Back up Mac OS X. How to back up your MAC OS using Time Machine How to back up your MacBook
The problem of data loss was relevant 10 years ago, and now it will be in the future. You can lose all the necessary information in various ways: damage the carrier due to infection with viruses, or unintentionally delete them. There are not so many ways to restore information, and it is considered the most reliable - recovery from a backup. What is the point - you insure yourself and make a backup copy of the necessary data, when everything is in order with them, when an unexpected problem happened, you simply restore it from the backup. You don't need to think that creating a backup copy is hard manual work, not at all, today there are quite a few programs that will do everything for you, once setting up such a program, you can forget about it and remember only when you need something restore. Mac OS already has a built-in similar program for backing up data and it is called Time Machine.
In order to perform a backup (it is also called backup / backup) using Time Machine, you need OS X 10.5 Leopard or higher + external media where the backup will be performed (this can be an external HDD connected via USB, Thunderbolt or FireWire, network drive, AirPort Time Capsule, or similar Apple devices). Next, you need to determine the size of the external media, the calculation is as follows The occupied space on the hard disk MAC OS multiplied by two, i.e. if you have 50 GB of disk space, then you just need to allocate 100 GB of space for backup. To see how much space you have on your hard drive, click "Finder" - "Applications" - "Utilities".
Then select "Disk Utility".
Select your main disk and below you will see information about how much disk space is occupied.
In my case, I will need about 60 GB for backup. The backup process will look like this, the first backup will be "Full", i.e. the entire OS together with the data and will take up as much space as is occupied on the MAC OS, all subsequent backups will only backup the changed data and they will already require much less space. Time Machine stores:
- Hourly copies for the last 24 hours;
- Daily backups for the last month;
- Weekly backups for all other months of work.
As soon as there is not enough space on the external media, the old data will be overwritten with new ones.
From theory, I propose to go to practice, connect the media to which you will backup, go to "Finder" - "Programs" - "Time Machine".
In the window that opens, select "Select backup disk".
Select the media to back up to. If you wish, you can password-protect the backup, to do this, check the box "Encrypt copies". This procedure is optional and is only needed to protect your backup from outsiders.
If there is any information on this medium, it must be transferred, since Time Machine will delete all information on it and format the medium in Mac OS Extended (Journaled).
If necessary, you can exclude some folders from the backup, to do this, click the "Options" button, click on the "plus" and specify those folders that you do not want to backup.
By using macOS backup, you can avoid problems such as data loss due to drive failure or system problems that cannot be fixed.
Anything can happen - an unsuccessful system update, disk damage, software and system errors, or there will be a need for a pre-configured and saved system. In this guide, you will learn how to create macOS backups, protecting yourself from the loss of important data and other problems.
Backing up with Time Machine
To create a Time Machine backup, you need an external drive connected to your computer, such as a USB drive of sufficient capacity.Time Machine automatically performs hourly backups for the last 24 hours, daily, for a month, and every week for all the past months. As the disk becomes full, the previously created copies will be overwritten.
Connect the external drive to your Mac, go to system preferences and open " Time machine".
Click " Select a backup disk".
Select an external drive, check the box " Encrypt copies"(to ensure the safety of your backups) and click the" Use disk".
Create a password that will be used to encrypt your drive.
Important ... If you forget your password, it will not be possible to restore your backups.
If the disc is not properly formatted, you will be prompted to erase it.
After that, Time Machine will periodically create backups of your system.
If you need to turn off automatic backups, just uncheck the " Create backups automatically".
If necessary, you can start the backup manually by selecting " Back up now".
Also, view the status of the backup, stop the backup, enter Time Machine and open the settings.
ICloud backup
Open " System settings"and go in" iCloud".
Check the data you want to back up.
Do not forget to look at " Parameters".
Now you can protect your data from loss and restore it when you need it.
In order not to lose your dear Mac OS X settings configuration and a set of installed and correctly configured programs, you need to make backups of your operating system.
Despite the reliability and stability, MAC OS X nevertheless, it can “crash” due to incorrect user actions. And at the most inopportune moment. But after all, no one wants to lose their personal, so dear to the heart, the configuration of the settings and the set of installed and correctly configured programs ...
In order not to find yourself in such a situation, it is imperative to make backups of your operating system from time to time.
Unlike the numerous difficulties and prohibitions associated with cloning living things, no one bothers to create an exact copy of your Mac OS X on another piece of hardware.
Cloning animals is difficult, time-consuming and unlawful, but operating systems are simple, fast and, in a sense, even obligatory.
So, we create our "apple" sheep Dolly.
Time machine
There are many ways. The first option for backing up your system is in MAC OS X itself, starting with version 10.5 and later. This is Time Machine.
Time Machine automatically backs up the system and all important files on an external hard drive and must "go back in time" to restore system files to their original state when you need it. If you enable Time Machine in the "System Preferences" (System Preferences), she will offer to create "backups" (backup copies) and ask for a directory to save them.
But Time Machine has a couple of downsides. The first one is that it "eats" disk space very quickly. Although not completely. After the first backup, Time Machine continues to save only changed files.
The second problem is that automatic copying prevents it from working normally, starting by itself.
To somehow neutralize this, let's turn to an additional application that allows you to configure Time Machine itself.
This is TimeMachineEditor. You can download it. TimeMachineEditor will allow more flexible customization of the schedule of their procedures. For example, every hour on Mondays, every day after work, and so on.
Using this utility, we increase the intervals of "time jumps", "curbing the appetite" of the Time Machine itself, and adjusting its backup sessions to a convenient schedule.
Thus, Time Machine has the ability to back up your system in case of various failures and "roll back", but it is cumbersome and not very convenient for this purpose. Including the "backup" disk is not bootable and requires starting from the installation Mac disk Os X.
Disk Utility
Another way to "grow" your "clone sheep" is to use the standard disk utility. By default, it is located in the Applications / Utilites folder.
We launch this application and select the name of your system disk in the menu on the left, for example, X. Now drag the icon of your start disk (X) to the “Source” line window, and drag the disk icon to the “Destination” line, on which will save your clone, for example, Backup. This can be an external FireWire or USB drive, as well as an internal hard drive or a USB flash drive of sufficient size.
If you need to format this directory beforehand, switch to “Erase”. For external media, the format does not matter (as a rule, it is Mac OS Extended Journaled, but for hard disk on a Mac with an Intel processor, it is preferable to select the GUID Partition Table.
Now click "Restore" and enter your password. Go.
After a while, another "Dolly sheep" will appear - an absolute copy of your system disk.
Now, if your Mac OS X “crashes” fatally, and no “remedies” will help, you can repeat this procedure on the contrary, replacing the damaged system with your saved copy.
To do this, you need to "start" from the backup system itself: turn on your Mac while holding down the option key, then select the disk with the ready clone as bootable (in our example, Backup) and perform the recovery procedure in reverse order.
But before doing this, you should definitely try to "cure" the damaged system with the same "Disk Utility".
Select the "damaged" disk in the left menu (in our example it is X and in the "First Aid" section do the following procedures: "Verify Disk Permission" and, if necessary, do "Restoring access rights" ( Repair Disk Permission) and, accordingly, “Verify Disk” - “Repair Disk”.
The familiar OnyX program can also provide irreplaceable help here.
Despite the simplicity of cloning using Disk Utility, this method has one drawback. Absolutely all, without exception, information is copied. And if we are talking about a spare disk of a small volume, or even a flash drive? The files on them may simply not fit.
What's the choice?
There are many possibilities for cloning your "Dolly Sheep". Up to using the command line according to the instructions from Apple itself. To mere mortals, other utilities such as SuperDuper !, Clone X, Tri-BACKUP or MacTuneUp may seem more accessible. In my opinion, the most advanced among them, convenient and at the same time absolutely free is called Carbon Copy Cloner.
Carbon Copy Cloner is manufactured by Bombich Software. You can download it. Voluntary donations to developers (Donate) are welcome.
Mike Bombich, the creator of this wonderful program, in an interview with a popular American site, highlighted the "highlights" of his brainchild: the speed of the cloning process, the possibility of selective data transfer and additional protection against accidental actions in the form of a special list of all possible candidate disks with a request their ID (Unique identifier).
Carbon Copy Cloner gives you the ability to create a full or partial clone of your system by transferring it to another disk or saving it as a.dmg (disk image). Newer versions of Carbon Copy Cloner focused on the Snow Leopard system support compression in file system HFS +, the display of folder and disk sizes in the decimal system has become noticeably more convenient, the copying speed has increased, and Time Machine databases are ignored if they have already been created.
Carbon Copy Cloner can come in handy when upgrading your system drive and replacing it with a larger one. It is enough to transfer the previously rejected system to a new disk.
Before you start creating a backup of your system, it would be a good idea to first clean up all the "garbage" accumulated in the system using the OnyX utility and put it in order.
Install Carbon Copy Cloner and launch. If you need it during work, enter your usual password and unlock the "lock" at the bottom left.
At the top left in the Source Disk menu, select the one from which your system will be cloned (in our example, this is drive X).
At the top right, Target Disk, select the one that will save the "twin" of your MAC OS X. (In our case - X2. It is important to note that this utility has the ability to write the system in the dmg format and even to a remote computer over the network.
Now let's take a look at another feature of Carbon Copy Cloner: create special filters that allow you to exclude some files from the clone by extension, for example .mkv or .avi, and then movies of this format are not cloned. This will help save space.
In order not to complicate our life, we will try to manually do some preliminary procedures to facilitate the backup system and speed up the cloning process.
You don't have to back up your entire library to a system backup: digital photos, music, movies, supporting documentation, and so on. As well as working files, which can "weigh" more than one gigabyte. You can also opt out of "heavy programs" if there is not enough space on the spare disk.
Find Items to be copied in the left window and look carefully, turning off some of the checkboxes opposite unnecessary files... If they are not randomly stored on your disk, they will most likely be in the Users / macuser (your username) directories. For example, in this configuration, disable the Calibrie Library and the books it contains. After all, they have already been recorded on a separate DVD.
Then, in the Cloning options section on the right, select Incremental backups of selected items, this dynamic mode will allow you to transfer only the changed data when you update the version of the backup system next time. The checkbox below Delete items that don’t exist on the source in synchronization mode will not "take along" old programs and other files that you have not been using for a long time.
Protect root-level items on the target will preserve root mode if you are. Finally, Archive modified and deleted items will allow you to create a separate archive of modified and deleted files... In my opinion, it is better to turn it off so as not to waste time.
In the event that Carbon Copy Cloner "gives the go-ahead" - This volume will be bootable, - which means that there is enough space on the spare disk or flash drive, and this volume will become bootable, you can start.
All made by you presets will be saved if you click Save Task in the event that you are going to make clones of your disk on a specific schedule, like in Time Machine. But for creating a backup Mac OS X, this is unlikely to come in handy.
Click Clone.
How many files are stored on your system drive? It turns out tens of thousands. so the process can take some time: from fifteen minutes to an hour or two. It depends on the amount of information.
And so it ended. Now we have two "Dolly sheep" - mirrored Mac OS X. And you can be sure that you will not be left at the "broken trough" at the most inopportune moment.
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With the availability of spare parts, up to 85% of complex repairs can be completed in 1-2 days. Modular repairs take much less time. The website lists the approximate duration of any repairs.
Warranty and liability
Any repairs must be guaranteed. Everything is described on the website and in the documents. The guarantee is self-confidence and respect for you. A 3-6 month warranty is good and sufficient. It is needed to check quality and hidden defects that cannot be detected immediately. You see honest and realistic terms (not 3 years), you can be sure that they will help you.
Half of the success in Apple repair is the quality and reliability of spare parts, so a good service works with suppliers directly, there are always several reliable channels and your own warehouse with proven spare parts of current models so that you do not have to waste extra time.
Free diagnostics
This is very important and has already become a good form for service center... Diagnostics is the most difficult and important part of the repair, but you should not pay a dime for it, even if you do not repair the device as a result.
Repair in service and delivery
A good service values your time and therefore offers free shipping. And for the same reason, repairs are carried out only in the workshop of the service center: correctly and according to technology, it can only be done at a prepared place.
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If the Service works for you, and not for itself, then it is always open! absolutely. The schedule should be convenient so that you can catch up with before and after work. Good service works both on weekends and on holidays. We are waiting for you and working on your devices every day: 9:00 - 21:00
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How many masters in directions
If several engineers are always waiting for you for each type of equipment, you can be sure:
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No matter how debugged the Mac platform is, there is always the possibility that, due to various circumstances, the user may lose his data, often quite important. Most popular means for backing up information in Mac OS X, Time Machine comes with the operating system. This fairly well thought-out application, with all its advantages, has one noticeable drawback - the lack of advanced backup settings. The program indiscriminately copies everything that is on the user's disk. Meanwhile, the user does not always need to make a copy of the entire disk; quite often it is necessary to save only certain data. In this case, he will be helped by alternative applications from third-party developers, which include a small utility from the developer company with the funny name Grapefruit (Grapefruit).
The multilingual interface of the program is localized in 15 languages, including Russian. It cannot be said that the Russian localization is performed flawlessly - somewhere there are untranslated phrases, somewhere the translation is made without taking into account the peculiarities of the Russian language ... However, all these translation shortcomings are found mainly in the program settings menu, where the user will look from time to time.
In the upper part of the program window there is a panel of program profiles, in the left - a list of groups of objects, the contents of which are supposed to be copied. In the right part of the window, a list of the contents of one or another selected group is displayed. At the very bottom of the window there is a very small toolbar, which also performs an information function, displaying information about the selected profile. Additionally, you can display a pull-out panel that displays information from the log file of the operations performed. The display of this panel is controlled using the corresponding button on the toolbar.
All operations for copying and restoring are carried out using profiles that are created in a special section of the settings menu. Initially, iBackup already has two profiles, “ Recovery" and " Backup copy“, The purpose of each of which can be guessed by the name. In order to be able to literally make a backup copy of certain data with just one click of the mouse, the user will need to set up a profile, indicate to him the folder where the file with the data should be saved and mark the objects that should be copied. We select the profile we need and using the button Set ..., set the folder for saving the backup file. Now we need to select objects for backup. To do this, go to the list of groups and select one or another group, for example System parameters... After selecting a group, a list of objects included in this group will be shown on the right side of the application window. These are what you need to mark so that the program knows what to copy. If you need to copy all the objects included in the selected group, then you do not need to mark each element at all - just put a check next to the group name and all the elements of the group will be automatically selected.
After completing the selection of the objects we need, use the button Create located on the mini-toolbar - and the program will save a backup copy of the marked data to the specified folder. As you can see, the operation is quite simple and it can only be easier to restore data from a saved copy. To do this, in the profile Recovery we indicate the path to the file with the saved data, mark those elements of the list of its contents that we want to restore, and press the button Restore.
We have now described the operation for a one-time copying and restoring data. If the operation of copying the same data is supposed to be performed more than once, then during the next copying session there is no need to re-mark the objects - it will be enough to select the desired profile and use the button Create.
The undoubted advantage of the utility is that if you need a regular backup, all operations can be automated using the ability of the program to work on schedule... According to the additional profile settings specified in the tab Profiles program settings menu, iBackup can copy data to a specified folder daily, weekly or monthly, on specified days and hours. Additionally, you can set the end of the program after the copy operation, put the computer into sleep mode, or turn it off altogether. Before starting the operation and after its completion, you can enable the execution of certain scripts.
iBackup can copy data not only to a specific folder on the local hard drive, but also upload it to a specified AFP or SMB server (unfortunately, the program does not work with FTP servers), and after the download is finished, it automatically disconnects from it. To do this, the user needs to specify the full path to the desired folder on the remote server in the corresponding tab of the settings menu.
Why do you need several profiles, you will say, because one profile would be enough to save and one to restore. The use of several profiles opens up possibilities for the separate storage of data, for example, documents on a mobile medium, photographs on a remote server, etc.
Initially, iBackup operates with 10 groups ( system parameters, program parameters, Desktop, user's home folder, programs, documents, movies, music, pictures, site), in which potential objects for copying are collected. It is quite clear that the list of groups is based on an average Mac and may not contain certain applications, data folders, etc. that are used on a particular user's computer. That is why the developers have provided the ability to add any other folders and objects to the general list by the user.
As for the groups System parameters and Program parameters, then the situation is somewhat more complicated. The thing is that the utility can make a backup copy of the parameters of only those Mac applications OS X or third-party vendors that it knows about. The utility takes information about applications and where exactly the files with their parameters are located from the corresponding plugins. The current version of iBackup can copy parameters 26 Mac OS X applications (including operating system settings) and more 260 third-party programs and games, which is quite enough for the average user.
If the plug-in for the required application was not found in the list, then there is an opportunity to create and upload your own plug-in (a template for creating a plug-in can be downloaded from the application developer's website). The plugin is an XML file, the analysis of the template of which showed that the only difficulty in creating a plugin will be the need to specify the paths to ALL settings files of the selected application, while knowledge of the program code is not required.
The program settings menu is quite simple and consists of three tabs, one of which ( Plugins), you have already met in the previous screenshot. Tab Are common responsible for general iBackup settings (including launching the application at login and automatically checking for updates).
Overall, iBackup is a simple and convenient solution for backing up and restoring virtually any data on a user's hard drive. The function of launching the application at logon and the ability to work on a schedule make the work of the program almost invisible to the user, without distracting his attention to himself.
iBackup is completely free for private use and can be recommended to all those users who want to be able to selectively back up their data, with the ability to fine tune to the level of an individual folder or file.
