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Review: Real World Mac Maintenance and Backups

Submitted by jcost on Wed, 11/22/2006 - 23:31.

Mac Maintenance Book
Have you backed up lately? Come on, be honest. I haven't either, and I am going to regret it. I enjoy using my Mac so much, I hate the time it takes me to backup my system. I had an extremely bad incident last year where I accidentally deleted thousands of files: images, music, documents, and most importantly - my Quicken file. I didn't have a recent backup of any of them and it was quite devastating to lose it all.
Luckily Mac expert Joe Kissel is here to remind us what to backup, when to do it, and what methods are available. In addition to that, he also instructs us on the needed maintenance that is needed to keep your Mac running trouble-free with his new book Real World Mac Maintenance and Backups.

Broken into 12 easy to read chapters and 3 appendixes, Real World Mac Maintenance & Backups is a quick read non-techie book.

Chapter 1 - 5 covers a few no brainers, like how to use Software update, getting your Mac up to the current version, and what you need to do to get rid of all of the junk files on your Mac. It guides you through the daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly tasks that should be done. Details are thorough when needed, but not to the point that you are wishing the paragraph would end.

One of my favorite features in the book are little side-boxes that have small discussions with other leading Mac experts. For example, there is a discussion on Software updates, and they posed the question, 'When should you install new updates?' The consensus was not during the work week when you have a mission critical deadline coming. I really like these 'side conversations' and they add a nice set of varying opinions to the topic at hand.

Chapter 6 will keep you glued to the pages as Kissel goes into detail about how he thinks repairing permissions is somewhat of a placebo affect. I won't give away the details, you'll have to read the book for that. What he says makes sense, and under ordinary circumstances, repairing permissions isn't usually required. However, I still do it. Old habits are hard to break...

Chapter 7 & 8 cover software updating to new versions of OS X and monitoring your Macintosh's health. It covers CPU load, S.M.A.R.T. monitoring, memory leaks, RAM usage & lots more. Do you know the difference between wired, active, and inactive? These are a bit more geeky subjects, but he makes they pretty easy to understand, even for the geek-challenged.

Chapter 9 gets down to the nitty gritty and helps you decide on a backup strategy. Do you need archives, incremental, duplicates, offline storage, etc. He covers it all very well and makes you think about what needs are going to fit into a backup strategy that you can handle.

Maybe you would like your photos stored onto an online service such as Flickr, Snapfish, or Kodak Gallery. Joe gives a quick low down on each of them.

Heading into Chapter 10 gets fun, since you probably will end up heading down to your nearest electronics super-store. This chapter is where you consider what types of backup media to use. Hard drive, Optical media, DV tape, Tape drives, NAS or SANS, Off site services, etc. He covers them all and lists the considerations for each of them. Did you even know you could use your DV Camcorder to backup your data? While he doesn't recommend it... he didn't forget it either. You will walk away from this chapter well informed on all of the available options for backing up your data.

Chapter 11 lays out the available known good software for backing up your data. Covered in-depth is what to look for in a backup application. Do you need one that offers encryption, compression, or other features? Retrospect Backup is a long time favorite on the Mac, and he gives this program some dedicated coverage. Not to be forgotten, he also includes a list of recommended software. He doesn't say whether or not to use any particular program, but he does advise you of all of the considerations you need to be aware of when choosing programs.

After you have followed all of the preceding advice, you are now ready to run a test backup and Chapter 12 will get you going. Topics of interest include backup automation, creating and testing backup archives, off-site storage, longevity of the media, and restoring your data.

Since the author has no way of knowing what type of software you are using, everything is very generic and can be applied to almost any backup situation.

Appendix A covers a brief list of technical references - books & websites for you to check out. Nothing that you couldn't find with a Google search, but it's nice to have a printed copy.

Appendix B covers the different backup software available on Mac OS X. They did a very nice job by adding a few charts that provide all of the features at a glance. It would take too long to seek out each of these titles and compare all of the features, so I am glad they did the research for us.

Closing the book is Appendix C,which contains a Retrospect primer, which guides you through some of it's backup abilities, such as scripts, scheduling backups, backing up network clients, and of course restoration of the files.

Conclusion:

Joe Kissel does an excellent job at covering all of the bases to keep your Mac smiling. You will be smiling too if you follow his advice and start backing up your data. With the detailed info provided inside this 230 page book, you can make an informed decision on what data to backup, how often to do it, and what is going to be the best storage for your needs. Kissel has done an excellent job making the book easy to read for beginners or advanced users. When OS X Leopard is released next year, it is going to include a built-in backup system called 'Time Machine'. This will make some of the software recommendations a moot point, but for now, they are very relevant to anyone running OS X Tiger or below.