Chapter 10. Backup

Sooner or later, every computer user learns (usually the hard way) the wisdom of regularly backing up important files. It's a simple concept, but most of us suffer from a human operating system bug called "optimism." We think our data is safe. Instead, we should assume the worst is going to happencorrupted files, theft, fire, lost files, accidentally trashed files, mistakenly overwritten filesand prepare accordingly.

A Mac.com membership includes Backup, your personal software to effortlessly backup the files you can't afford to lose. You can backup to removable media, such as CDs and DVDs, to your iDisk, to a FireWire or USB disk drive, or to all of these for extra security and peace of mind.

Some files are too large to fit on iDisk, a CD, or even a DVD. Backup can break large files apart and use multiple discs to create a backup copy. When you need to restore such files, Backup rejoins them on your hard disk.