Could someone please tell me the fastest, cheapest, simplest way to back up all my data (photos and music) thanks!

Question

Well I am heading in to the
apple services store to collect my computer which went dead in my power cut 10 days ago (discussed in my last post), and has since been fixed with new power supply.  My question is - what's the cheapest and easiest way for me to back-up all my data (several thousand photos, and similar number of songs on iTunes, and a few quicktime video files)  Is there a product I can buy to save it on - I have no idea how many gigs etc, that will be? and what I need to buy to do so, and finally, how easy/fast will it be to save everything.... this is indeed a very simple thing, I am sure, but I have never done it before, just saved odd bits on pen drives, etc.....  The repair is costing over $400 - and as it's an old imac, aside from the fact it has all of Final Cut Pro Studio on it - it's hardly worth the repair price.... what I want though is to save everything as cheaply and simply as possible - what do I need to buy and how (in simple language please) do I save it... Many many thanks if anyone can put this in simple language for me... Cheers

Answer 1

I agree with BGreg about OWC, great people and service, quality products and competitive prices. Not bigbox sell cheap stuff prices but fair prices. Like him I also like cloning with SuperDuper! or CCC. For most users CCC is perfect - SuperDuper! adds some extras that techs like.
But I'll also add a vote for Apple's own TimeMachine. It is an automatic backup system that runs every hour; the first backup takes a while and the rest not very long because they are backing up only the chances made in the last hour. Due to its schema, TimeMachine is most effective with a backup drive that is 2-3 times larger than your backup set. If you are using 200GB of your 500GB drive, then your TimeMachine backup drive should be at least 400GB and preferably closer to 600GB.
The two backup schemes are different and having two different backups is a very good idea - backup drives have been known to die . The clone's advantage is that it is a bootable system disk - if your computer's drive dies you can boot with it and keep working until you get the computer repaired. If your computer's drive gets messed up you can boot with the clone and try to repair it or at least recover some of the most recent files that aren't on the clone. (Which happens to be one of the disadvantages of a clone - people tend to reclone somewhat infrequently.) Having TimeMachine means you have very recent backups.
So if you intend to keep using this computer - TimeMachine might be the better choice - or at least another consideration. If you are just grabbing data - CCC will do the trick best.