burgold2 Loc: Cheshire. U.K.

iCloud, Time Machine, Carbon copy Cloner. Can make as many clones to external drives as you feel you need, copies everything and is bootable.

OldCADuser Loc: Irvine, CA

iCloud

MJPerini

Apple's free Time machine is a superb product for easy local backup, it should be part of your backup plan.
Carbon Copy Cloner is also very much worth having and can make Bootable clones.
Your 'off site' component can be via Apple or other cloud service.

bebop22 Loc: New York City

Im glad to see someone get into carbon copy cloner. It is wonderful.

BobHartung Loc: Bettendorf, IA

Can it make Bootable clones of Mac OS 13 (Ventura) on Apple silicon?

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

You don't need anything except for an external drive. Time Machine software is built into MacOS (not iOS... that's the iPhone Operating System).

There IS one piece of software worth having in addition to Time Machine, and that is Carbon Copy Cloner. It is DRIVE CLONING software used for making bootable copies of your internal drive (and MUCH more).

https://bombich.com is the site for Carbon Copy Cloner... It's $50 and fully compatible with MacOS Ventura 13.2.1.

Most Mac software is licensed to your Apple ID, so it is always available for download on your Mac from Apple's App Store, should anything happen. If you subscribe to Microsoft 365 or Adobe Photography Plan, those apps are downloaded by signing into your accounts on Microsoft and/or Adobe websites. Most other software not sold on the App Store is going to require a download and your registration information (serial number, installation code, user license name...), so keep that in a safe place.

One bit of advice: As you move to the MacOS, realize that it is not Windows. It does the same basic things, but in very different ways in some cases! Certain features of Windows are exclusive to Windows, just as certain features are exclusive to MacOS. Don't make the mistake of making one into the other. I ran both in my office for 25 years, so I got used to their quirks.

That said, between System Settings and Finder Preferences and the individual preference panels of Mac applications, there are hundreds of ways to customize your experience to maintain some degree of familiarity. Suffice it to say, no two Mac users will set up their Macs the same way.

BTW: Try all the free Mac apps. They are all useful... no bloatware or crap-ware there! I use most of them for one thing or another, even as I continue to use Office and the Adobe Photography Plan.

russraman Loc: New York City

Apple's built-in and FREE TimeMachine software is reliable and works great for automatic hourly back-ups. But you can also easily back-up important files manually on a LaCie or Western Digital hard drive, just as an extra safety net.

neillaubenthal

Get a BackBlaze subscription for an offsite backup, use Time Machine…and if you want more backups get a copy of CarbonCopyCloner from Bombich.com…written by and primarily supported by Mike Bombich who used to work in Apple’s disk formatting team…I own both it and SuperDuper but the latter is unused due to limited capabilities and the complete non interest in the author in adding additional capabilities similar to CCC. CCc allows cloning entire disks or just folders to both local and local network destinations, includes versioning and all sorts of scheduling options…and is my backup app of choice. There’s also SuperDuper…but while it’s good at doing a full disk clone like the name says…it is very obtuse if you want to setup folder syncs to another location…it’s a one trick pony. There are also a couple of other apps…ChronoSync gets good press but I’ve never used it as CCC does everything anybody needs…and an app named Sync. I think that BackupExec still is sold…but it’s oriented more to businesses use and tape drives as destinations the last time I checked.

Also…don’t forget that DropBox has however much space you want and gets synced to the cloud…along with a bunch of similar apps. Finally…JungleDisk will do backups including versioning and scheduling to Amazon servers or just about any commercially available drive space…I used to use it but BackBlaze is superior.

iCloud is not really a backup…so although I use it to share files with iPad and iPhone it’s not a backup for me.

Also…be advised that with current macOS and anything running on Apple Silicon…backing up the boot drive is almost a non starter. You can still do it and sometimes it even provides a disk you can boot from in an emergency…but it is deprecated, depends on some Apple tools that they said will go away, and is no longer suggested. Your Macintosh HD is actually 2 volumes that look like one…one is a few GB and contains a signed, locked, read only copy of the macOS and an associated Data volume that has user directories and applications…but you just see the one volume in Finder.

Apple no longer really wants you to clone the macOS…and as I said while it is still technically possible the clone frequently doesn’t work…even for a guy like me who has done macOS since the System 6 days (or maybe even earlier…since 1985 to 86. And if your internal drive on any Apple Silicon machine fails booting is simply impossible by design. If you do want a separate bootable drive…much better to actually install macOS on it directly so all the signing and such gets done properly…and even then you have to boot into recovery mode and do some settings before an external will boot.

Finally…when you get your Mac, the first account you create will be an admin account…not quite as powerful as the root account in the underlying Unix core of macOS…but you do not want this to be your daily driver account as you can screw yourself if not careful. In System Settings create another standard account and log into that one (or set it as the auto login account if that’s your desire although I recommend against that. Then when you need to do something that requires admin fights like install an app…you will get an authentication dialog…just enter the admin username and password and it works even though your logged in account is non admin. And don’t forget to enable FileVault to keep the entire drive encrypted.

neillaubenthal

Yes there is…TM has a lot of horror stories associated with it and one should really be using the 3-2-1 backup theory anyway.

cindo51

I have been using LaCie back up drives for years...I do time machine back-ups regularly and often store folders of photos on the external drives as well. I haven't used any software programs to back up...but maybe I will look into that as well! Good luck in Apple Land!

CamB Loc: Juneau, Alaska

Ah! It seems you too have dealt with that one little quirk in CCC.

ejw 46 Loc: Tempe, AZ

Thank you all for the feedback. I have already implemented Time Machine and will explore Carbon Copy Cloner, Good Sync, and I Drive for backup and copying files/folders to other external drives.

tomc601 Loc: Gilbert, AZ

Time Machine. Amazing how well it works. Of course, you should have a dedicated drive for your backups and leave it connected all the time. Time Machine backs up at regular intervals throughout the day. I also use Sync Folders Pro (free) to back up my photos and other files I don't keep on my computer's hard drive.

ejw 46 Loc: Tempe, AZ

Neil,

Thank you for taking the time to provide all this information. I must admit the transition from Windows to Apple is not the easiest one. :>) (.

317tman Loc: Indianapolis, In

I’ve been using Carbon Copy Clone on my mac in addition to Time Machine for years. Works well for me.