A Complete Backup Is BOTH Local AND Off-Site. Don't get ROBBED Of Your Data!

We’ve heard this story before:
We recently learned via another Apple Authorized Reseller about their client, an attorney on the West Coast, whose MacBook Pro and Time Capsule were stolen in a recent break-in. Everything he had was on those two devices.
If a drug addict breaks into your home or office looking for stuff to steal to fuel their next drug fix, they WILL steal anything that has an Apple logo on it and anything else they think might be related. They will grab ANYTHING else they think they can get as little as $5 for. The same holds true for most break-ins these days, if it’s not a quick smash and grab, crooks will steal ALL they they think they can get away with and will take their time to clean you out.
Update 5/19/14: One of our clients, a college student from St. Mary’s College of Southern Maryland, had her whole apartment robbed over the weekend. Her MacBook AND her backup hard drive were BOTH stolen. As mentioned in the case from the West Coast above, this is a situation where having a backup off-site would have been extremely helpful. For college students, Dropbox is a great way to have your data in two places at once. While not a real backup solution, Dropbox does offer a good way to store a good amount of school work and projects for free. It is however imperative to goto the Internet and CHANGE your Dropbox password and Apple ID or any other password that might be stored on your computer. When your computer gets stolen, you should also treat it as an identity theft. Also, for Dropbox customers with a stolen Mac computer, you might be able to contact Dropbox to get the ID address of your stolen Mac’s last IP address which might help the police catch who ripped you off!
You might be 100% totally backed up locally, which is AWESOME because so many people don’t even do that, but if your data needs to be backed up, you need three things to have a complete back up:
The important thing is to PLAN AHEAD. Your back up is not complete if it’s not:
1. Automatic (Use Time Machine and this point is covered)
2. Redundant (Double your back up with a clone of your data or use an off-site back up and this point is covered)
3. Off-Site (Take your double back up off-site or get Mozy or CrashPlan Pro and this point is covered)
If you’d like to sign up for CrashPlan Pro, we have links to that service below. We also have our own CrashPlan backup server which we offer for clients that want to backup with MacMedics
http://www.macmedics.com/crashplan
We also have a number of other backup related articles on the MacMedics Blog about Time Machine, backups in general, and some posts about disaster planning.
Don’t Play Trick Or Treat With Your Mac’s Back Up!
It’s Not A Real Backup Until You Also Have An Off-Site Copy Of Your Data
Be sure to read “The Nine Things We Wish We Did Before Our House Burned Down“. We have the list line by line and a link to the original post, which is a “MUST READ” for anyone that has a house OR a computer