Chapter 12. Using Backup

One of the many perks of having a .Mac account is that you get a copy of Apple's filebackup programnamed, appropriately, Backup. With it, you can set up your system to automatically copy important files to your iDisk, to a network volume or another hard drive, or even burn them to CD or DVD.

The information on your computerall of your e-mail messages, letters, digital photos, everythingis there because incredibly complex electronic devices and equally complex software keep everything in order. But, inevitably, something happens to one of those systems, and precious data evaporates. It happened to me personally. Twice.

Backup offers hope. Properly used, it's a great way to ensure that you don't lose any valuable data. Once you've set up a backup scheme, Backup copies the latest versions of all your files, so that if something happens to your "working" copy, you can easily restore it from the backup copy. In this chapter, I'll show you how to set up Backup to protect your data.

And for those of you using Backup 3, a little notealthough there's a lot of Backup 2 instructions here, don't lose heart. Although Backup 3 is more powerful to use, it's also easier to use, and so it requires less in the way of step-by-step instructions.