After Apple updated Time Machine and The Airport Extreme you can now have the same function as Apples Time Capsule. I am going to include this as 1.5 of my backup solution “Mac Backups Made Easy“.

You can get an Apple Airport Extreme from Amazon for 174.99 and that is 5.00 off of Apples price and they toss in Free Shipping.You can also pick up a really nice Western Digital 500 gig My Book for 129.99 and it gets shipped for …

Over the last year or so of running New Mac User the question I am most often asked is “What is the best way to backup my system?” I have tried to give just about everyone who asked advice on what will work for them. Sometimes it works and sometimes it does not. I firmly believe that until you lose some very important data backing up is not a priority for you. This was the case for me. Right after …

As many of you may know from some of my early articles I am a BIG advicate of backing up…. According to the web site, it has added a better user interface and a few other new features listed here. Support for block-level disk-to-disk clones.Synchronization built-in, not bolted on.Support for backing up across the network to another Macintosh.Advanced scheduling capabilities — Backup tasks can now be scheduled on an hourly, daily, weekly, or monthly basis, or you can indicate that a backup task should run when the backup device is attached (e.g. an iPod).CCC recognizes iPods specifically, allowing time for the iPod:iTunes synchronization to complete.The ability to drill down into folders to select exactly what gets copied and what doesn’t (you can drill down indefinitely).Built-in software update feature notifies you when updates are available.I will be testing out the new CCC this week to get a better feeling for it.

Because when the stuff hits the fan and you need these disks to reinstall your operating system, weather it is OS 10.4 or any other operating system. Now i am sure that i will get comments on the fact that you can call apple and have them ship you replacement disks at the charge of $40 (US), but i hate to give any company and more of my money than i have to. My advise you you new Mac owners is to get these disk that come out of the box and first make a copy of them and place them in a very safe location.

The Fine folks aver at the MacTipper.com Blog put together a really nice back up strategy that is really worth looking at.”Backup is one of the most important things you should do on your computer…. Well, here’s the minimum that I suggest you do.Every year, backup your entire computer to DVD/CD.Every month, backup your entire computer to an external HD.Every other week backup your user to an External HD.Every week, backup your critical files (I would suggest a jump-drive, external HD or internet service such as Mozy)…. and then go to File>Export…To do this in Safari, go to File>Export Bookmarks…I would suggest that you save your bookmark.html files to ~/Library/Application Support/Safari/ (You might have to create this folder.)If you have the room, I would suggest that you backup MacHD/Library/ and MacHD/System/Library/ However, be warned that these folders are usually large.So, that’s my two cents on what you should backup.

Freeridecoding has released a significant update to the backup program SmartBackup, bringing it to version 2.1. The tool can backup data to hard drives, network sharepoints, webDAV, usb sticks, iPods and other locations. It supports the use of Spotlight’s “saved searches” as backup items or to define exclusion, allowing for dynamic sets of data. The new release can be launched with superuser privileges, has improved cleanup and archiving, improved handling of metadata, improved backup to network shares an updated interface, German localization and several bug fixes. The software is priced at 15 EUR (about $20).

Mozy has introduced their 2 gig online backup solution to the Mac. This service gives you 2 gigs of online storage for free. they do have a fee-based service. There are many different fee-based options ranging in price from 4.95 to just under 50.00 a month. Over the next week we will be useing this software and putting it through the paces.

Mozy Mac Back up

While reading some of the bloggs today i cam across this tip for you. Use your Web hosting companys hard drive as an off-site backup stroage center. http://www.tuaw.com/2007/04/02/backup-your-mac-to-dreamhost/

I have a few other ideas about this but will post them seperatly.

UPDATE:
Today on Lifehacker.com they did a reviw of some very good (and some free) back up utilites. This is very worthy of a look.

Lifehacker Post