Backing up is SO not Hard to Do!

We have talked too many times about how important maintaining a backup of your data is and just how easy it might be to lose that data. Most hard drives are made up of spinning magnetic disks that whisk around at 5-10,000 revolutions per minute (that’s fast!) while a magnetic head moves over them to extract the data and send it to your machine.

You all know I am an amateur mechanic and love to mess around in my shop, and I have learned pretty quickly that mechanical devices that move quickly break. So whether it is simply a matter of time between failures, an electrical surge or an impact, that spinning data depository in your Mac could suddenly become little more than a good doorstop.

I know this firsthand. I had a PowerBook that I took on a long motorcycle trip, and each time I stopped for the night, I transferred the hundreds of photos I’d taken along the way. It worked great, but soon after I returned home, my drive failed and I could not access these hundreds of pictures from the trip of a lifetime. I did end up recovering them with the help of DriveSavers, but it made for a lot of anxious moments, and I was out $1200!

Then, Apple made it easy! Time Machine is on Mac OS X and makes backing up simple and automatic. But they went even further when they introduced the Time Capsule which made backups not only easy, but wireless, too. The Time Capsule is the perfect solution for backing up your mobile devices because there are no cables needed. The Time Capsule combines an AirPort Extreme wireless access router with a hard drive to store your backed-up data.

As I mentioned above, we made a special purchase of some 2TB Time Capsules that are now discontinued (but brand new) and include a 1-year Apple Warranty. These provide more than adequate storage for most users and are a great solution for wireless access and backup.