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Online Backup

Online backup refers to copies of files that are directly accessible. Some examples of online backup would be copying files to USB thumbsticks or an external hard drive, and cloning a drive with Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper. Online backup is convenient because you don’t need any additional software to get access to the backup files and you save the time that would be spent on restoring files from some other type of backup archive. Cloning is particularly good for system drives because you can boot up your computer and get to work right away instead of waiting to reinstall everything or restore files from a backup archive like you would with Time Machine.

Examples:

• USB thumbdrive
• External hard drive
• SuperDuper! clone

Nearline Backup

Nearline backups are usually saved in an archive format that is saved to storage that is directly attached to the computer, or available on the same local area network. Nearline backups use additional software to manage the copies and provide some additional benefits like compression, incremental updates, versioning of files, and maybe even centralized administration and security. The disadvantage of nearline backups is that you can’t boot from them if your startup disk is down and you can’t directly access the files if you take the backup drive to another machine. Time Machine is the most familiar example for Mac users, but other software like Retrospect can be used this way too.

Examples:

• Time Machine
• Retrospect
• Tape drives

Offsite Backup

Offsite backups are simply copies that are stored in another physical location from the computer. The purpose of offsite backup is to protect you in the case of fire, theft, or some other disastrous event like a lightning strike or flood that would destroy both the computer and the backup storage next to it. Offsite backups, by nature of being physically removed, take time to recover and restore and are really only there for catastrophes. You can rotate physical drives offsite, use cloud backup service like CrashPlan or a filesync service like Dropbox.

Examples:

• Second Time Machine drive
• Cloned drive
• CrashPlan
• Dropbox

These different layers can be combined to provide you with the right amount of protection for your needs. Here are three ways that a casual, moderate and hardcore user might implement online, nearline and offsite backup for their important files.

Casual

Online

• Copy your most critical files to a USB thumb drive. Repeat this process every quarter.

Nearline

• Buy an external hard drive and turn on Time Machine.

Offsite

• Take a second USB thumb drive with critical files to work.
• Get a free Gmail  account and email an encrypted disk image (use Disk Utility) of your files to yourself (don’t forget the password!).
• Get a free Dropbox account and copy up to 2 GB of files.

Moderate

Online

• Clone your system drive to an external hard drive with SuperDuper! Update your clone at the beginning of every month.

Nearline

• Use Time Capsule for automatic network backup. If you have a laptop, don’t underestimate the convenience of having Time Machine just run while your computer is on without having to remember to plug anything in.

Offsite

• Buy more storage from Dropbox or…
• Sign up for CrashPlan, possibly the best cloud backup service for Mac users

Hardcore

Online

• Clone your system drive to two different external hard drives with SuperDuper! Take one clone off site and rotate them every week.

Nearline

• Time Machine with Time Capsule.

Offsite

• CrashPlan
• Dropbox in addition to Crashplan
• Second cloned drive
• If you’re really, really hardcore, set up a second Time Machine drive and rotate that offsite as well. You will have to manually switch drives in Time Machine preferences each time you rotate the drives.

Whatever your level of preparedness (or paranoia), there’s a backup strategy for you. Take a little time this Worldwide Backup Day to choose one and implement it before you have a reason to regret putting it off any longer.

Related content from GigaOM Pro (subscription req’d):

• Do Consumers Care Where Their Content Is Stored?

Step 1: Sync and Back Up the Old Device

First off, you need to create a backup of the old device using iTunes. This should happen automatically when you plug the device in, but if not, or if you just want to make sure, right-click the device’s name in the sidebar and choose “Back Up.” Note the name of the device, because that’s what the backup will be named in step 2.

Step 2A: Sync the New Device (Brand-New Devices)

If you’re transferring to a brand-new device that’s never been synced before, plug it in with the USB cable to begin the activation process in iTunes. Since you backed up your old device, you’ll be presented with a choice: set up as a new device or restore from a backup. Check “Restore from the backup of” and select the correct device from the dropdown list. Then hit the “Continue” button and your device will be set up exactly the same as the old one.

Step 2B: Sync the New Device (Previously-Synced Devices)

If, instead of a new device straight from the box, you’re setting up a device that has been synced with another iTunes library before, this step is slightly different. If you bought the device second-hand, hopefully the previous owner restored it, but if not, follow the instructions below.

Again, connect the device to iTunes. If it hasn’t been restored since its last sync, iTunes will warn you of this and ask if you want to erase it and sync. Click “Erase and Sync,” and wait for the process to finish. Then, right-click the device name in iTunes and select “Restore From Backup.” A popup window will appear asking which device backup to use. Select the correct one and click “Restore.” Your device will be restored to factory settings, then synced with all the content and information from your backup.

Once the restore has been completed, your new device is ready to use, and should be set up just how the old device was. All of your email accounts should be synced, your apps should be how you left them and the settings should be the same as before. Did I miss anything? Add your own tips or advice in the comments.

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Mac OS X: iTunes backs up your iOS device’s settings each time you sync, but it doesn’t even come close to backing up the device in its entirety. If you want a complete backup of your device, you can do it easily with an application called PhoneDisk and the wonderful command-line utility rsync. More »

You’d be mistaken for assuming that copying a music CD couldn’t be more complicated than copying a data disc. Well, it is, especially on a Mac. While Windows solutions like Exact Audio Copy (EAC) have long been cited as the gold standard for audio backups, a Mac version doesn’t exist. But I’ve come to find the abilities of the awesome, free X Lossless Decoder (XLD) on the Mac to be on par with those of EAC on the PC. XLD is the star of the first two methods below, while iTunes rounds out the list.

XLD: Best for Audiophile Digital Packrats

The big difference between using XLD and just using iTunes to rip a CD lies in the implementation of what is called Secure Ripping. Put simply, all optical discs (CDs, DVDs, Blu-rays) can become damaged.  Inherent in the design of a disc is the ability to rebuild lost data segments due to physical damage.  This built-in error correction capability can be exploited to make extremely accurate reproductions of the original audio stored on the disc.  The technique employed to securely rip a CD typically involves reading each segment of the disk multiple times, comparing the results of each read over and over until the ripping software is satisfied that it has an accurate representation of the original audio data.  When there’s an error, the ripping software attempts to rebuild the missing data segment. These results can be further analyzed against a database of other ripped tracks such as AccurateRip. Both EAC and XLD employ these secure ripping techniques and verify their results via AccurateRip for the best possible audio fidelity.

To decode a disk using XLD on the Mac you need to:

1. Download, install and launch XLD.
2. Open XLD Preferences (From the menu bar, XLD > Preferences).
3. On the General tab, select the output format you want the disc ripped to. Choose a format like Apple Lossless to retain the full quality of the original music.
4. On the CD Rip tab, select the ripping options you want to rip the disk with. Here you have the choice between CD Paranoia III 10.2 and XLD’s own Secure Ripper implementation. Either should be fine. Be sure to check the “Use C2 error pointers” option if your drive supports it.
5. Insert your album and select Open Audio CD from the File menu, you should see the name of the CD in a sub menu. Select it.
6. From the CDDB menu, click on Get CD Track Names to retrieve the album information from freedb.org.
7. Select “Include pre-gap for all tracks” and click on Decode. You’ll be prompted for a location to save your ripped music to.

Note that in order to add album art, you’ll need to download the image file separately and add it manually. Ripping in this secure manner will take a little longer than other ripping methods.  This is, again, due to how the information is being read, verified and corrected before decoding.

Now you have backups of your music on your hard drive, ready to add to your iTunes collection. But Unlike EAC, XLD can’t take your backed-up music files and perfectly recreate a disc-based copy complete with the same file structure and sound quality. But just because XLD can’t do it doesn’t make it impossible.

XLD + Toast: Best for Audiophiles Who Want It All

Enter Roxio Toast, a program that allows you to make copies of audio CDs or back them up as image files. You have several copy options available to you with Toast.  You can copy the CD directly, save the album as a Sound Designer II image file, or save the CD as a binary copy with a cue sheet (BIN/CUE).  If you choose to create a BIN/CUE copy of the music CD on your hard drive, you can then use XLD later to decode the image and create individual music files for each track, or use your BIN/CUE version to create an exact replica using a CD-R. That way, you’ll have a burnable perfect copy of your disc, and files for your iTunes library. To do this, you need to:

1. Download, install and launch Toast.
2. Select the Copy tab in Toast and choose Disc Copy.
3. In Toast’s Options box in the bottom left hand corner of the window, check “Use Disc Recovery”.
4. From Toast’s File Menu, choose Save as Bin/Cue…
5. Choose the save location for the resulting image files.
6. Once this process is complete, launch XLD and open Preferences from the XLD menu.
7. On XLD’s General tab, select the output format you want the disc ripped as.
8. From XLD’s File menu, choose Open Raw PCM (bin+cue)…
9. Navigate to the image file you saved from Toast in step 5 above.
10. From the CDDB menu, click on Get CD Track Names to retrieve the album information from freedb.org.
11. Select “Exclude pre-gap (incompatible with AccurateRip)” and click on Decode, you will be prompted for a location to save your ripped music to.

Again, in order to add album art, you will need to download the image file separately and add it manually.

iTunes: Best for the Casual Music Fan

The final, and simplest option, is to use iTunes and simply encode a music CD using Apple’s Lossless encoder directly from within iTunes itself.  iTunes can be configured to export many of the same audio formats as XLD.  iTunes also has the option to use error correction when reading Audio CDs. This is all relatively easy to configure via the Import Settings of the General tab within iTunes Preferences.  You can even burn a high-quality Music CD from within iTunes.

While it may all sound very good, this method likely won’t result in an exact copy of the original music CD.  Any time you decode an album and then take the decoded files in some other audio format and burn it back onto a CD-R, you jeopardize the integrity of the disc’s structure as well as the audio quality itself. Which method you end up choosing really boils down to how exact you want your copies to be.

Every time you enter a disc into your SuperDrive, it gets mounted to the big directory structure that makes up your computer. We use the term mount because we used to physically mount spools of magnetic tape onto devices that were accessed by computers.  Once mounted, the user can then delve into that particular disc’s file structure and access its content via the Finder.  The same concept holds true for .dmg (or Disk Image) files.

Apple’s Disk Utility has the ability to mount and unmount these devices as well as format, erase and copy file structures.  It’s therefore possible to create a an image or copy of any CD or DVD.  This resulting image file works just like the .dmg files you often download from the Internet and use to install third-party applications, like Firefox and Skype.  In fact, if you open a .dmg file and then type the command ‘mount’ in the terminal, you will see that the operating system is looking at the .dmg file in exactly the same way it looks at discs you load using the SuperDrive.

To preserve the type of file system the optical disc is using, you can Disk Utility’s ability to create images. Here’s how:

1. Insert a data CD or DVD into your computer’s SuperDrive and launch Disk Utility (located in your [User] > Applications > Utilities folder)
2. From the source menu on the left, select your disc drive. It should have a CD icon next to the manufacturer’s name and a model number
3. Click on the New Image icon in the Toolbar at the top of the Disk Utility window
4. Select a save location as well as a name for the image file you are about to create
5. Be sure to select “DVD/CD master” as the Image Format and leave Encryption set to none
6. Click Save

At this point, Disk Utility will create a copy of the CD or DVD that you had in the SuperDrive. To mount this file as a drive, simply double-click on the file in the Finder.  Your file will be mounted just as if the original disc was inserted into your SuperDrive. This only works for data discs, not movies or music.  You can even reverse this process and burn a physical disc from an image that was created by Disk Utility.  To burn a disc from a .cdr image, you need to:

1. Open the image file in Disk Utility (File > Open Disk Image… in the menu bar)
2. Find and select the image file
3. Click on the Burn icon on the Toolbar
4. Insert a blank disc of appropriate size into the SuperDrive
5. Click Burn

Disk Utility will burn the disk image from the hard drive to the optical disc.  Again, this only works for data discs, not music CDs or movie DVDs, but it should help you get started on de-cluttering your physical media collection.

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