Syncing your iPhone with your computer will do three key things. It’ll update the apps, music, videos, podcasts, photos, etc. on your iPhone based on whatever you have on your computer. This may be all that you expected would happen. But, it will also backup your iPhone so that if you lose your iPhone (or replace it for any other reason) you can load the new one with a backup and get everything back as it was. It’s really seamless and will appear magical the first time you setup a new device from a backup. The other benefit syncing will give you is that iTunes will periodically check to make sure the system software on your phone is the latest and greatest version. iTunes will prompt you to download and install the newest version of the OS if your phone isn’t up-to-date. You’ll get new features and/or fixes for issues when your OS is updated.

These are three great benefits to regularly syncing your device with iTunes. Do it at least monthly. You’ll want that backup one day in the future!

MacBook & MacBook Pro

The average hard disk drive for the new MacBooks is 250GB, so you should try to get a least a 500GB hard drive as your backup.

The LaCie Rugged Hard Disk is a good option for a MacBook. It’s rugged so it will stand up better to being packed into a bag and lugged around along with your laptop and it is is available in 500GB sizes. It connects to your Mac over Hi-Speed USB 2.0 which is bus-powered so you don’t have to bother plugging in a power cable too. It doesn’t have any other connections which helps keep the cost down and meshes well with the new MacBook (non-Pro) which no longer has a FireWire port.

A better option, however is probably the Apple Time Capsule. It is a disk drive and a Wi-Fi base station built into one tiny box. And it is also offered in a 500GB configuration. Anytime your MacBook is within range of the Time Capsule’s Wi-Fi network, it will seamlessly backup without you having to make any cable connections – or even think about it really.

If you’ve upgraded to the 320GB hard drive on either of the MacBooks, you’re probably good but you might want to consider stepping up to a 1TB (1,000GB) hard drive. LaCie has their Little Big Disk Quadra or the Big Disk Extreme+ (the Little Big Disk Quadra is pricey but it is bus-powered over FireWire so the MacBook Pro users can leave the power adapter at home) in 1TB sizes. And Apple offers the Time Capsule in a 1TB version as well.

MacBook Air

The Air maxes out at 128GB with its solid state drive. And its 120GB hard drive isn’t far away from that. So, you’ll want to get at least a 256GB backup drive.

The LaCie Rugged Hard Disk is also a good option for the MacBook Air. Although, for the Air you can save some money by opting for the 250GB version. But, getting the 500GB capacity version of it certainly wouldn’t hurt.

I still recommend the Time Capsule as the better choice for the MacBook Air, but the lowest capacity Apple offers is 500GB.

Mac Mini

The average size hard disk drive for the Mac Mini is 120GB, so a 250GB hard drive is ideal.

The LaCie Mini would be great in its 250GB capacity, but unfortunately they’ve discontinued it. You may still be able to find these on clearance around the web.

Instead, get the Iomega MiniMax drive that is at the lowest price. They should all be at least 500GB.

A better option is to get the LaCie Big Disk Extreme+ Triple because it offers incredible value. A 1TB drive is only $200 at the time I’m writing this. You’ll have plenty of room left over to store non-critical files that you don’t mind not having a backup of.

iMac

The average iMac probably has a 320GB hard drive in it. So, you’ll want to get a 1TB backup drive for it. Like most things with the iMac, deciding on the right backup drive is easy. Get the 1TB LaCie Big Disk Extreme+ Triple and connect it to your iMac with a FireWire 800 cable. If you’ve opted for a larger internal hard drive, just upsize to the 2TB version of this drive.

Mac Pro

OK, I’ve been suggesting hard drive models and capacities up to now. But, the Mac Pro is highly configurable, so I am going to simply suggest the drives. Size them according to the storage you’ve configured your Mac Pro with – and don’t forget to double it for your backup drive.

A good option, and actually what I use right now, is the LaCie Big Disk Extreme+ Triple. I really like this drive and it hasn’t failed me yet.

A better option is to go with a Drobo from Data Robotics. The two major benefits of the Drobo are that it provides fail-safe storage (one of the drives can fail without losing any data) and it allows you to expand its storage capacity terabyte-by-terabyte all the way up to 16TB on a single volume as disk sizes increase. You can buy it empty and add your own drives or you can buy it pre-installed with 2TB or 4TB worth of drives. The Drobo is a great option, but it is pricey and that’s why I don’t have one yet. So, make sure to price it out with how ever many drives you want before committing to this as your backup solution.

All you have to do is connect an external hard drive to your Mac, and the system will ask you if you want to use it for backups. Tell it that you want to, and you’re done. The next thing you know the computer is performing the first backup of all of your data. After this is complete, Time Machine will backup any changes (including new files) every hour that your computer is active.

Restoring files from Time Machine is also extremely easy. Just click on the Time Machine icon in your Dock, or start Time Machine from your Applications folder. Time Machine will whisk into view presenting you with the current state of your application. You can scan back in time to look for lost files by either clicking the back arrow or picking a particular time from the timeline on the right. Select the files you want to restore and click the restore button. Time Machine then slides out of view and your restored files are available again in your application. You’ll probably most often use Time Machine from the Finder, but it also works with other applications like iPhoto or Mail.

You can tell Time Machine that there are folders that you don’t want to backup, if you’d like. A good use of this is excluding your podcasts from the backups. My podcasts folder (located in your iTunes Music folder) is currently 8.4 gigabytes in size, so preventing them from being backed up saves space on my backup volume. Especially when you consider that the contents of the podcasts folder could be changing daily or hourly and if you lose them, you can probably get them back from the original source if it is that important.