The Mac Experience in Business & Home: Help, Tips, Discussion & Radio Show Notes

Prior to installing sync software, prior to various software updates, prior to troubleshooting any problems with your email software, your techs may be, should be! recommending you backup your mail.

A free way to do this with Mail.app in Apple’s OS X 10.4 is here:

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=301239#mail

An almost free way to do it ($10), and do it automatically, scheduled, with Apple Mail as well as Entourage and Thunderbird, is here:

http://homepage.mac.com/minge/emailbackuppro/index.html

On November 28th, I posted a blog about a customer’s equipment being destroyed by her local cable company, and the data recovery that ensued. The intended effect was to remind people people of the importance of backing up their data. Nearly all of the responses to the blog expressed disbelief that the event happened, and questioned the authenticity of the damage to the components. Evidence of the catastrophe follows.

I asked this customer permission to use her detailed account of what transpired along with photographs that she took at the scene.

There are many ways to lose important data, and not just on your computer (where did I put my keys?). While it is almost always unexpected, and we as computer-users are often unprepared - occasionally data-loss occurs in ways that make you sit back and consider the infinite.

Recently at the OnDeckTech 24×7 help desk, I received a call from a customer who was upset, suspecting she had just potentially lost a TON of very valuable data. A video editor here in Chicago, she has a 15″ Powerbook with an 80GB HD, two Maxtor 300GB External Drives, and one 160GB LaCie Porsche drive. ALL of which fell victim to one of the most bizarre disasters I have encountered.

In this step-by-step, we’ll walk through backing up Microsoft Entourage 2004 data in Mac OS X. Before we begin, know that Entourage groups, notes with multimedia items, and category information for everything except contacts cannot be saved in the backup file.

To create an archive of your Entourage identity, click on the File menu and click Export:

This will bring up an export window in Entourage. Select Export items to an Entourage archive and choose the items you wish to backup. In this example, Entourage will back up all items:

A good thing to do prior to first synchronizing your calendars and address books with .Mac or Zimbra here’s how to back up Apple’s iCal & Address Book data in Mac OS X 10.4.

Backing up iCal:
First, launch iCal and select File > Back up Database:

A window will appear in iCal requesting where to save the backup file to:

This will create a backup file of iCal:

After creating your backup file, store it safely on an external hard drive or burn the data to CD/DVD. To recover from your backup file, simply navigate to File > Revert to Database Backup and select the backup file.