
Yes, we preach back ups. After all, when your Mac’s hard drive dies, and it will one day, everything on it dies, too.
Thousands of photos, all your music, every file could disappear in an instant. Make back ups easy with BackityMac.
I prefer Mac applications and utilities that don’t cost a dime and provide an excellent user experience and above average functionality. BackityMac is close, very affordable, incredibly useful.
My back up routine is simple. I clone my Mac’s hard drives using SuperDuper! For next to nothing I get a quick, painless, effortless, bootable clone of my hard drives.
Cloning isn’t for everyone, though. Sometimes you just need to copy and store the most important files on your Mac. That’s what BackityMac does.
Apple’s success with Time Machine shows Mac users that back ups should be painless, set-it-and-forget-it non exercises. But it’s not perfect. Hard drives die (and cost money to begin with).
BackityMac, even at $10, is an attractive solution because of how easy it is to set up and use.
The user interface could not be easier to figure out. The left column lists presets for all the most important files on your Mac, including your Home directory (usually very large with many files).
The presets mean you just have to click on those files you want to back up, even if you don’t know where they are on your Mac. Quick, where’s the iCal database located? Can you find the iWeb website files? What about the Address Book database?
See? I’m not even sure where they all are, but BackityMac knows so you don’t have to care. Click the presets and let BackityMac back up files. Files such as Mail, iCal calendars, your browser bookmarks, Preferences, Widgets, and the all important Keychain files.
Even your iTunes music files and your iPhoto image files can be backed up.
Mac users on a tight budget will find BackityMac easy and thorough. Of course, if you’re really on a budget, backing up doesn’t do much good if you don’t have a second hard drive or another Mac to back up to, right?
BackityMac also backs up to CDs and DVDs, and automagically slice and dice the disk images into sections that will fit accordingly.
Even I have to admit that CDs and DVDs are cheaper than hard drives.
What you end up with is a read-only disk image of your important Mac files. When things go bad and you need to restore, use BackityMac to select the disk image and restore the contents back to your Mac.
You can even back up your complete Home directory on your Mac, and move it to another Mac.
Backing up files on a Mac is one of those things we just have to do. It’s digital insurance. We do it, but hope we never have a major problem which requires a restore. BackityMac makes both back up and restore easy for Mac users with too much month left at the end of their money.
Do you have an inexpensive back up plan? How does it work? Share your experience, good or bad, in the Comments section below.
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By Alexis Kayhill | I'm a 20 year Mac user veteran, writer, photographer, wife, and mommy. I live in sunny San Diego with my husband, three children, two dogs, one mean old cat, and an SUV with a back seat full of beach sand. Follow me on Twitter.
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