Let’s face it, backing up is not exactly fun or exciting, but it is a very important task that many of us neglect until it is too late.
Take a second and think about how much of our lives have become digital. Virtually everything from our photos, music, videos, finances, and documents reside on our computer. If you don’t take the time to back them up you could be faced with a huge data loss disaster and be left desperate to get them back.
There are a lot of options available today for backing up your data, ranging from the cloud to Time Machine® to backup software or even multiple combinations of these options for a failsafe plan. If you are looking for customizable backup software, Prosoft’s Data Backup 3 comes highly recommended by Mac industry experts. Data Backup 3 is flexible, powerful and very easy to use.
Here is an overview of the types of backups Data Backup 3 supports as well as a video tutorial to demonstrate how to execute that specific type of backup. Prosoft offers a free 30-day demo of Data Backup 3 for you to try, as well as free technical support.
Clone – Making a clone of your drive creates an identical image of your hard drive. This kind of backup comes in handy because with a clone of your main HD drive, you can boot from the clone that you have created should your Main HD drive ever fail. The drive has to be partitioned with the right partition map (e.g. GUID/APM) and Prosoft’s support team can walk you through that over the phone or email. Clones of other drives are also handy ways to make identical copies of drives. Making a clone of your Main HD drive can turn out to be an absolute lifesaver!
Simple Copy – A Simple Copy is a basic backup of your drive that includes some hidden information that can help Data Backup manage additional backup processes in the future. The key feature that makes simple copy the fastest is that only the changed files will be copied and files no longer present in the source will be deleted in the destination. When scheduled this is an incremental backup also.
Versioned – A Versioned backup is very similar to a simple copy except the old and deleted versions of the backup will be stored inside a hidden area on your destination drive. All of your files in the source will be copied to the destination. When future backups are run, old versions of the files are then stored in hidden locations on within the destination. Similar to Time Machine, files from any backup date can be selected and restored.
Synchronize – A Synchronize backup method merges the contents of two drives or folders and places the complete set of data into both the source and destination. If a file is deleted or added in either the source or destination, the file will be deleted or added from the other.
Full – A Full backup will make a complete copy all of the files and folders present in the source. When it is completed, the destination will contain additional folder names “Full-Date” which will contain all of the files and folders that were selected to copy.