143. Back Up Your Information  BEFORE YOU BEGIN 45 Sign Up for .Mac 30 Configure Networking Manually
 SEE ALSO 144 Move Your Data to a New Mac 147 Archive and Install a New Mac OS X Version
Apple knows that one of the biggest problems with computers is the fact that they sometimes fail. Hard drives crash, laptops are dropped or stolen, files are accidentally deletedand for most people, there's no solution but to start over from scratch. Making proper backups is one of those things that everybody knows they should do, but very few people have the patience to actually do it. Backup applications can be expensive, as can the media on which the data is stored. It's like insurance: a significant cash outlay designed to buy assurance that in the extremely unlikely chance of catastrophe, the loss of data can be reversedand nobody likes paying for insurance. WEB RESOURCE http://www.dantz.com Dantz Retrospect is a full-featured backup suite for Mac OS X that gives you more control over your system's data backups than what Apple Backup offers.
143. Back Up Your Information 
 NOTE Apple Backup is only one of several data backup applications commercially available for the Mac, and you might decide that it isn't full-featured enough to meet your needs (or you might not have a .Mac account, which is required to take full advantage of Backup's functionality).
That's why .Mac includes a data backup program, and a very good one at that. Backup , as it's called, can archive all your important data to CD, DVD, an external or network drive, or to your iDisk if you've purchased enough storage there. If you have a writable CD or DVD drive (or an external FireWire drive) and a paid .Mac account, you don't have much of an excuse for not making regular backups. | 1. | Download the Backup Application
Log in to the .Mac website and click the Backup icon in the left panel to go to the Backup page. A large site full of step-by-step tutorials and strategies is online here, as is a link (in the upper right) to the download page for the Backup application. Download the most recent version available, which at the time of this writing is Backup 2 .
| | 2. | Install the Backup Application
When the disk image has finished downloading (if you're using Safari), it automatically mounts and opens in the Finder; if it doesn't, locate it (on the Desktop, usually) and double-click it to mount it. Double-click the Backup.pkg file to run the installer. When prompted about whether the installer can "run a program to determine if it can be installed," click Continue .
| | 3. | Launch Backup
After the Backup application is installed, navigate to it in the Applications folder and double-click its icon.
| | 4. | Select the Backup Media The drop-down list in the upper-left corner of the Backup application window lets you choose your backup media. You can only choose a media type to which your computer can write; if you don't have a SuperDrive, for instance, but only a CD-R burner , you can't back up to DVD. To back up to an external or network drive, first make sure that the drive is mounted on your Mac and that you are able to write to it. Then select Back up to Drive from the menu, and click the Set button to open a sheet where you select whether to open an existing backup location or create a new one. Click Create to make a new backup target. In the navigator sheet that appears, go to the location on the external or network drive where you want to save your backed -up data. Specify a descriptive name for the backup location (such as FireWire Drive ) and click the Create button. Backup is now set to use that location as its target. NOTE CD or DVD burning in Backup both require a full .Mac account. If you have a trial account, it will not allow backups to CD or DVD to be performed. | | 5. | Select Your Data Sets Using QuickPicks The main window of the application lists QuickPicks, which are prepackaged collections of data associated with certain conceptual areas that aren't easy to find by simply navigating through the system's folders. For instance, Backup will back up your Safari bookmarks and Keychain passwords, even if you don't know where in the system such things are stored. Just select the check box next to each collection of data that you want to back up. As you click each QuickPick check box, the usage bar at the top of the window updates to reflect how much space the backup will take if you're backing up to iDisk. The darker orange bar indicates space on your iDisk that is already used; lighter orange is the segment that will be used by the next backup, using the current QuickPicks. If you back up to CD, DVD, or an external drive, some additional QuickPicks are availablenamely, the ones that take up a lot of space, such as your iTunes music and your iPhoto Library. These data collections are likely to be far too large to back up to iDisk, so they're available only for CD or DVD backups. TIP You can back up different sets of data to different locations. For instance, you can create a small set of critical files to back up daily to your iDisk, and set your huge iTunes Music Library to be backed up weekly to an external drive. It's a good idea to set up a more frequent backup scheme for the parts of your system that are changed most frequently. | | 6. | Back Up Your Data When your backup configuration is complete, click Backup Now . If you're using iDisk, your data will be backed up and transferred to the .Mac servers; if you're using CD or DVD, you will be prompted to insert a blank disc. If your backup data set will span more than one disc, you will be prompted again for another disc at the appropriate time. TIP If you schedule automated backups to an external or network drive, make sure that the drive is mounted and available at the time the backup is supposed to run! If Backup can't access the drive, it won't be able to back up your data. One way to make sure a network drive is always available is to add it to your Startup Items (see 109 Set Applications to Launch Automatically at Login ). | | 7. | Schedule Automatic Backups
You can optionally set up automatic, scheduled backups to iDisk. Click the Schedule icon at the bottom-left of the Backup window (which looks like a calendar). In the dialog box that opens, choose whether to back up daily or weekly, select a time range (in the middle of the night is a good bet), and click OK to set the schedule.
| | 8. | Restore Your Backed-Up Data
If you should need to restore from your backups, because of a catastrophic hard drive failure or because you accidentally deleted an important file, the restore process is simple. Just select Restore from iDisk, Restore from CD/DVD , or Restore from Drive from the drop-down list at the top left of the Backup window (depending on which type of media you used for your backup). A list of the files and QuickPicks that were backed up onto the selected media appears. You can navigate to individual files and drag them into the Finder to restore them, or you can click Restore Now to restore all backed-up files to their original places on the disk.
| NOTE Be especially conscious of your password if you have enabled FileVault ( 136 Secure Your Files with FileVault ), which encrypts all your data using that password. If you forget your account password, the encrypted data can't be recovered in a usable formeven if it was conscientiously backed up.
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