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I can’t stress enough the importance of backing up your software for any system let alone your precious mac, many people assume because they are so stable and organized they will never break down but it is silly to just think that way. Here are the best in our opinion backup utilities for the Mac. I urge you to try them out and have at least one backup of your data.

Time Machine

License: Included with Leopard OS

From the Publisher:

A Giant Leap Backward

Time Machine is the breakthrough automatic backup that’s built right into Mac OS X. It keeps an up-to-date copy of everything on your Mac — digital photos, music, movies, TV shows, and documents. Now, if you ever have the need, you can easily go back in time to recover anything.

Set it, then forget it.

To start using Time Machine, all you have to do is connect an external drive (sold separately) to your Mac. You’re asked if you want it to be your backup drive, and if you say yes, Time Machine takes care of everything else. Automatically. In the background. You’ll never have to worry about backing up again.

Anatomy of a backup.

For the initial backup, Time Machine copies the entire contents of the computer to your backup drive. It copies every file exactly (without compression), skipping caches and other files that aren’t required to restore your Mac to its original state. Following the initial backup, Time Machine makes only incremental backups — copying just the files that have changed since the previous backup. Time Machine creates links to any unchanged files, so when you travel back in time you see the entire contents of your Mac on a given day.

Click here for complete set of features

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n055CqFnjyo

PsyncX

License: GPL

From the Publisher:

This application, based on the command-line utility psync, is designed to allow novice computer users to backup either one part of their hard drive or the entire hard drive to another computer. In addition, it allows users to schedule backups.

Screenshots:

Download here

Super Duper

License: Shareware (27.95USD)

From the Publisher:

Have no fear. SuperDuper v2.5 is here!

SuperDuper is the wildly acclaimed program that makes recovery painless, because it makes creating a fully bootable backup painless. Its incredibly clear, friendly interface is understandable, easy to use, and SuperDuper’s built-in scheduler makes it trivial to back up automatically. It’s the perfect complement to Time Machine under Leopard, allowing you to store a bootable backup alongside your Time Machine volume—and it runs beautifully on both Intel and Power PC Macs!

SuperDuper’s interface confirms all your actions in simple, clear language to ensure that the end result is exactly what you intended.

Nice Tutorial made by T4ShowVideos

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5tBO6vZm3o

Download here

iBackup

License: Shareware (US$ 25)

From the Publisher:

iBackup is a simple to use backup/restore utility.

iBackup supports scheduled backups of files, folders and applications. Further, it uses plugins to backup your settings like the dock, deskop picture, time, firewall, bluetooth and other system preferences. It is also able to backup application settings.
You can add, delete and edit these plugins.

Screenshot:

Download here

Carbon Copy Cloner

License: Freeware

From the Publisher:

Clone, synchronize, backup. Schedule and forget it. Try it ’til you trust it.

The key to a successful backup plan is to actually do the backups regularly. When left to a human, the task often gets tacked on to the end of a very long list of other things to do. When you eventually have a catastrophe, the data is simply gone. You know that feeling — you just lost six years of family photos. Your kids being born, their first birthdays, their first everything. The answer to this is consistent and regular backups, placed on a schedule and handled automatically by your computer.

CCC 3.0 features a new interface designed to make the cloning and backup procedure more intuitive and more responsive. Users have better control over what gets backed up, and are provided with detailed information about the progress of their backup. In addition to general backup, CCC can also clone one hard drive to another, copying every single block or file to create an exact replica of your source hard drive. CCC’s block-level copy offers the absolute best fidelity in the industry!

Among the new features are:

• Support for block-level disk-to-disk clones.
• Synchronization built-in, not bolted on.
• Support for backing up across the network to another Macintosh.
• Advanced scheduling capabilities — Backup tasks can now be scheduled on an hourly, daily, weekly, or monthly basis, or you can indicate that a backup task should run when the backup device is attached (e.g. an iPod). You don’t even need to be logged in for your backups to occur!
• CCC recognizes iPods specifically, allowing time for the iPod:iTunes synchronization to complete.
• The ability to drill down into folders to select exactly what gets copied and what doesn’t (you can drill down indefinitely).
• Built-in software update feature notifies you when updates are available.

Screenshots:

Donwload here