Best backup for Imac?

[tmal85]

Hi Everyone, first post here. I have an older 2014 Imac that i do alot of music, video and photo's on. I used to have one of those wifi apple drives (round?) but I moved and can't find it. I was wondering, what is the best wayt o back the Imac up now? I think the way I did it before it copied the whole setup, files, OS everything and I could just restore from that backup if I needed to?

That would be great, or if i could back up all the files etc

just curious what the best device or software is now to backup the whole Imac?

thanks so much

 

[sboychuck]

I use this. It works great for local backups. Put a spinning hard drive or an SSD into it for Time Machine backups. I also do CCC backups once a month as well, so I have a bootable drive if ever needed. They work great and also have connectors for jump drives and a card. It is USB3 and plenty fast enough for backups and cloning.

 

[Apple_Robert]

I suggest doing a multi backup process.

1) Time Machine - external drive needed.
2) Carbon Copy Cloner - external drive needed. Makes a bootable clone of your system
3) Back Blaze - online backup

 

[bmauter]

I back up with TimeMachine to one of two Seagate Backup+ USB3 external drives. Every month I unmount the drive and take it to work. The other external drive is at work and I bring it home and then I back up to it for a month. Both are encrypted drives so even if someone found and stole the disk at work, my data is safe.

https://www.amazon.com/Seagate-Desktop-External-Storage-STDT5000100/dp/B00HFRWWAW?th=1

They have Mac and PC format disks, but it doesn't matter. Buy the size you need, plug it in and let TimeMachine take over the drive.

 

[tmal85]

Great, thanks everyone! I ordered another TB hard drive and will do Time Machine to that and look at the carbon copy cloner as well. Appreciate it!

 

[seagate_surfer]

They have Mac and PC format disks, but it doesn't matter. Buy the size you need, plug it in and let TimeMachine take over the drive.

There's also a free driver called Paragon which will allow for Mac systems to read/write to NTFS (Windows-preferred) volumes and will allow PC systems to read/write to HFS+ (Mac-preferred) volumes so that you don't have to worry about reformatting/only being compatible with one or the other. Just something nifty to be aware of.