Advice for backup choices

I have FOUR Mac laptops that I have to troubleshoot regularly. Mine (MacBook) works great. My daughter's Macbook Pro has just crashed, and I'm trying to recover the files, etc. My sons each have an ibook G4 (one older than the other).

ANYWAY, after my daughter's computer crashed today, I realized that I NEED to have some kind of external backup going on, and I have none. My computer is used for all of our personal finances AND all of my work files. (I'm a teacher.)

I'm looking for the best way to back up my laptops. I need something that is simple but very effective. I know NOTHING about backing things up. (I know, pathetic!)

Thank you for any help you can give me! Michelle

Purchase an external hard drive and use it for your backups. Since you didn't mention which operating system you're using... I'll assume it's Leopard or later. Time Machine is built into Leopard and Snow Leopard and is probably the easiest way to backup your machine as it's done automatically.

If your OS X is before Leopard (Tiger or earlier), post back and I'll suggest something else.

Regards.

Have a look at McBies comments here to help decide which criteria is important in your future plan. One cheap possibility if room permits is to partition all laptops to 2 partitions and back up A to B and B to C etc... on the basis of 2 drives failing at the same time is fairly remote. Perhaps a big Ext HD with 4 partitions and each laptop with a copy of SuperDuper for backing up.

I am using Leopard and SnowLeopard on all four laptops, so I can use time machine. Do you have any advice as far as what brand or type of external hard drive to purchase? I once purchased one at Costco (250 mb, I think), but once I got it home and tried to use it, my computer wouldn't recognize it. So, I'm looking for what works well with Mac, is economical, and is reliable.

Most hard drives that are available for purchase are probably going to be formatted for use with Windows. You'll need to use Disk Utility to reformat. Time Machine will only work with a drive that's formatted to the HFS Extended Journaled file system. That's probably why the drive you purchased at Costco wasn't recognized.

Any good quality hard drive should work. Costco, Sam's Club, Best Buy, Fry's, and so on, all stock many different brands. Just remember that you will have to probably reformat the drive prior to its use for Time Machine. There are drives that are sold (Apple Store) which are already pre-formatted for use with OS X and Time Machine.

Regards.

Thanks!

I appreciate your help. I'm going to go do some price comparisons right now!

If you are a member of Costco or similar check there, they usually have the Western Digital Passport line pretty cheap, its small and USB is self powered thus you'll have fewer excuses for not backing up.

Costco

Will do! I just checked the Apple Store, and the Time Capsule is pretty expensive. Is it difficult to reformat the drive for Mac?

No, is anything on the Mac that difficult? Disk Utility does the formatting and its very easy.

Good point! Lol! Thanks for the tips!