My Apple Backup Plan (Mac)

A few weeks ago, whilst browsing the internet on my beloved unibody Macbook Pro 17” (early 2009), I suddenly postulated the thought of what would happen if the hard-drive were to suddenly crash. The result for me would be unthinkable; losing years of music, each song fully named with artwork and rated with the all important play counts; losing all my memories in pictures, my iPhoto library is nearly 9BG full of lifelong images; all my documents, university work, CV, cover letters etc…

Anyway to cut a long story short, I began the long journey into researching the best backup plan for me. I have spent many hours browsing internet forums and various ‘Mac sites’, all of which have provided me with a wealth of information on different hardware and software available as well as what backup strategies to consider.

Below I explain (in detail) MY backup strategy. I think it will provide a very good model for most people. I must firstly note that I will not be discussing ‘Time Machine’ here, for information on this pretty good Apple backup-software go here. I will provide brief comparison between the various hardware, software and online services I researched in enough detail to be somewhat knowledgeable about.

The Layout for this article will be as follows:

Hardware – Which External drive should I get?

Software – Which software should I use to backup my files?

Online – What is online backup and why is it worth considering?

Hardware – Finding the perfect External Hard Drive

This decision will be made by considering a number of smaller questions?

– How much can I afford to spend?

– Do I require portability of the the Hard Drive?

– How much will I be wanting to backup?

– How important is the speed of the backup to me?

I will not be comparing different hard drives here, for advice on which one is right for you I suggest you read Macworld’s article.

My answers to the above questions:

– No more than £130 (approx $180)

– Yes, I think a portable hard drive would be very convenient, especially for around campus and when I go home during school holidays.

– My Laptop has 320GB capacity, but I have a 100GB Windows7 Bootcamp Partition, which I will not be backing up atall. I have a 30GB iTunes Library, 50GB Movies Library, so I figured 500GB would alright, although I am certainly flexible depending on whats available and for what price.

– Speed is pretty important to me. I can be bothered to wait ages for backups.

My Options: Below are the four most popular hard drives satisfying my criteria (A portable, 500GB hard drive with FW 800)

LaCie Rugged 500GB (£150)

A very impressive looking and compact portable hard drive, with firewire 800.

Check out this very old review by CNet: here. I think the smallest version they offer now is 250GB.

Why this was NOT the hard drive I ended up buying:

Overpriced in my opinion, the protection offered is little more than a little bit of rubber with some foam padding around the internal drive. It looks pretty nice, but it is not fan assisted and tends to overheat (according to forum reviews). It does have firewire 800 however, for rapid transfer rates. But at £150, I think its not worth its price.

Iomega eGo Triple Mac Edition 500GB (£110)

Check out this nice video review on this product by CNet: Iomega eGo Review

Why this was NOT the hard drive I ended up buying:

A very reasonable price for the product. I was very much put off by a number of forum reviewers, complaining of overheating, often resulting in the top plastic panel falling off as the glue securing it become softened by the extreme heat. It seemed the least structurally sound, compared to the other hard drives, the brittle plastic outer body, could easily get cracked by a small fall from my desk or whilst in my school bag.

Wester Digital My Passport Studio 500GB (£120)

Macworld has a very nice review of this product here; or check out the CNet review.

Why this was NOT the hard drive I ended up buying:

There are few reasons I can give. I was very close between this and the hard drive I DID end up buying; which is below. After visiting my Apple store, I had a good conversation about all the portable drives available and which ones he thought were best; we discussed rpm speeds, FW800 vs usb, price, durability, and more (the conversation was very ‘nerdy). The conclusion of the conversation was that this was the second best portable hard drive available for the Mac. It was bettered only by……..

G-Technology G-Drive Mini 500GB (£130)

CNet Video Review (This is for the Triple interface version (FW800/FW400/USB2.0) and is for the 7200RPM version).

I went for the version with two FW800 ports which will allow me to daisy chain (connect it) with other hard drives; and 5400rpm, which should be sufficient, (people generally overestimate the performance benefits of 7200 vs 5400, for most uses, it makes only a very slight difference, maybe 5-10%).

The model can powered directly though the FW800 port, so no additional power cable is required (this is called ‘BUS’ powered).

The heat-sink at the bottom of the drive provides an excellent cooling system.

This drive is also extremely rugged; G-Technology claims one could drive over it with a car and it would still be functional.

One additional benefit this drive has than none of the others have is the ability for self upgrade. If I wish to backup more than 500Gb of data, I could fairly easily, unscrew the casing, and install a larger 2.5″ hard drive that you can buy from any computer shop. The prices are also extremely reasonable. A 500GB 7200rpm is around £100 i believe. And Im assuming 1TB 5400rpm are around the corner and will probably be around £150-200.

I will stop here. I will post the ‘Software’ portion of this post soon.