More than one place. If you created it, you had better have it in more than one place. Your hard drive is guaranteed to fail. Just like the engine of your car, it won't last forever. External hard drives are great and will work on any Mac however; in the instance of fire, flood, or theft, it could all be gone. For the best possible option, backup to both an external hard drive and burn DVD's of your data and pictures and keep them somewhere else away from your house or office. I am a backup freak and do everything I have listed here.
1. iPhoto:
Burn all your photos in iPhoto. How? By launching iPhoto and creating
Albums for all your photos then drag your photos into your albums. Once
you have done this, click on an album that you made and then click on
Burn. Insert your DVD and your on your way. If you have two many photos
for one DVD, create another Album and drag half the photos there and
try again. Do this for every Album. You can shift click to select more
than one Album if they are small and you can fit more than one album on
a DVD.
2. Mail: Back up
your mail by clicking on your hard drive. In the side bar on the left,
click on your house. Once you are in your home folder, open Library.
You will see a folder called Mail. Hold the Option key down on the
keyboard (important) and option drag this folder to your desktop.
3. Address Book:
Create an Address Book Archive by launching the Address Book and go to
File, drag down to Export and hang a right to Address Book Archive.
Save this file to your desktop.
4. iCal: Back up iCal by launching iCal, then go to File, Backup iCal. Save it to your desktop.
5. Documents Folder:
Now open your Documents folder and Go to File, New Folder. Name it
Backup. Drag all the files you created on your desktop into the Backup
folder.
6. Burning: Insert a blank DVD. It will open
and ask you if you want to open it in the Finder, click OK. You will
see the DVD on your desktop. Now open your hard drive and find your
Documents folder but DO NOT open it. Hold down the option key on your
keyboard again and option drag the Documents folder to the DVD. Now
click on Burn. If your Documents folder is too full to burn on to one
DVD, then half the data and burn two DVD's and so on until all your
data is backed up.
7. External Hard Drive: Another option
would be to do the above but save to an external hard drive. As long as
your data is somewhere else, you will be fine.
8. Time Machine:
Leopard on up has Time Machine, which I love! My Mac mini crashed and I had to completely erase it. I then used Time Machine to restore all the data and programs. It was great! It saved me at least two days of work. It's worth it to upgrade your Mac Operating System just to be able to use Time Machine. You will need to purchase an external drive. Another great thing you can do is to clone your system using
SuperDuper but that's getting a little too geeky which I will not
explain here.
9. Music: Hopefully you have an iPod or iPhone. If
you don't, go purchase one. It is a great backup tool. If your hard
drive crashes, you can restore your music back to your Mac from your
iPod. Apple says you can't but there are many great programs that let
you copy songs from your iPod to your Mac.
10. Service Call: If you were naughty and did not backup and are faced with a hard drive crash, DON"T PANIC! There is a chance that your data can be recovered. Call 269-214-2356 to make an appointment and I will recover your data or call in the big guns who can. Drive Savers will recover your data but it is expensive, so make sure you follow the steps above.
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