usually, there’s a great deal of data that needs to be retained past the day it was finished. Typically this data is moved from the main store to an Archive drive which in itself needs it’s own redundancy. Often multi-disc arrays are the best way to go offering redundancy in the event of a failing drive for what ever purpose it was destined for.
Mac Aid have been helping others sort their backup for a long time, and are happy to help with the right equipment, set up and even monitor it all moving forward.
If you have any questions or would like to book us in to come and setup your backup, then don’t hesitate to get in touch.
