If you don’t currently use a backup app, try one of these Mac backup apps. You’re going to feel a lot better knowing that, should something happen to your Mac’s storage system, you can quickly retrieve any lost data and get right back to work. Once you set it up, you can go about your daily business without giving backups a second thought. Time Machine automatically takes care of everything for you. Time Machine also works with OS X’s migration assistant, making it an effective choice for moving data to a new Mac as well as performing backups. While it offers a number of attractive features, Time Machine isn’t perfect. We recommend using Time Machine as the core of your backup strategy and relying on other backup apps for additional capabilities, such as cloning or remote/cloud backup. SuperDuper’s core features (creating clones and backups) are free. The paid version of SuperDuper includes additional features, such as the ability to set up schedules to automate your backups or clone creations. Smart Updates are incremental versions of a clone and significantly reduce the time it takes to update an existing clone. User scripts allow you to create custom backup routines and schedules. While widely used for creating bootable clones, Carbon Copy Cloner can also create full and incremental backups, schedule tasks, and back up to any networked share that your Mac can mount on its desktop. Free and noteworthy features include the ability to create full and versioned backups, exclude files and folders, synchronize files and folders, and create bootable clones of a startup drive. In today’s backup market, cloning a drive is nothing new, and most backup utilities can perform this service. Mac Backup Guru has a few additional tricks it can perform. Besides cloning a drive, Mac Backup Guru can sync any selected folders and create incremental clones, which cuts down on the time it takes to keep a backup clone current. It also has a complete scheduling system so you can automate your backups. You can designate any Mac, Windows, or Linux computer on your network as the destination. CrashPlan uses this computer as the backup device for your other computers. You can even backup to remote computers that aren’t your local network, say the computer of a good friend who lives next door. In this way, you can easily create off-site backups without trusting your data to the cloud. IDrive offers a free basic level, allowing you to backup up to 5 GB of data from any device. If you need more backup space, you can choose the Personal 2 TB plan. IDrive goes beyond basic backup service: It also allows you to synchronize files between devices and mark files for sharing.
