Backing up data from a Mac Computer

Migration Assistant

If a user has purchased a new laptop, they should follow the directions on transferring files to the new laptop using Apple’s own Setup Assistant or Migration Assistant. The migration assistant requires a firewire cable and power outlets. Start your new mac and follow the directions to transfer your files.

If the user has access to another mac, but not in their possession, then backing up the entire Home folder is preferred. This will allow the user to move all of their data (iTunes, iPhoto, Mail, iMovie, Documents, Desktop, etc.) to a new mac without anything changing. This does not move applications, they should be reinstalled from the original discs.

Moving your entire Home folder

Your home folder has almost everything you have changed or saved on your computer. It stores your mail, Safari bookmarks, iWeb sites, documents; and it saves them all in your Home folder. You can find your Home folder by opening the Macintosh HD, and then Users folder. Under the users folder you will see a folder with your username. That is your Home folder. It should also have an icon like a home, dead giveaway.

If you have a small home folder, you may be able to burn it to a disc to save it. Otherwise you may need to purchase a external hard drive to save it to. Your home folder can not be bigger than 80GB because that is the max size of your hard drive in the laptop. To copy your home folder correctly, you should create a new admin account and log into that before trying to copy your Home folder. This will make allow all the files to transfer without error. If you do not do this and you stay logged into the same account your trying to back up, the files will have errors while trying to copy because some of them will still be in use.

Once you have copied your home folder to the external drive, you can retrieve data from it at any time. If you should choose to copy it to another mac in the future, it is a little tricky, but not impossible. You should first, on the new mac, create a user account with the same short name as your home folder. If you have a user account already, you can just rename the folder to match your short name. You can find your short name in the Accounts pane of the System Preferences. Once you have a user account, you will then need an admin account too.

This admin account will allow you to make changes to the other users home folder. Otherwise this is not possible. You can delete the admin account when you are done. Create an Admin account using the System Preferences. Log into the admin account and delete the old (or new if you just created an account) home folder of the user on the mac. Then copy the home folder from the external hard drive to the Users folder. Once this is done, open the Terminal, which is located in /Applications/Utilities/. You will have to type in these commands without the quotes:

Replace ‘user’ with your short username and enter the admin account password when it asks for it.

“cd /Users/” “sudo chown -R ‘user’ ‘user’/” “sudo chmod -R 775 ‘user’/”

If you get no errors after hitting return, you can log out of the admin account and log into your own account. You will see all of your data and settings the same.

Moving files to a different laptop

If the user does not have a new Mac laptop, they need to back up their files to another media, such as DVD. The directions for the appropriate program follows.

iTunes

Start by checking your burning preferences. Go to iTunes, Preferences, Advanced, Burning. Change the disc format to “Data CD or DVD”. Create a new playlist. Then copy all your music and videos into the playlist. Click the “Burn Disc” button on the bottom of the screen and insert a blank CD or DVD. iTunes will tell you if your music will fit on one disc or more, and it will separate it for you and burn it on separate media.

iPhoto

Open iPhoto and choose your Library. Go to the Share menu and choose Burn. Insert a DVD or CD into the computer when iPhoto asks. iPhoto will show you how much space you can fit on the media and if you are close to it. If your overall library is larger that the media, you will need to split the photos into albums. Once you get your photos to the right amount and size, click the burn button.

iMovie

All iMovie projects are saved in their own files. These are normally saved inside the movies folder in you home folder. Normally these files are quite large and can only be backed up occasionally. If you have a project that does not fit on a DVD or CD, you may need to purchase an external hard drive to copy it to. If you do not need to keep the projects, you can export them to movies and just save the movie. iMovie projects do NOT work on any computer except a Mac running OS X 10.4 & iLife 06’.

iDVD

iDVD projects are saved in their own files. These files are just the titles of any dvd. These files are normally small and can be backed up with a CD or DVD easily. These usually are not necessary to back up because they are made from your photos and music collections, and take little time to recreate. iDVD projects do NOT work on any computer except a Mac running OS X 10.4 & iLife 06’.

iWeb

There are two ways to back up iWeb. They depend on if you will have access to a mac to edit your site with. If you do, back up the “Domain.sites” file that is located in Home/Library/Application Support/iWeb/. This file can then be copied to another Mac running OS X 10.4 and iLIfe 06’ and be edited. If you do not have access to another Mac, then you will need to export using “Publish to a folder”. This will allow editing using another application such as Dreamweaver or FrontPage.

Mail

Mac Mail is stored in Home/Library/Mail folder. This folder can be burnt to a Disc using the Finder. Insert a disc and copy the folder to it. Double click the disc and hit the burn button in the top right of the window. Mail saves all emails in a standard .mbox file. This file is text and at the very least can be read with a text editor. If you can use another mac, copy this folder back into the Library folder and your mail will return. You will loose your account settings, but they are easy to remember.

Safari

Bookmarks in Safari can be dragged to the desktop to be saved. They will only work on a Mac computer running OS X 10.3 or higher. You can also export all of your bookmarks in Safari as an HTML file. While in Safari, click the File menu, then select export bookmarks.