External Hard Drive Backup For The Mac

If you are looking for a software solution for backing up data to your external hard drive on the Mac platform, you don’t have to look any further than the Mac OS, which already comes with its own backup utility called Time Machine. Built into Mac OS 10.5, Time Machine presents a simple and easy to use backup software solution that can get the job done well enough, although it lacks some of the more advanced bells and whistles of the more full featured 3^rd party backup software. You will inevitably want to move on to more advanced backup software later on as your needs become more sophisticated, but Time machine should do well for starters.

Once you are ready to move up, you may want to take a look at SilverKeeper. A product of the LaCie company–which is of course well known for some of the finest external hard drives around–SilverKeeper is a freeware solution that allows you to back up files, folders, or even entire disks. One feature that you will find particularly useful is the automatic comparison of data when you are tying to back up to a drive that you previously used for an earlier backup. SilverKeeper does have some drawbacks, such as the inability to perform backups automatically and to compress data, but for a freeware solution it is certainly more than adequate.

Another program you may want to check out is Deja Vu. Released by Propaganda Productions, Deja Vu is a shareware backup software solution that does offer automatic backups according to a schedule that you pre-set. Deja Vu allows you to back up as many folders as you wish to an external hard drive, or you could back up your data to a remote device. What’s more, you could even use Deja Vu to create a bootable copy of your OS X system disk!

Retrospect is another worthy contender in the Mac backup software business. Released by Dantz, the backup software solution offers a host of welcome features in a simple to use and easy to understand interface. With Retrospect, you can back up your data to an external hard drive, locally or remotely. Adding greatly to its flexibility is the fact that Retrospect can be used in a mixed PC and Mac system.

The Apple Corporation offers yet another backup software solution. It’s called “Backup”, imaginatively enough, and it allows users to perform a wide range of backup operations to a variety of destinations including the user’s .Mac account, an external hard drive, or a CD or DVD. In order to use this software, you will need a .Mac account.

Finally, check out Carbon Copy Cloner, which is yet another shareware program that allows you to make exact copies of entire disks or individual files and save them onto an external hard drive. Carbon Copy Cloner also helpfully includes even invisible files in the backup procedure.