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Protect your data with “Take Control of Backing Up Your Mac, Second Edition”

Could you get back to work quickly and without data loss if your drive were to fail, or if your Mac were dropped or stolen? I hope the answer is yes, but either way, Joe Kissell’s “Take Control of Backing Up Your Mac, Second Edition” has the information you need to ensure that all – and I do mean all – your data is protected in case of crash, corruption, or calamity.

The 201-page second edition has been significantly updated to cover all the changes to the backup world in the last 2 years – it’s normally $20, but the 30% MUG discount drops that to $14. Learn more about the book via the coupon-loaded link below.

http://tid.bl.it/backing-up-mug-discount

For those who already have a backup strategy (good!), Joe has poured a great deal of thought into the “Reassess Your Backup Strategy” chapter especially for you. Give it a read to find out if you should be adjusting the way you make backups given new features in Time Machine, improvements in online backup services, changes in available backup hardware, and updates to key software packages. Also note the new “Teach This Book” section, which has links to a one-page handout and a PDF-based presentation that you can use to help others improve their backups (it’s easier to help them make backups than to try to recover their data later!).

On the other hand, if you’re hesitant about your backup strategy, or if you don’t have the holy trinity of versioned backups, a bootable duplicate, and offsite backups (in other words, Time Machine alone is NOT enough!), please, please read this book and do what Joe recommends. Setting up a solid backup strategy doesn’t have to be hard or expensive, but everyone will lose data, sooner or later, and with a good backup, you can turn what could have been a catastrophic accident into a minor annoyance.

Although tax season is past for the year, we couldn’t resist channeling the kind of excuses that the lack of good backups engender in this “Joe of Tech” comic from our friends Snaggy and Nitrozac of Joy of Tech:

http://www.takecontrolbooks.com/news/joe-of-tech-on-backups

Why do you need versioned backups, a bootable duplicate, and an offsite backup?

* Versioned backups, such as those made by Time Machine, are essential if you need to recover an earlier version of a file. Perhaps you – or someone else! – made changes that turned out to be inadvisable, or perhaps the program crashed and corrupted the document. It happens, and it’s the pits.

* A bootable duplicate is key for anyone for whom downtime is a problem. Reinstalling Mac OS X and restoring from a Time Machine backup works fine, but it will take hours. If you have a major deadline looming, you can be up and running from a duplicate in the time it takes to reboot your Mac.

* An offsite backup can be the hardest to justify, because you never want to think that your home or office will be ransacked by thieves, or that you’ll lose hardware to fire, flood, hurricane, tornado, or meteorite impact. OK, the last one is unlikely, but the others are unfortunately all too commonplace.

Although “Take Control of Backing Up Your Mac, Second Edition” is designed so you can focus on only the topics that are most important to you, if you read the entire ebook, you’ll learn how to design a reliable backup system, choose the best hardware and software for your needs, operate Time Machine, make your backups, deal with any special backup needs, and – most importantly – recover lost data after a crash or other disaster.

To sweeten the deal, we’ve included coupons for six of the programs and services Joe recommends: ChronoSync, CrashPlan, Data Backup 3, DollyDrive, QRecall, and Retrospect Desktop. Use almost any of them, and the book will effectively be free.

http://tid.bl.it/backing-up-mug-discount

Thank you for your support of the Take Control series, and regardless of whether you buy this ebook, please make those backups! We hate hearing from customers who buy the ebook only after losing data, or, worse, who bought the ebook but suffered a hard drive crash before getting around to setting up a backup system.

cheers… -Adam & Tonya Engst, Take Control publishers

P.S. Check out some of our other recently released ebooks, all at 30% off:

* Take Control of Your Passwords (one of our top-sellers of late)
* Take Control of PDFpen 6 (for all your PDF manipulation needs)
* Take Control of Dropbox (because it’s more subtle than it seems)
* Take Control of Using Mountain Lion (covering lots of important features)

http://tid.bl.it/tco-catalog-mug-discount

With the release of Mac OS X 10.7 Lion and numerous other changes in the backup world in the past year, Joe Kissell has updated all the details and distilled his various advice in “Take Control of Mac OS X Backups” and its younger sibling, “Take Control of Easy Mac Backups,” to provide a single, unified set of recommendations that will serve the needs of nearly any Mac user. The result is the 210-page “Take Control of Backing Up Your Mac,” which provides, as Joe puts it, “a modern approach to Mac backups that covers the bases but doesn’t overwhelm you with extraneous details.” Although it is carefully designed so you can read just the parts that are important to you, the full ebook describes how to design a reliable backup system, understand backup lingo, shop for hardware, choose backup software, operate Time Machine (and determine whether Time Machine is a good option and what to do if it’s not), make backups, deal with any special backup needs, and – most importantly – recover lost data after a crash or other calamity.

Modernize your backups with “Take Control of Backing Up Your Mac”

A quick question. If you had to rely on your backups right now, could you recover your data? Would you be able to get back to work relatively quickly? These aren’t rhetorical questions, as thousands of flood victims in southern New York and northern Pennsylvania can attest. Most data isn’t lost to natural disasters, of course, but to failing hard disks, dropped or stolen laptops, and simple human or computer error. But whatever the cause, if you – like most of us today – rely on your Mac for your business, for important communication, or for the photographic record of your personal life, you need rock-solid backups from which you can restore after any sort of catastrophe.

The most popular Take Control ebooks of all time have helped tens of thousands of Mac users set up backup strategies, and the author of those titles, Joe Kissell, has now distilled all his advice about the topic and all that has changed in the last year into a single new book, “Take Control of Backing Up Your Mac.” Whether you wish to rethink your existing backup strategy to handle changing needs and take advantage of new options, or you haven’t yet gone so far as to even turn on Time Machine, “Take Control of Backing Up Your Mac” will help you design a custom backup strategy that will let you recover quickly from a lost file, get back to work quickly if your entire hard disk dies, and avoid losing anything important if your home or office is destroyed. It’s fully up-to-date for Mac OS X 10.7 Lion, but covers 10.6 Snow Leopard and 10.5 Leopard too. It’s normally $15, but you can get it for only $10.50 with the 30% off MUG coupon embedded in this link:

http://tid.bl.it/backing-up-mug-discount

As Joe describes it, “I’d like to think that what we now have is a modern approach to Mac backups that covers the bases but doesn’t overwhelm you with extraneous details. I explain how to develop a solid backup strategy, what your choices are, how to set everything up, what sorts of pitfalls you may encounter, and how to restore your data if disaster strikes. Rather than explore every alternative exhaustively, I guide you gently but firmly into a fairly narrow set of options that should yield excellent results for the vast majority of Mac users.”

Although you can focus on only the topics that are most important to you, if you read the entire ebook, you’ll learn how to design a reliable backup system, shop for hardware, choose your backup software, operate Time Machine (and know whether Time Machine is a good option for you and what to do if it’s not), make your backups, deal with any special backup needs, and – most importantly – recover lost data after a crash or other calamity. A pair of coupons help you save $30 off Data Backup and 10% off CrashPlan, both of which make Joe’s recommended list.

Take Control of Mac OS X Backups, Fifth Edition

Set up a rock-solid backup strategy so that you can restore quickly and completely, no matter what catastrophe arises.

In this comprehensive, 228-page book, backup guru Joe Kissell helps you pick the best backup strategy for your needs and understand the hows and whys of what you are doing, taking you far beyond the limited security of turning on Time Machine or copying a few files to CD. You’ll get an at-a-glance comparison of different backup strategies (low-cost, easy, safest), advice for backing up digital photos and massive video projects, and time-tested recommendations for setting up, testing, maintaining, and restoring backups.

Click here for the 30% CDPUG Discount. Take Control of Mac OS X Backups, Fifth Edition.