How do I know it's backing up things?
 

My family gave me a fancy new iMac desktop that runs Mavericks. James Garner used to be my favorite "Maverick" but I guess that doesn't apply.

Anyway, I'm not all that with computers but I can find my way around easy and simple stuff most of the time.

The grands gave me a backup called Super Duper and an External Hard Drive that is supposed to back things up from my regular hard drive to the external one, just in case I mess up I guess.

When I double click on the "Devices" External Hard Drive icon, it opens up and the icon and words External Hard Drive is highlighted. Above it is listed (all on the very far left side of this window that opened up) Dropbox, All my files, Air Drop, Desk top, Granny, Applications, Documents, Movies, Music, Pictures.

HOWEVER, with the External Hard Drive icon and name highlighted, the stuff listed to the right in the little window that opened up are: Applications, Library, Users, System, Student Work (one of my files), QT Folder, Developer, Ask Arron, User Guides and info (with a little arrow in the bottom left corner of that folder) and User Information (same little arrow).

Oh, and under the Devices is also Remote Disc. I sure don't know what that is.

Anyway, how do I know that I have things backed up onto the External Hard Drive? For example, I saved a recipe the day after Christmas, to my Recipe folder which is on my regular Hard Drive, but it didn't show up on my External Hard Drive and I don't even know that my recipes folder is there. The External Hard Drive is set up to copy stuff from the Hard Drive to the External Hard Drive every Mon, Wed, and Fri at 11:30 pm, and I checked and found no error messages, and so now I'm confused.

Thanks in advance for your help!

Forget that one. Your new toy came with a most excellent backup utility called Time Machine. Fully integrated into the computer, zero maintenance.

Go to the Apple menu (top left corner of your screen) and open System Preferences.

Next, click on Time Machine (greenish circle). Click Select Disk and choose your external drive (probably the only one available).

Move the big Off/On Slider to On.

Now leave it alone for a while. Don't turn it off either - the first backup usually takes several hours.

In fact, just don't turn it off at all. My Mac Desktop has been on constantly since I bought it several years ago. Once the screen shuts itself off it consumes very little power.

Yes, another vote for the Apple-included Time Machine. It is very simple (ON/OFF) and straightforward.

Once the backup has completed, you can launch the Time Machine application. (In /Applications folder.)
This presents you with a Finder-like window, allowing you to browse your disk, but with the added magic of viewing that folder at any point in time, whenever a backup has been taken. (Hence, Time Machine.)

You can then select files from the past and restore them to your computer, if they've been deleted or overwritten.

Enjoy your new Mac!

Should not confused check that the family did not set a schedule like weekly super duper back ups?

Thanks for the input!

I'm still a little bit confused...why didn't my SuperDuper! back up my recipe onto the External Hard Drive? I also found a couple more of my recipes "missing" that I thought were automatically saved!

Can I use both SuperDuper and TimeMachine on my one External Hard Drive? How do I know if I have enough room on the External Hard Drive for both things?

I only launch TM from the Applications folder--after the back up is completed -- if I want to find something, right?

Thanks for the help and clarification!

I don't use SuperDuper, but:

1. TM will fill an external until there's no more room. Then it will start deleting the oldest backups (so that you will always have the last (say) three years' worth of data.)

2. Yes, use the TM app to search back in time.

Oh, I found more info!!!! Maybe this will help with figuring things out...

I did a Get Info for the External Hard Drive icon.
It said:
The External HD has a capacity of 999.86 GB.
Available is 936.5 GB.
Used is 63,364,071,424 bytes (63.36 GB on disk).

Does this mean I can also run Time Machine on it?? Do I have to do any thing called a "partition" (which I don't understand)?

Acme and Ben, if I get set up with TM, then when I do a search, do I search by a vocabulary word (like paprika) or do I have to remember the actual name of the document or the file?

Thanks!
Gran

The more backups the better. Using both SuperDuper and Time Machine is better than using only one.

It is pointless to make both backups to the same drive. Each backup should be to a separate physical disk (not just separate partitions on the same disk), and not to the disk being backed up. That is, if you're making two backups of your internal disk, you're going to need at least two separate external disks.

If you can only use one backup system, use Time Machine. It's dead simple fire-and-forget, so your backups will get done. With any other kind of backup, there's significant risk that you'll skip one backup, then another, and pretty soon you're skipping them all.

TM is also significantly faster (after the first backup), which Apple automatically exploits to do them much more frequently. Even though TM backs up every hour, each backup is so blazing fast that you rarely notice them happening. And yet it keeps old versions around too, letting you browse backwards through time, without using significantly more disk space than would be needed to keep only the latest version of each file.

This.
The point of a backup is that EITHER the external drive OR your internal drive can explode, catch fire, get stolen or just stop working, and NOTHING will be lost.

Two backups on the same device are pointless: if that drive fails, you lose them both; if your other drive fails, you will restore one of the copies to the replacement disk, but not both.

At my high school, there was one person who kept their "backup" on the other side of the floppy disk.

I've never used Time Machine, but IF you're going to use it you should also use a backup utility that produces a BOOTABLE backup. SuperDuper does that; Time Machine does NOT.

As others have already said, back up to different backup hard disks, one for Time Machine and one for SuperDuper.

Actually, local TM backup drives will contain the Recovery Partition if the source volume was a system disk. TM backup volumes show up in the system chooser (<alt> boot) as a boot choice.

Admittedly, this is not the same as having a spare drive with a bootable clone from which you can "carry on with your work" as though nothing had happened.

Time Machine and Super Duper both have pros and cons, and you can have each backing up to a different partition on the external drive.
You can directly reboot your computer from the super duper backup, which you can't do with TM, and with TM you can go back and retrieve that scone recipe you accidentally deleted last week, which you can't do with SD....

I used to use both, now I just use SD.... personal preference really, and I don't accidentally delete stuff.... :)

Flash drive as backup?
 

Thanks again for more info, everyone!

Lee, I happen to have a wonderful scone recipe! I also have a hard copy of it. :)

Oh, another question... I have a 16 GB USB flash drive. Would that be another option for backing up things?

If I decide to just use SuperDuper, and not do Time Machine, and if there was a problem, wouldn't I just be able to recover my documents (and photos too) from my flash drive?

Thanks!
Gran

SuperDuper (unless I'm reading the description wrong) makes an exact copy of your computer's main disk drive. Time Machine makes incremental copies in dated folders.

The difference is if you deleted a file last week, SuperDuper will delete the file from your backups as well. Time Machine will still have the file in last week's section.

What I like about SD! is you can very easily confirm the backup has worked and is all there just by booting from it....

Actually another program Carbon Copy cloner can be set up to keep a revision history too. Though historically I found the feature conflicted with bootable clones eventually...

*** Not sure you have to told us the import of your Data. Some people do not really have much they care about some have a great deal they care about, and the same with revision histories and deleted files.

There are many kinds of back up programs. Ones that make a directly bootable backup literally a mirror copy. There are ones that do files and there are ones that do a bit of both. There are also ones and companies that provide off site service.

Any individual drive can go bad and die or data get corrupt. And sometimes even one back up is not sufficient.

*For mostly cloning Carbon Copy Cloner and Super Super are the best and easy and the tasks can be automated.

*For a bit of both complete restoration, revision history and as long as you boot from a recovery disk Time Machine can be a good choice when used with a locally attached hard drive (not over a network, especially wifi as this leads to trouble).

*For off site while there are many choices my personal favorite is crash plan which is around $60 a year for unlimited off site encrypted storage, files only, not bootable and offers revision history and deletion restore, its an amazing app. It also can work locally to drives and other computers for free but that is not its main purpose.

For people that a very concerned about their data a mix of these programs and multiple back up copies on separate physical disks is crucial.

I personally maintain 3 backups of my laptop system drive, a bootable SD! clone on a portable FW drive, an SD! sparseimage backup on a NAS at home, and a clone on an encrypted portable HD in my office desk at work. Really the no 1 thing I'm protecting is my photo library/home movies of the kids, the rest is replaceable.

I would second the need for some sort of offsite backup, at the least of your most precious data....

Please be wary of Sparse bundles no matter who makes them. They easily can become corrupt. Repair is a crap shoot and its all or nothing when they go bad. I would use Crashplan if you want to go over a network. Its free though I would also urge you to use it for off site. You can do both, its very capable.

If you mean the little "thumb" drives that are a few inches long, those are not as reliable in the long term as the bigger boxes. They often seem to go kaput randomly. But it's better than nothing - i.e. better than not having a backup, or better to have a secondary backup than only having one backup.

But maybe my experience of the "thumb" drives going kaput is more related to their typical usage where they get plugged into multiple computers when used for transferring files.

Given how dirt cheap external drives are now, I wouldn't bother with USB flash drives for backup purposes, too small, slow, flakey....

A flash drive is a drive like any other. I do not have cold hard stats but Neither flash drives nor Hard Drives are perfectly reliable. Any kind of storage medium can just go poof. USB drives probably a little more often. Flash drive frailty is because of three reasons 1) Flash technology though wonderful and fast it can be in the form of an SSD is not only fallible but has a finite though theoretical read/write life span. 2) Flash especially in a memory stick is not the best quality 3) As others have pointed out jacking and jacking them even if you dismount properly first seems to cause issues.

The real trick is to have as many back ups as your data is important. Some people even purposely keep some documents in email as many providers provide multi GB for free assuming that data is not sensitive.

Answers to your questions.

1) Yes can just use Super if you want to, its a good product
2) Yes can also use a Flash Drive, you can not have too many copies of data. At least format it for A mac first instead of leaving it formatted Fat which is a PC format it came with but the mac can use. This is done from Disk Util and the format is known as MAC OS Extended journaled.

Thank you everyone, for continuing to clarify for me and offer options and input!

Anthlover, I did not know this at all, about formatting it for a mac, or how to do it until now!!!

Gran

The usefulness of a bootable backup is grossly overrated.

The argument goes: If my main drive fails, and I have a bootable backup, I can get up and running immediately.

But my objection is: If you boot off your (only) backup, then YOU HAVE NO BACKUP! Sure, booting off your backup is quick, but it's also foolhardy.

At the very least, your first order of business after booting from it is to make a new backup of it. That takes just as long as restoring from a (non-bootable) backup.

If you have two (or more) backups, then I agree that making at least one of them bootable is a good idea. It lets you get up and running right away, at the cost of losing only one of your backups. But you're still going to want to get back to whatever level of backup coverage you're comfortable with, so the cost is the same. You need another drive to store the new backup, and you need to take the time to make it (in addition to whatever time is spent acquiring the new backup drive). If you frequently operate under hard deadlines, where not getting up-and-running immediately is a Big Deal, then by all means make sure one of your backups is bootable.

A whole-disk restore from Time Machine takes the same amount of time as a whole-disk restore from a clone. A Time Machine disk is bootable (into the equivalent of a Restore Partition). That doesn't get you up and running immediately, but unless you have multiple backups, you don't want to be up and running immediately. Backups first; business second.

Oh! Oh! Oh! I found out I have a Drop Box. I think I just click Save to Drop Box, or else I drag and drop stuff there, right?

Would that be a good backup for some of my documents and maybe even photos (until I need more memory [?] in it) ?

Gran

If you mean the "Drop Box" in your Public Folder, then no - this is just a folder on your drive that others can put files in for you on your network.
It offers no backup function - the files are on your drive the same as any other location.

What he said.

"A" drop box is a place other people can leave files for you.

"Drop Box" is a remote service. Go here: http://www.dropbox.com/
If it is familiar, then you have cloud-based storage and backup.

If you have never seen it before, then you don't.