Do you know how many backup apps there are for Macs? Me neither, but it would take me a day or two to track them all down.
Every week seems to bring yet another Mac backup app to market. The best have a price tag, but even the free backup apps are worthy.
The latest is called Backup Buddy. The Buddy in the name symbolizes friendly and easy to use. After all, if an app is painful to setup and complicated to use, how likely will it be used as part of a serious backup routine?
Backing Up Is Hard To Do?
Actually, everyone is making backups easy to do. Apple’s Time Machine merely requires a separate, external hard disk drive for a complete backup.
Other apps give you options to backup to other Macs, to other disks on a network, or even to CDs or DVDs.
Backup Buddy is simpler than most. More complex than Time Machine, of course, but less difficult to setup than the free and highly recommended Carbon Copy Cloner.
The first Backup Buddy backup takes a little while as all the files you select are backed up to a specific target disk.
Subsequent backups only copy files that have changed, so the backup process is many times faster than the first.
Add multiple backup options to different destinations. For example, backup Documents to another Mac, but backup the Mac’s home folder to an external disk.
Creating new backups start with a click. Name the backup. Select the destination for the backup. Then set the schedule.
You determine which folders to backup, when they get backed up, and the destination for the backup.
Backup Buddy even backs up to a disk image. Options are simple and limited by design. Drag and drop folders you want to backup onto Backup Buddy’s options.
Click to choose the backup destination. Even add limits to the size of the backups (or, check the backup size first, to make sure you have enough disk space).
If there’s a weakness to all this simplicity and low price, it’s in the Scheduler. It’s simple to set up and use, but limited on options. But it does give you options for day of the week, time of the day, or backup every so many hours.
Backup Buddy isn’t Carbon Copy Cloner, but it’s priced right, and much easier to use.
Kiwiiano says
Did you notice whether Buddy creates bootable copies?
Jack Miller says
This is a useful, easy-to-use app, but it’s missing a few of the more esoteric features, including bootable, cloned backups. For that, use Carbon Copy Cloner. It’s donation ware.