Back up your Mac with Time Machine Learn how to create a backup of the files on your Mac. You can use Time Machine, the built-in backup feature of your Mac, to automatically back up all of your files, including apps, music, photos, email, documents, and system files. If you don’t back up your Mac’s files, then it’s a matter of when—not if—you’ll lose data that’s precious to you. Apple already robbed Mac users of any excuse not to back up regularly with Time Machine. But a single bad power surge, or a true disaster like fire or vicious weather, could render your Time Machine backups worthless. Fortunately, off-site backup is easier than ever. A slew of Web services offer affordable online backup for your Mac. These services are often simple to use as well: you install software from the service on your computer, and it backs up your files over the Internet. By keeping current copies of your treasured data far away from your home, you can feel far more confident that your files are safe. ![]() I looked at six online backup providers: Backblaze, Mozy, Carbonite, JungleDisk, Dropbox, and CrashPlan. They all offer the same core approach, but vary significantly in precisely what they offer, what they charge, and how they work. Note that when you first start backing up your files with an online service, it can take some time to upload all your data—even days. If your Internet service provider caps your bandwidth, you may need to consider throttling your initial backup (by limiting how much data the backup service can transfer per day, or by limiting the number of files it backs up initially and ramping up over time), or instead choosing a service like CrashPlan that lets you send in a hard drive for your initial backup (with an additional cost). Backblaze Three buttons: Backblaze's simple interface makes it easy to find what you're after. Is a fairly typical example of how these online offerings work. The service costs $5 per month (or $50 for a year), which affords you unlimited backups for the files on a single computer, and any directly attached USB and Firewire hard drives. (Extra discounts are available if you prepay even more; the price gets as low as $3.96 per month if you pay for two years at a time.) Like several services covered here, Backblaze places limits on what types of files it will back up. It specifically doesn’t back up the operating system, installed software, temporary files, or any files larger than 9 GB. Fortunately, seemingly huge files like your iPhoto, Aperture, or Lightroom libraries are generally smaller than they appear, since they’re really bundles of many files—which Backblaze can handle. ![]() Backblaze’s software runs as a well-designed pane in System Preferences on your Mac. The options are simple: You can initiate a backup, check out restore options, or configure settings. The settings let you throttle how fast Backblaze backs you up (and thus how much of your bandwidth it consumes), exclude specific files, and browse reports and logs regarding just what the software is doing. On the whole, it’s very simple to navigate and configure the preference panel. Backblaze backs up your files continuously (though you can switch to once daily or manually triggered instead), and keeps up to four weeks of file revisions. When you need to restore files, you can do so for free via a Web interface, or order your files on a DVD (for $99) or a USB drive (for $189). Mozy On the whole, is pretty similar to Backblaze. Downliad naruto shippuden apisode 138. Mozy costs $4.95 per month per computer, or as little as $4.33 per month if you prepay for two years at a time. Like Backblaze, Mozy runs on your Mac as a preference pane. Also like Backblaze, the service keeps up to 30 days’ worth of file revisions, backs up your files continuously, and ignores certain file types like your applications. Mozy—again, like Backblaze—wisely uses what it calls “block level” backups, meaning that the service attempts to back up only new or changed portions of files, to save bandwidth and time. And, like Backblaze, it backs up any drives connected via USB or Firewire. Control panel: Mozy lets you control when it backs up, and how much bandwidth it can use. That said, Mozy’s file restoration options aren’t quite as good as Backblaze’s.
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