Backup solutions are one of those things that get the short shrift for freelance designers, like health insurance. And like health insurance, they seem like a waste of money until something terrible goes wrong, then you curse never having obtained it.

Incredibly I haven’t had major data loss in the past five years (despite switching from a custom-built Windows PC to an iMac to a Macbook Pro), but that doesn’t mean I’ve been skimping on data storage.

My current favorite solution is Carbon Copy Cloner, a free app for OSX that makes backing up a breeze. While I still use Time Machine for system backup, I use CCC for backing up my work and maintaining my archives (I have two hard drives with two clones each, totaling 6 internal hard drives hot-swappable via two firewire-enabled hard drive docks).

CCC allows me to schedule backups based on a clock or whenever the drives are mounted (I use the latter). I have two original backup drives: the first backs up my current work and projects, taking them off my laptop’s hard drive, and keeping older versions archived as space permits; the second drive are for finished/archived projects, which I put there manually. CCC then allows me to keep perfect clones of both drives so I have 3 identical copies always.

Just earlier today I had a project that required a major redesign and rerender of 3d elements, only to have the changes recalled at the last minute. I had overwritten the original project elements already, and rerendering them as they were before would’ve amounted to hours of rendering time. Luckily CCC kept copies of those old prerenders which allowed me to drag them back to their current status.