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Backups on a Macintosh: Protecting Your Computer Data
| Backup Your Data | Organizing Data | Special Data Locations | Selecting Media for Backups |
What to do when "Something Is Wrong" with your computer |
- Organize your important data.
- Select a media to back up your data.
- Verify the size of the available free disk space on the media.
- Verify the size of the data to make sure it will fit on your backup media.
- Copy the valuable data to a removable media such as Iomega zip disk, writeable cd/dvd or another type of media.
- Check the media and verify that the data is intact.
Organize your data files (e.g. Word documents, Excel documents, email, etc.) so that are they are located within a few folders on your hard disk. Storing your data files in a few main folders makes it much easier to perform a backup of your vital data.
In Macintosh OS X 10.0 - 10.4.x:
The default location to house your data is the Home folder
.
In Mac OS X, to locate the Home folder, open the Finderand click on the Home button
The Home folder
Folder Name Folder Icon Purpose Documents House documents, spreadsheets, email, pdf files, etc. If you use Eudora, the Eudora Mail folder containing your data (address book, email, etc) is installed here by default. Pictures House digital photos including your iPhoto library. Library Houses preferences for most applications and data for some programs. Apple's Address book stores addresses in the ~/Library/Application Support/AddressBook folder. Apple's Mail application stores mail data in the ~Library/Mail folder. Firefox stores your user data in the ~/Library/Application Support/Firefox folder. The Mozilla web browser stores bookmarks and mail here. Fonts may be installed here as well as customizations to applications such as Microsoft Word, Excel, etc. Movies House quicktime, iMovie, video clips and projects. Music House digital music files such as your iTunes library. Public House data that is being sharing over a network. Sites House web sites if your machine is configured a web server. If data files are on the Mac desktop or in other locations on the hard disk move them into the appropriate folder or sub-folder in your Home folder
).
If necessary, create sub-folders within the appropriate main folders in your Home folder to keep your data organized. For instance, if you have documents for courses - History 101, Philosophy 315 and Music 560, you could create individual sub-folders for each course within your Documents folder.
You can choose to back up your entire Home folder or individual folders - such as your Documents folder and Pictures folder. You may wish to exclude certain folders from the backup process if they are very large and/or you can restore those files from CD's and DVD's. For instance, if you have a very large iTunes music library that you created from CD's, you may or may not want to back up the Music folder since your backup media may not be large enough to store all the data. Decide what data is absolutely crucial.
If a Macintosh is setup for multi-user access, each account will have it's own Home folder and subsequent sub-folders. If backing up a machine with multiple accounts, be sure to back up the relevant data in each person's Home folder.
In Macintosh OS 7.x - 9.x:
The default location to house your data is the Documents folder.
Locate the Documents folder by opening the hard driveand double-clicking on the Documents folder.
We recommend creating sub-folders within the Documents folder to keep your data from different applications or projects separate. If you have items such as Microsoft Word files on your desktop, we recommend you move them into your Documents folder or in sub-folders within your Documents folder. If you do this consistently you will know where all your data is on your hard disk and won't accidentally miss backing up important data.
Identify Special Data Locations
Certain applications may store important files outside the Home
Some applications have preference files. A preference file stores customization information for an application. For instance, if you customized Microsoft Word to always hide or display a particular tool bar, this setting would be saved in the preference file for Microsoft Word.
In OS X, there is a local Preferences folder in your Home Library folder
and a global Preferences folder installed in the Library folder located directly off the root of the Macintosh hard drive. Global preference files affect all users on a machine.
In OS 7-9.x the Preferences folder is located within the System Folder.
If there are certain applications that you have modified and you want to retain those preferences you should locate and backup those files.In OS 7-9.x, certain versions of Qualcomm's Eudora email application stored email mailboxes, address book, configuration settings within the System Folder. The location of data files often depends on how the application was installed. Other applications such as Netscape may store the bookmarks file within the Preferences folder of the System Folder. When performing a backup you need to first identify the files within the System Folder that you need.
If you use a version of Eudora that stores your email data in the System Folder backup the entire Eudora folder located in the System Folder. If you can not identify the specific files you need you may want to make a backup of the entire System Folder (Note: copying the entire System Folder will consume a very large amount of disk space and is normally not recommended).
The most common devices to back up data are zip drives, CDRW drives (CD read/write drives), DVDRW drives (DVD read/write drives), additional hard drives (such as a firewire hard drive or secondary hard drive), tape drives or shares on a local area network. Your decision will be based on how much data you need to back up, what devices you already have that could be used for backups, and whether or not you can purchase a new backup device.
Many newer Macintosh systems come with a combo drive (re writeable CD drive) or a superdrive (writeable DVD drive). If you have a combo drive you can use CD-R and CD-RW disks to make backups. Combo drives can write approximately 650-700 MB of data to a CD. This amount of data that can be written is dependent on the CD. If your Macintosh has a superdrive, you can use DVD-R disks in addition to CD-R and CD-RW disks. DVD-R disks can hold much more data (up to 4.7 GB) but can only be written to once.
Firewire hard drives are hot-swappable (can be connected/disconnected to the Mac without having to reboot) and come in very large sizes from 5 gigabytes to over 1 terabyte (1000 gigabytes). The relatively cheap prices, quick data transfer speed, and ease of use of these drives make them very attractive as a backup solution. LaCie is a popular manufacturer of firewire drives. Apple's iPod can double as a backup storage for valuable data since it is essentially a firewire hard drive.
Iomega Zip disks come in 750MB, 250MB and 100MB sizes. Iomega Zip drives come with software for backing up data to zip disks. You can also use the Apple Finder to copy your data folder(s) to a zip disk.
Network shares may be an option for backing up data if your local area network provides this service. A network share is typically a shared disk on a network. Check with your local IT support staff if such services are offered. Apple's .mac offers Macintosh and Windows users a 100 Megabytes of online disk storage for a $99 yearly fee.
Unlike the previous devices, tape drives are designed specifically for backing up data. They hold more data, 4GB to more than 40GB, and require running a backup program both to back up or restore files. A tape drive cannot be used like a large floppy disk. The Macintosh operating system does not come with backup software so you must use the software, if any, that comes with the tape drive, or purchase backup software such as Retrospect. Tape is the least expensive media for very large amounts of data.
What to do when "Something is Wrong" with your computer
If the computer can start up do the following:
- Identify your most important data files and where they are located.
- Copy all your valuable data to a removable media such as Iomega zip disk, writeable CD/DVD, firewire hard driver or another type of media.
- Go to another computer and verify that the data is intact.
If the computer can not start up do the following:
- Locate a CD/DVD that contains the Macintosh system software (such as the Apple System CD/DVD that came with the Macintosh computer) or from a utility CD such as Alsoft Disk warrior.
- Insert the CD/DVD into your computer, hold down the 'C' key and turn on the computer. Continue to hold down the 'C' key until the computer boots up.
- Copy all your valuable data to a removable media such as Iomega zip disk, firewire hard drive or a writeable CD/DVD.
- Go to another computer and verify that the data is intact.
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Last Modified: 1 Aug 2005
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