Filed under: Odds and ends, Security, MobileMe
Add Apple's free Backup.app to your backup toolbox
When most people think about Apple and backups they probably think about Time Machine or perhaps even Time Capsule. But Apple has a lesser-known application which you might consider using.
The app, simply named Backup, was originally available only to .Mac users, but is now openly available on Apple's website. It lists "MobileMe account" as one of its requirements. If you do not have a MobileMe account, each backup is limited to 100 MB. The good news is that for what I am suggesting, 100 MB will be completely sufficient for most people. Follow along as I use Backup to create a complete and scheduled backup of personal data and settings on my Mac.
First, install and launch the application. Choose Plan > New Plan from the menu.
If you have a MobileMe account, choose the "Personal Data & Settings" option (second from the top), click the "Choose Plan" button, and then skip the next paragraph.
If you don't have a MobileMe account, select the Custom option at the bottom, give your backup plan a name like "Address Book, iCal, and Settings". Then click the plus sign ( + ) above the Destination and Schedule to choose what will be backed up. Select Address Book, Application preferences, iCal, and Safari Settings (this assumes that you use Safari). The application displays how much data it is backing up. For me, this was only about 28MB. If you find it is creeping towards 100 MB, you can create multiple, separate backup plans, each of which gets its own 100 MB quota. Finally, click the + button UNDER "Destination and Schedule" and choose where you want the data to be stored.
MobileMe users can back their data up to iDisk, while those not using MobileMe can backup to Dropbox or simply backup to a folder on your hard drive. On my iMac, I have my backups set to copy to a folder on my Drobo. On my MacBook, I have it sync to iDisk.
I highly recommend backing this data up every day. On my MacBook, I set it to start about 10 minutes before I need to leave the office to pickup my son from school. When I see the application launch, I start packing up whatever I need to bring home. By the time I'm finished, the backup has completed and I can pack up the laptop as well.
Why keep daily backups of this information? I don't know about you, but my calendar and address book information are crucial. I worry not only about data loss but data corruption, so keeping extra backups around seems like too easy of a step to not take it. Application preferences and Safari settings might not be considered crucial, but it's so easy to back them up, I can't see why not to add them as well.
MobileMe users should definitely checkout the options that Backup.app has for backing up iTunes and especially iPhoto if you use it. My iPhoto collection is probably one of the most important things on my computer, with 7 years of pictures of our son and vacations, etc. That data is irreplaceable. I wish Apple didn't limit larger backup sets to MobileMe users. There is no reason why anyone shouldn't be able to use this application to backup information to their own hard drive. Apple's decision to limit access to the full feature set of this application to MobileMe users is a completely arbitrary. In my opinion, Apple ought to be doing everything possible to encourage people to make backups.
One final "pro tip" regarding the Backup.app: by default, the application will wait for 2 minutes before starting. While it waits, it bounces in the dock. I find this to be a huge annoyance, so I tracked down a hidden preference which will reduce that to one second (and one bounce). Launch the Terminal.app from /Applications/Utilities in Finder and paste in this line:
defaults write com.apple.Backup 'Backup Timer' -int '1'
You can change the '1' to however many seconds you want it to wait. If you are thinking about choosing zero, please note that will actually disable the backup from running. One second is as low as you can go. 120 is the default.
At the risk of sounding Ballmer-esque: Backups! Backups! Backups!
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Brewie said 6:19PM on 10-13-2009
Going along the backup theme, can you recommend any online backup ideas for Safari/Firefox bookmarks/preferences? I'm trying to get off MobileMe and have replaced Mail with Gmail (now with push to iPhone), storage with dropbox and don't really need any of the Back to my Mac/iPhone features. The only thing remaining is the quick bookmarks and preferences for Safari and Mail!
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Devin said 6:31PM on 10-13-2009
http://wiki.getdropbox.com/TipsAndTricks/SyncSafariBookmarks
Devin said 6:34PM on 10-13-2009
Sorry, forgot to say, the same should work for ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.Safari.plist. I’m not sure if it would for Mail preferences, since that has the accounts and everything, but if you use Gmail’s IMAP, you should be pretty set.
Brandon said 10:15PM on 10-13-2009
For backing up bookmarks on firefox, try the foxmarks plugin. I believe it might be called xmarks now. Works great for backing up/syncing bookmarks.
Wish I could help with safari.
Cameron said 1:53AM on 10-14-2009
Xmarks now syncs Safari bookmarks as well, hence the name change. www.xmarks.com
Gethyn said 6:20PM on 10-13-2009
The date of the last successful Personal Data & Settings to iDisk on the systems in my household is the day before we updated to Snow Leopard. I still use Backup.app but I thought it was relegated to obscurity since this issue cropped up on an OS upgrade and I've relied on Time Capsule ever since. Personal Data & Settings shows "this plan doesn't contain any items to back up" under 10.6+
Am I the only one with this issue?
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Gerry said 10:25PM on 10-13-2009
I haven't seen anything that says this is compatible with Snow Leopard. With 10.6, I haven't been able to back up to my iDisk. Wish this would get fixed.
invaderzimaus said 6:41PM on 10-13-2009
Nice to see Backup offered as a download for both users of MobileMe and other users.
For me, not being a member of MobileMe-a 100MB limit is fine as I always like to make small backups.
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Dinesh said 6:42PM on 10-13-2009
Thanks for the tip! I just setup Backup to backup my settings to a folder on my Dropbox. I did a weekly backup setting.
Sweet.
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Ethan said 8:04PM on 10-13-2009
This sounds like the kind of thing that could get shut down.
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phlyingpenguin said 10:35PM on 10-13-2009
Agreed. It'd be a heck of a lot better to spend the time to learn how to make an rsync and cron backup to something like dropbox or a local network server. These are tools that aren't going anywhere and will always operate quietly in the background.
Sigfrid said 8:05PM on 10-13-2009
Great tip. I will start using it
Thanks
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Brad Owens said 8:09PM on 10-13-2009
I've been using this as part of my own backup plan. It's worked very well. I outlined how I use it in my backup routine here: http://bit.ly/10KpXT
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marc said 9:45PM on 10-13-2009
great article. i use superduper a few times a month, but between backup and dropbox, this is a super easy safety net.
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phil said 12:10AM on 10-14-2009
I tried a couple of test backups to my dropbox and they worked fine, but it looks like Backup makes a new backup file each time. Is this the case? If so, doing daily backups will fill up a 2GB dropbox account fairly quickly. Can I just delete old backups from my dropbox folder?
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jankees said 2:53AM on 10-14-2009
I have been using this for a few months and I love it.. I haven't restored a backup however...
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Barrie said 3:50AM on 10-14-2009
If you have more than one Mac using backup to iDisk beware of using the default settings. Backup will use the same name for the data and settings files in the same iDisk folder - so one Mac simply overwrites the backup from the other. I naively left the defaults running on two Macs for years until the day I needed the backup .....
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f055 said 5:19AM on 10-14-2009
100 MB is good for people with virtually no workspace backup. I have a 6 GB usb pendrive which I daily update using iBackup App ( http://www.grapefruit.ch/iBackup/ ) and I consider it to be the best option for big and quick backup for mac!
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Aaron said 8:06AM on 10-14-2009
I have been using backup.app to copy my personal data which i store on my time capsule (due to a large amount of data and a small laptop hard drive) to another external hard drive, but it is very unreliable. Normally half way through a back up it causes the time capsule to crash and reports an error.
Does anyone have a good back up solution for backing up network drives?
Thanks!
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Michael said 12:58AM on 10-15-2009
This is nothing new? This is an update to Backup 3.0, and the link in the article above says it was posted in 2007. It still requires MobileMe to actually be functional in anyway, and from what I recall, the app still makes references to .Mac. You could always find this on Apple.com.
Slow news day?
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