My backup plan: David Wang

The editors at MacWorld.com have been detailing their backup strategies (Dan Frakes, Lex Friedman). I thought I would add mine as well.

Since I replaced my internal drive (Macintosh HD)ย with a 240GB SSD, I’ve off-loaded some of my data to an Auxiliary drive. My whole life and business live on these 2 drives. This makes me very nervous that something bad will happen to them, so I have implemented a rigorous, redundant, yet automatic backup strategy.

1. My internal drive is backed up hourly to a Time Machine volume on my network storage.

2. Both the internal and Auxiliary drive are cloned every night to an external drive connected via USB. This happens automatically thanks to Carbon Copy Cloner. CCC is free to use but I have gladly given the developer Mike Bombich a donation for his excellent software.

3. Finally, both the drives are backed up to the BackBlaze online backup service. BackBlaze backs up unlimited data and any connected drives for a low $5 per month.

With my system, there are at least 3 copies of all my data at any given time, in 2 separate locations (local and online). Time Machine and BackBlaze will allow me to restore lost files, and the nightly clones will allow me to boot up from a snapshot that’s less than 24 hours old.

Backing up is important. Don’t wait till it’s too late and you’ve lost your work files, family photos, etc. It’s bound to happen sooner or later, so please get around to it today. If you think that I’m paranoid for being redundant, that’s because I’ve had my backup drive die on me before. It doesn’t hurt to be paranoid, especially when storage is cheap and backup options are plenty. Download Carbon Copy Cloner and sign up for BackBlaze today.

Update: I now also regularly swap the clones with another drive every few weeks. I store the swapped drive at my in-laws house, so that’s another offsite backup in my strategy.


6 Comments on "My backup plan: David Wang"

  • XCool says

    Excellent backup strategy! I currently backup to Time Machine only, while having some other more important files stored over in Dropbox. These files are accessible from both my MacBook Pro and Mac mini.

    I’d love to try online backup, but that has to wait until I can get some proper broadband. ๐Ÿ˜‰

  • When Backblaze says ‘backup everything’, does it mean my whole C drive? Or, can I choose folders?

  • blogjunkie says

    @XCool – you should sign up for it and start anyway. Imagine the source code for your apps get destroyed :0

    @Danny – you can choose which folders to exclude, and also there are some files that won’t get backed up:

    Backblaze backs up everything on your computer except your operating system, applications, temporary files, or those over 9GB

    Source: http://www.backblaze.com/remote-backup-everything.html

    • Ahh. Hmm, don’t think I wanna back up my applications since installing on a PC is more cumbersome than Mac. ๐Ÿ˜›

  • Adison Ross says

    Time machine is great at taking incremental backups but lacks in case of bootable backups. However, buying backblaze apps doesn’t sound a good decision as it can’t backup my operating system, apps and limited to 9GB also. Other cloning apps like CCC, Stellar Drive Clone are great cloning tool for my Mac.

  • Rose says

    Time machine is good at taking incremental backups but lacks in case of bootable backups. However, buying backblaze apps doesn’t sound a good decision as it can’t backup my operating system, apps and limited to 9GB also. Other cloning apps like CCC, Stellar Drive Clone are great cloning tool for my Mac.

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