Okay, so this question has many answers. Do you back up on the cloud? Or do you use an external hard drive? Should you use an iCloud system or otherwise?
One of the first factors you should look for is ease of usability. Sure, taking your external hard drive and copying files to it is cheap and doesn’t require monthly fees. But, will you remember to plug it in nightly or monthly for your backups? Probably not, right?
What is the best way to back up your computer?
So, my fave is going online. Yes, the cloud, online, virtual, whatever you want to call it. Which one you ask? If I have to choose one, I’d say go with Carbonite. It’s $60, alright $59.99, for the year and you can back up as many files as you want. It may take up to 1-2 weeks to back up everything, but once you’ve done that, it will only back up incremental changes and won’t take but a few minutes here and there as you go along.
Why not DropBox you may ask? DropBox syncs your files. That to me is a security flaw. Such syncing can self-perpetuate ransomware and viruses as it syncs it across to the cloud. Carbonite, on the other hand, is a true cloud back up service that backs up and encrypts your files which is much more protective.
What about iCloud? That’s like a pseudo-backup. It really only backs up stuff on your MacBook that you enable, such as contacts, calendar, mail, apps, and such. It’s not really backing up your bread-and-butter files that you need.
Time Machine is certainly a better choice, but it cannot be used to back up online. You’ll need to go to an external hard drive. Come on, Apple! It pains me to see Apple once again falling short with a technology service when we know they can make it happen. They don’t want Time Machine and iCloud competing with each other. It’s the same reason iPads don’t have more functionality. Apple doesn’t want iPads competing with MacBooks. Okay, I’m done with my Apple support rant.
So, Carbonite is a solid online backup and they can even provide a free 15-day free trial with this Carbonite discount link. Surely, if you want to share files online, this is not what Carbonite does as this is for another blog that will certainly be out soon.