Welcome to Take Control of Backing Up Your Mac, Third Edition, version 3.1, published in January 2019 by alt concepts inc. This book was written by Joe Kissell and edited by Caroline Rose.
The data on every Mac should be backed up to protect against theft, hardware failure, user error, and other catastrophes. This book helps you design a sensible backup strategy, choose and configure the best backup hardware and software for your needs, and understand how to make your backups as painless as possible.
If you want to share this ebook with a friend, we ask that you do so as you would with a physical book: “lend” it for a quick look, but ask your friend to buy a copy for careful reading or reference. Discounted classroom and Mac user group copies are available.
Copyright © 2019, alt concepts inc. All rights reserved.
You can access extras related to this ebook on the web (use the link in Ebook Extras, near the end; it’s available only to purchasers). On the ebook’s Take Control Extras page, you can:
Download any available new version of the ebook for free, or buy any subsequent edition at a discount.
Download various formats, including PDF, EPUB, and Mobipocket. (Learn about reading on mobile devices on our Device Advice page.)
Read the ebook’s blog. You may find new tips or information, as well as a link to an author interview.
If you bought this ebook from the Take Control website, it has been added to your account, where you can download it in other formats and access any future updates. However, if you bought this ebook elsewhere, you can add it to your account manually; see Ebook Extras.
To review background information that might help you understand this book better, such as finding System Preferences and working with files in the Finder, I recommend reading Tonya Engst’s ebook Take Control of Mac Basics.
In this book, when I use the term disk by itself, I generally mean your Mac’s primary internal storage device—whether that’s a mechanical hard drive, an SSD, or other solid-state storage. (Apple, after all, still uses the term “Macintosh HD” as the default name for your Mac’s startup volume, even when it’s not stored on a hard disk.) A drive is a physical device for storing data; a single drive can comprise one or more volumes, or logical storage devices. The volume that contains the copy of macOS currently used to boot your Mac is your startup volume. I’ll specify hard drive when I need to talk specifically about the little boxes with spinning platters.
Version 3.1 is a minor revision that brings this book up to date with macOS 10.14 Mojave and various changes in hardware and software. Along with numerous small edits, this version contains the following significant changes:
Added a lot of new information in What’s New in Mac Backups, including mentions of the end of Prosoft Data Backup and of Apple’s Time Capsules, the beginning of Retrospect Solo, continuing changes related to APFS, and things owners of new Macs equipped with T2 chips will need to know about backups
Included more information about snapshots in APFS; see the note in Snapshots and File Lists and changes to the sidebar Local Snapshots
Removed various mentions of Data Backup and other products that are no longer available
Added information in Retrospect and Retrospect Tips about the new Retrospect Solo app
Made several mentions of Jeff Carlson’s new (and highly relevant) book Take Control of Your Digital Storage
Updated Creating a RAID with SoftRAID to discuss issues relating to APFS volumes
Stripped most of the discussion of Time Capsules from Network Storage Devices
Updated Configure a Drive in El Capitan or Later to cover cases in which APFS is a suitable format
Added a sidebar about putting APFS Bootable Duplicates on HFS Plus Volumes
Included notes in Test Your Duplicate and Use Your Bootable Duplicate about booting Macs with T2 chips from external drives
Gave a different example of a cloud backup service in HIPAA and Cloud Backups
Added a potential downside to Backblaze in Self-Contained Cloud Backup Services
The book you’re now reading has a long and complex history, having gone through various title changes, splits, and merges stretching all the way back to 2004—and the third edition of this book (version 3.0) represented not only a change in its version number but also in its title. This book’s most recent ancestor in the Take Control series was Take Control of Backing Up Your Mac, Second Edition, which was published in November 2014. I subsequently acquired publication rights to the book, updated it significantly, and rereleased it with a new title (Backing Up Your Mac: A Joe On Tech Guide) in May 2015. The second edition of that title appeared in June 2016, followed by a version 2.1 update in September 2016.
After I purchased Take Control Books from TidBITS Publishing Inc. in May 2017, I decided to bring this book back under the Take Control umbrella. That meant reverting to its previous title and incrementing the edition number by one (even though there were, in effect, two editions of the book between the second and third).
It would take many pages to detail the differences in each iteration of the book (and the third edition alone contains hundreds of changes), but here are the most significant changes since Backing Up Your Mac: A Joe On Tech Guide, version 2.1:
Updated the entire book for compatibility with macOS 10.13 High Sierra; see APFS Evolves in Mojave for an overview
Removed coverage of CrashPlan, except for the explanation of why I no longer recommend it; see CrashPlan for Home Is Finally Gone
Removed coverage of FireWire (which hasn’t been seen on new Macs in many years) and eSATA (which was never a built-in option), while saying more about Thunderbolt 3 and USB-C
Updated information on various cloud storage and backup services; see Use a Cloud Backup Service
Expanded Factors to Reevaluate to cover Optimized Storage (in 10.12 Sierra and later) and network backups
Added a new chapter, Choose Local or Network Backups, to explore the relative merits of using a hard drive connected directly to your Mac versus a NAS, Time Capsule, or Mac server
Removed coverage of Synk, which has been discontinued
Totally reorganized, updated, and expanded the Choose Backup Hardware chapter; new topics include Decide on a Storage Configuration and Evaluate Network Storage Options
Added a sidebar on why to Keep Time Machine Backups Separate from Other Data
Updated the Configure and Use Time Machine chapter to cover High Sierra changes (such as the new topic Use a Mac as a Time Machine Server), add advice, and remove obsolete information
Updated the tips for using Arq, ChronoSync, and Data Backup in Use Other Versioned Backup Software
Updated the instructions for using Carbon Copy Cloner and SuperDuper! in Create and Use a Bootable Duplicate
Updated Self-Contained Cloud Backup Services with new information on Acronis True Image and IDrive, and updated information about Backblaze and DollyDrive
Updated BYOS (Bring Your Own Software) Internet Backups with current pricing, plus information on Wasabi
Updated Back Up Data from the Cloud with current details about several providers
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