What surprises me as much as anything about modern computing, whether Mac or PC, or even iPhone or iPad, is how few of us backup our files. What’s with that?
Backup apps are plentiful, affordable, easy to setup and use. Supposedly, the photos, music, movies, and files on our Macs are valuable, so why don’t all Mac users backup files?
The Backup Headache
It’s not that backing up critical files on your Mac is a daunting exercise. It can be automated. The problem might be more psychological than technical.
Backing up is often an extra step, a conscious effort. Most Macs are notebooks, which are often traveling here and there.
That extra step of creating and managing a backup, then waiting for it to complete is a worthy effort, but often an ignored action.
A backup often requires an additional disk drive. Mac users may be led into false security because disk drives and SSD storage devices are better than ever.
Still, if you don’t backup files at all, a disaster awaits. Here’s an easy and free way to backup your Mac’s critical files.
It’s called iBackup. Yes. Yet another iNamed Mac app.
iBackup doesn’t take much effort to set up and use, though the interface is somewhat spartan. It uses the traditional Source and Target to copy files and folders.
What iBackup does that’s somewhat unique is backup specific critical files rather than clone the Mac’s entire storage device. That includes System Preferences, Mail, iTunes, iPhoto, and other commonly used files.
There are also well over 200 plugins for more customization. All you do is select the files you want to backup, select where they should be copied, and specify when. iBackup does the rest.
The only negative is that iBackup is free for personal use, but commercial use has a price tag (though it is nominal).
