Read Me First

Welcome to Take Control of Backing Up Your Mac, version 1.0, published in September 2011 by TidBITS Publishing Inc. This book was written by Joe Kissell and edited by Michael E. Cohen with help from Tonya Engst.

The data on every Mac should be backed up to protect you against theft, hardware failure, user error, and other catastrophes. This book helps you design a sensible backup strategy, choose and configure the best backup hardware and software for your needs, and understand how to make your backups as painless as possible.

If you have an ebook version of this title, please note that if you want to share it with a friend, we ask that you do so as you would a physical book: “lend” it for a quick look, but ask your friend to buy a new copy to read it more carefully or to keep it for reference. Discounted classroom and Mac user group copies are also available.

Copyright © 2011, Joe Kissell. All rights reserved.

P1.1. Updates

You can access extras related to this book on the Web (use the link in Ebook Extras, near the end; it’s available only to purchasers). On the ebook’s Take Control Extras page, you can:

• Download any available new version of the ebook for free, or buy any subsequent edition at a discount.

• Download various formats, including PDF, EPUB, and—usually—Mobipocket. (Learn about reading this ebook on handheld devices at http://www.takecontrolbooks.com/device-advice.)

• Read postings to the ebook’s blog. These may include new information and tips, as well as links to author interviews. At the top of the blog, you can also see any update plans for the ebook.

• Get a discount when you order a print copy of the ebook.

P1.2. Basics

Here are a few “rules of the road” that will help you read this book:

• Menus: Where I describe choosing a command from a menu in the menu bar, I use an abbreviated description. For example, the abbreviated description for the menu command that creates a new folder in the Finder is “File > New Folder.”

• Contextual menus: Contextual menus appear when you Control-click various elements on a Macintosh screen, including Dock items and files in Finder windows. To describe opening a contextual menu, I usually I tell you to right-click (Control-click) an item on the screen. If your mouse offers a right-click option, or if you use a trackpad or other means of opening a contextual menu, you should feel free to use the method you prefer.

• Finding System Preferences: I sometimes refer to settings in System Preferences that you may want to adjust. To open System Preferences, click its icon in the Dock or choose Apple > System Preferences. When the System Preferences window opens, click the icon of the pane whose settings you want to adjust. I refer to these panes using a brief notation such as “the Network preference pane.”

• Finding an application’s preferences: I often refer to preferences in an application that you may want to adjust. Don’t confuse an application’s preferences with the system-wide settings found in System Preferences. To access an application’s preferences, choose Application Name > Preferences. For example, in the program Retrospect, you would choose Retrospect > Preferences.

• Path syntax: This book occasionally uses a path to show the location of a file or folder in your file system. For example, Mac OS X stores most utilities, such as Terminal, in the Utilities folder. The path to Terminal is: /Applications/Utilities/Terminal.

  The slash at the start of the path tells you to begin at the top level of the disk. Some paths begin with ~ (tilde), which is a shortcut for the current user’s home directory. For example, if the person currently logged in has the user name joe and wants to install fonts that only he can access, he would put them in ~/Library/Fonts, which is just another way of writing /Users/joe/Library/Fonts.

• Big cats: I frequently mention details specific to a particular version of Mac OS X, which Apple usually refers to by a “big cat” code name:

  • Lion: Mac OS X 10.7

  • Snow Leopard: Mac OS X 10.6

  • Leopard: Mac OS X 10.5

P1.3. What’s New in This Book

As I explain just ahead in the Introduction, this book is effectively the sixth edition of Take Control of Mac OS X Backups plus the second edition of Take Control of Easy Mac Backups, rolled into one! Although the title has changed and the information has been consolidated, this book relies heavily on the contents of its predecessors. So if you had either of those titles previously, here are the most significant changes I made that you should be aware of:

• Totally rethought the organization of the material; even when the text itself is the same as in one of the previous books, it’s likely in a different place

• Updated the information in What’s New in the World of Backups to reflect changes in Lion and many other recent developments

• Included Factors to Reevaluate to help readers of previous Take Control ebooks about making backups quickly reassess their strategy as they begin reading this ebook.

• Added Lion-specific information throughout the book, especially in Lion Is Out of Its Cage, Local Snapshots in Lion, Encrypt Your Time Machine Backup, and Auto Save and Versions in Lion

• Included information about Thunderbolt in several places, including Choose an Interface (or Several)

• Updated the information in Create a Duplicate with Carbon Copy Cloner to cover its new (and significantly changed) interface

• Removed most of the discussion of backing up to optical discs, because with each passing year it makes less sense, and I want to encourage readers who are still stuck on this outmoded technology to walk toward the light

P1.4. Finding the Online Appendixes

Some content that was previously in appendixes has been moved to the Web at http://www.takecontrolbooks.com/resources/0014/:

• Joe’s Guide to Mac Backup Software: This former appendix is now hugely expanded, and it compares nearly 100 different backup applications. It was moved online to make it easier to update.

• Retrospect Primer: This appendix provides procedures for setting up duplicates and versioned backups in Retrospect Desktop 6.x, along with a brief look at the terminology, logic, and interface used in that version. (I discuss the newest version of the program, which thankfully doesn’t require so much handholding, in Retrospect.)