Back up solutions

[Mhanos]

I'm looking for some suggestions on good ways to back up my files. I just moved from a Dell to my 1st mac (a MacBook Air 13 with 128gb). My current dell probably has 20gb or so of pictures and another 90gb of music and then a smaller amount of videos and random files.

It's not important that all of this lives on my mac (and it can't) but I was trying to find an easy solution for juggling external drives, flash drives, sdxc cards etc.

I could probably portion out music that I really want and listen to a lot and pictures from the last few years to keep locally and those that I don't need on another device.

Does anyone have experience with a similar situation? What are your thoughts on sdxc cards or the really small flash drives that are barely noticeable when plugged in?

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!

 

[T5BRICK]

Buy a NAS, connect it to your home network, and use Time Machine to backup your Mac.

 

[firedept]

Time Capsule and Time Machine is another alternative you could consider as well.

 

[Mhanos]

Time capsule sounds like it is probably the easiest solution.

Does anyone have a cheaper alternative since I already own a few external drives. I was hoping someone may have a solution involving a USB flash or sd card that stays plugged in all the time. If this is dumb or unreliable I'd appreciate any feedback on that as well.

 

[jdechko]

Time machine would work with the external drives you already own. Ideally, you'd want something at least 2-3x larger than the drive you're backing up.

A SD card that is left in will protect against failure of your main drive (or accidental deletion) but does nothing if the machine is damaged (fire, water, electrical short) or stolen.

Depending on the specifics of your music library (how many songs), you might find that a cloud service is a good fit (iTunes Match or Google Music). That way you have access to all of your music without plugging into a drive. ITunes match is $25/year (a little over $2/ month). Plus if you have an iPhone or iPad, you get access to all your music there as well.

This really just gets you started; having one backup is better than none. However, you might also want to consider a cloud backup service such as CrashPlan, Carbonite or Backblaze (there are others). You can back up for only a few bucks a month.