Backup without using the cloud

If you don’t like all your important business or personal data to be saved on a server accessible via the Internet, there is an easy and cheap alternative. Just buy multiple hard drives, copy your data onto them at a regular interval and lock them up in a safe-deposit box at a bank. This has several … Continue reading “Backup without using the cloud”

If you don’t like all your important business or personal data to be saved on a server accessible via the Internet, there is an easy and cheap alternative. Just buy multiple hard drives, copy your data onto them at a regular interval and lock them up in a safe-deposit box at a bank. This has several advantages:

  • It is much cheaper for large amounts of data than most cloud services.
  • It is much faster to copy large amounts of data into it (however it is slower for small amounts because you have to bring the hard drive to the bank.
  • It is as secure as the safe-deposit box (if the hard drive doesn’t fail). Additionally you can encrypt the data.

For Mac computers you can use SuperDuper or CarbonCopyCloner. They can clone the complete internal hard drive of your computer onto a bootable USB hard drive. That means if your internal hard drive is damaged or lost, you can just connect the USB hard drive that contains the backup to your computer and boot from it. So you can immediately continue your work.

usb backup

I use SuperDuper but as far as I know CarbonCopyCloner can do the same. SuperDuper can quickly update an existing backup by only copying the files that were changed. So if you have several hard drives in your safe-deposit box you can just take the one with the oldest backup, update it with SuperDuper and put it back. Or you just keep one hard drive at home, update it, bring it to the bank and take the one with the oldest backup back with you. This way several backups are at the bank and one backup is at home.

To encrypt the backup just format it with an encrypted file system using the Mac’s “Disk Utility” program before using SuperDuper.

Instead of using USB hard drives you could certainly also use USB sticks if they are large enough. However when backing up a complete internal hard drive it is usually cheaper to copy it onto an USB hard drive instead of an USB stick.