Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
•
Would any of the latest products be a better solution?
New and higher-capacity storage devices (see
RAIDs and RAID-like
Tech
), improved online backup options (see
Use an Internet Backup
Versioned Backup Program
)
may offer solutions to problems that
couldn't be solved easily a year ago—or they may be more affordable
than they once were. I'm not one to buy new gadgets just for the
sake of keeping up with the latest fads, but if a new product
genuinely makes my life simpler or saves me money, I'm all for it.
•
Is your overall strategy still sound?
I hope you took my advice
to make use of the three main pillars of a solid backup strategy—
versioned backups (see
Why Create Versioned Backups?
), bootable
duplicates (in
Why Create Bootable Duplicates?
), and offsite storage
(read
Why Store Backups Offsite?
)
. If you decided against any of
these components, I'd like to kindly suggest that you take a moment
to review my reasons for recommending them and your reasons
for rejecting them. There's no shame in changing your mind; if
something makes sense now that didn't a year ago, adjust your
setup accordingly. Think about the details, too. For example, if you
keep versioned backups only of your home folder because your
external drive was once too small but now you have a bigger one,
consider expanding your backups to include every file on your disk.
If the time has come to move to new media or even to an entirely
different storage method, give some thought to whether you should
migrate your existing backups—for example, moving your Time
Machine backups from a hard disk onto a Time Capsule (read
Migrate
to a Time Capsule or Network Volume
) or from a smaller Time Capsule
to a larger one (see
Migrate to a Larger Time Machine Disk
)
—or start
over from scratch. Migrating your old backups ensures continuity; you
can be certain of having access to all your old files. Creating brand new
backups will reduce your storage space requirements, but you'll spend
a lot of time doing the initial backup, and your backups won't contain
previously changed or deleted files (so if you do this, be sure to keep
your existing backups safely on hand for a while).
