What is the best back up for a home mac?

I researched this a couple of years ago and decided SuperDuper! was the best backup utility, both because it preserves the most “metadata” related to each file and because it allows you to create a clone of your hard drive that is bootable. This means that if your hard drive dies, you can instantly reboot using your backup drive.

If you want something simple, then periodically back up your photos to DVD or set up a backup hard drive using Time Machine, which is included with 10.6 and higher.

I think you should use a coupe of methods. Time Machine is great and a no brainer. On top of that, you can do Carbonite. That way if your house catches fire, your photos are stored somewhere else.

I use Time Machine for primary and SuperDuper for the safety net. it gives me an opportunity for another large piece of plastic on the desk for Milo to warm himself on.

I use a remote solution—which has the advantage of you not having to worry about taking care of your own hardware and not having to worry about losing both your computer and laptop at the same time (say in a fire, as @missingbite mentioned). It does have the disadvantage of taking time and putting your backup system at someone else’s mercy.

I chose Backblaze because reading their blog made it clear to me that they were technologically savvy and trustworthy. Their software is easy and runs constantly in the background. It took about a month to do my initial backup, but after that it updates incrementally and now I never worry about my data being lost. (It used to pretty much always be a worry in the back of my head.) I’ve had to recover files from them once after hard drive failure, and it worked mostly pain-free (the download took a long time and I had to redo my initial backup after restore…) so I give them my endorsement.

Other similar services are Carbonite (as mentioned above) and Mozy. I’m pretty sure most of them cost $4 or $5/month.

The best solution would be to have both an on-site backup you take care of yourself and a remote backup, but I’m not quite responsible enough for that yet.

I use Time Machine, and periodically do DVDs and copy to another hard drive (I don’t trust just one hard drive). An offsite backup would also be good, but I haven’t gotten around to that. I really should. I love the Time Machine because I only have to remember to plug in the hard drive. It will back up wirelessly, too, but that is noticeably slow, whereas with the physical connection I usually don’t even notice when it’s backing up.

I use Time Machine with a Time Capsule in my home and CrashPlan for online backup.

@ratboy CrashPlan! I knew there was one that had a house as a logo and I couldn’t remember what it was, but it was really bothering me. Thanks for settling my mind.