How to choose Best Mac Backup Software | Hard Drive Cloning

Today, there are lots of articles written highlighting the importance of Mac backup and hard drive cloning concepts.These things are meant to make you aware about your data safety against loss. Infact, 31st of April is observed as - 'World Backup Day'.

This day is another call to remind us about backup's importance for keeping our data safe no matter in which situations it might undergo. 

 

After watching out these practices of article writing etc., I have decided to do something in the same. And then I wrote down an article for Mac users, that explores every important detail related to backup and cloning process.

In this article, I will bring you some great ideas and criteria in order to choose best Mac backup and cloning software. But, before we go further in this topic, you need to know the significance of Mac hard drive cloning.

I am trying to make my readers aware of creating clone of their Mac disk so that they become more attentive for taking regular backups of their vital data.

It is good if you already have backup of your drive as having any kind of backup of your data is better than none. 

 

Here, I am telling you how can you create foolproof and reliable backups. Although everyone’s choice is different according to their requirements. Therefore, I have list of recommended third party backup and cloning tools.

Apple's Utility To BackUp Your Mac Disk:

Mac has inbuilt utility known as Disk Utility that can create image of your Mac disk which you can restore when needed. It is also used for repairing and verifying disk permissions.

Image is an exact copy of your Mac disk that can be restored further if needed. Clone and image can be differentiated in a manner that image created is in compressed form while clone of your drive is referred as exact copy of your drive or volume.

One great backup application of Apple's Mac is 'Time Machine'. If you love to backup your entire drive using Time Machine, its good idea as it fascilitate you to restore your backup later to its original state. This itself state that Time machine has feature of scheduling and incremental backups.

Why Time Machine should not be considered as the only backup tool?

Although Time machine seems to be perfect backup tool for your Mac but experts advice not to depend completely on Time Machine.

I know TM approach for backup Mac data definitely reduce risks of data loss to minimum. This demonstrates that there's nothing wrong with TM backups. Its incremental backups are valuable, but it's not the only thing that we should totally rely upon. This means there are some more important aspects to be considered that TM couldn't perform. 

 

Time Machine runs as a background process, silently in your Mac, which is its another good feature that we found in a good backup tool. But, in order to protect your data completely and for creating bootable backups you must have some reliable backup and cloning software. 

 

I have also heard and read horror stories in forums where Time Machine has failed in updating itself. This is another reason of having another backup tool (Third party tool) if you really value your data.

Problems with TM:

• If your Time capsule (backup device that works wirelessly with Time machine in your OS X) gets failed to power up , one can't access his backup data. So, you need to have time capsule in order to access your data.

• Time Machine takes a long time while restoring your disk. TM can take several hours to days depending on the quantity of data you backed up.

• This is not the only problem but you can’t do anything else on your Mac while restoring.

So, I always recommend a second backup type i.e a bootable duplicate copy. Bootable duplicate is a complete copy of your startup disk on some external hard drive, with all default Mac apps in such a way that you can start your Mac with this duplicate bootable copy or Clone of your disk.

Hard drive Cloning Concepts and reasons why to clone your Mac drive:

Cloning of your data and OS X is essential in situationes like drive crash,failure because one can back to his work by booting his Mac using cloned disk. Clones are said to be bootable backups. But, before get into the essential details of creating bootable clone of Mac disk, lets talk some prominent reasons and benefits of doing this .

• Cloning gives a functional backup of your entire Mac disk:

By performing cloning on your Mac hard drive, you are actually creating an exact copy or backup of your entire drive, this includes system files,users files and all default apps. Since this is an exact copy of your Mac hard drive, you can even boot with your Clone. Just plug it in your Mac and keep the 'option' key pressed during boot-up and select the clone drive to boot from.

• Cloning is useful in testing applications and also trouble shooting issues

The Clone of your drive can be useful for testing new applications or software updates before actually installing them into your machine.

Also, in case of any problem, you can check whether the problem is in software or hardware by booting it up using clone.

• Replacement of primary hard drive

In case of a Hard Drive failure/crash or corruption, you could be disable to work for hours or even weeks before your primary drive get fixed and data restored. Instead, if you have bootable clone of your Mac, you could be back in business immediately by simply plugging your clone drive.

Best Mac backup software that makes bootable backup easy:
 

Although most of Mac users are well aware of the importance of backup and clone of their drive but it's true that many people are complacent and have trust on their hardware. These people should not forget that hardware technology is not responsible for your data protection. According to google study on rates of hard drive failure, it released that 3% of hard drives get failed within three months of usage. So, if you depend on your hardware you are creating the risk of losing everything - music, photos, projects, ppt and confidential documents. Everything!

So, if you haven't backed up your Mac yet, your data will be in danger zone. Just supppose what will happen if your drive is one of that 3% .

So, the mantra for every Mac user should be:

Back up Mac and clone mac drive!

You should not forget that without a reliable backup plan, each day you are theselves giving chances that all your precious data could be lost.

Now, its time to talk about some great Mac backup and cloning utilities. Below I have mentioned review of two best backup/cloning Mac software after testing a selection of backup and cloning utilities for the ease of use, reliability, interface design,value for money and assessing any extra options. You can decide by reading through these reviews that which application you should opt for according to your requirements?

A good backup and cloning application is the one that does its job quietly, quickly, effectively and reliably.

So, just go through the following reviews and find your best Mac backup/cloning software.

When I seached for the same, I have came across these applications: Carbon Copy Cloner and Stellar Drive Clone to clone mac hard drive.

Features	Stellar Drive Clone: Cloning,imaging and backup software.	Carbon Copy Cloner: Cloning and backup software.(give Incremental bcakups)
Ease of use	Easy to undersatnd interface, quickly works and allows you to do your work while cloning.	Interactive interface, fast working but interuupt your working by giving lots of pop ups while cloning in progress.
Aspects	It can create bootable clone of your disk and bootable image too that you can restore further.	It can create bootable clone and you can synchronize and schedule your backups.
Price	$39	$39.95
Extra option	It supports SSD(Solid State Drive) and can create clone of your window data on your Mac.	It can't create backup of windows partition on Mac and doesn't support SSD.

From these two cloning software for Mac, Stellar Drive Clone is the better solution.