10 Best Backup and Recovery Software For Mac

If Apple tries to convince you that Mac is unassailable, its not exactly so. There’s is no denying Macs are almost impregnable to viruses and spyware unlike the PC’s. Still the Mac systems are vulnerable to hard drive crashes that even both Steves (- Jobs and Wozniak) can’t shirk off. Well such a situation can be disastrous, in case you have no reliable backup or just insufficient backup. Now keeping a crude backup on CD or DVD might cost you a significant amount of time and never looks feasible for bulky backup’s. Why worry, when there are a number of backup programs available for Mac OS X. Some of these are freeware, while there are others are feature-rich programs that come as shareware or commercial packages. After a thorough research we found the 10 best backup software for Mac.

1. Apple Backup

This is a free backup software by Apple for .Mac members. It allows you to keep a backup to their .Mac account, second hard drive or their Apple-supplied CD or DVD reader. Users can select the files and folders to be backed and schedule the backup according to time and dates. It also allows you to configure the plans using QuickPicks or a Tiger Spotlight search.
Compatibility: Mac OS X 10.3.9 or higher

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2. Time Machine

It’s a backup program built into Mac OS X or higher versions that allows you to automatically back up the entire system. Time Machine keeps an updated copy of all your digital photos, movies, music, documents, TV shows and more. Whenever you need, you can go back to the date and recover the files.

Compatibility: Mac OS X 10.5
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3.  SilverKeeper

This freeware for Mac OS X automates backups to external storage devices like hard drives and other removable storage. SilverKeeper allows the users to create an exact copy of file, folder or disk. In case there is a backup to the disk more than once, it compares the old and new data and informs the user about differences.  Compatibility: Mac OS X 10.3.9, 10.4.11, or 10.5.x.

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4. Retrospect

This is feature-packed schedulable commercial backup and recovery software designed for home office, small office, small and midsize businesses, and branch offices to protect critical data on their Macs. It offers an intuitive and easy to use interface and enterprise-level features such as remote management of one or more backup servers and disk-to-disk-to-tape backups at minimal price.

Compatibility: Mac OS X 10.4.11 or higher (Intel Only)

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5.  SuperDuper!

In case you want the backup running in instantaneously after a hard drive crash, you would require the entire copy of Mac’s hard drive, including the whole operating system, applications, system settings and data. The freeware SuperDuper! allows you to clone your Mac’s hard drive to an external, bootable disk. You can plug it into another Mac start up fresh in your system has freezed.

Compatibility: Mac OS X 10.5 or higher
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6. iBackup

This is a simple to use freeware backup program that scheduled backup of the files, folders, application as well as the system preferences such as the dock, deskop picture, time settings, firewall, bluetooth and the system application like address book, Mail, Stickies, iChat, iTunes and more, which you want to save. iBackup would write the backup files to any mounted hard drive.
Compatibility: Mac OS X 10.3.9 or higher

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7. Carbon Copy cloner

This is a shareware that allows you to clone, synchronize and backup files in Mac. The software comes with a clean and easy to use interface that makes the cloning more intuitive and responsive. With Carbon Copy people have greater control over the backup and also offers details of the backup progress. In addition to general backup, the software also allows you to clone one hard drive to another. What’s more, it offers a unique block-level copy feature that copies every single block or file to create an exact replica of your source hard drive.

Compatibility: Mac OS X 10.4.8 or higher

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8. CopyCatX

It’s a powerful Mac application for data backup, restoration and recovery in Mac OS X. The backup software is designed to backup and restore a volume; copy a device or volume to disk image or other devices; and recover the contents of a device or media to an image. CopyCatX is a device and application independent application, creates disk images from any normal Mac OS hard drive.

Compatibility: Mac OS X 10.3 or higher

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9. Deja Vu

As the name suggests it’s offers an innovative approach to backup files. The program allows a scheduled backup of an unlimited number of folders to local data storage devices or remote devises using WebDAV, AFP, NFS and SMB. Deja Vu also enables synchronization of folder contents and clones the OS X system disk that provides a bootable copy.

Compatibility: Mac OS X 10.4.11 or higher

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10.  Data Backup

This is an powerful and easy-to-use backup utility for Mac. It can backup your iTunes or iPhoto files, other important data in a jiffy. Using Data Backup you can backup the FireWire and USB Drives, networks volumes, CDs and even DVDs. You can schedule the backup according to your convenience.

Compatibility: Mac OS X 10.3 or higher

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