
What files should you backup?
There are many files on your computer that change daily, or even more often, that you could lose if there is a crash or hard drive loss of data. It is also helpful with some data to have saved copies to refer back to at a later date. Here are some items that you may want to consider backing up:
Files to back up
- Any document that you are working on.
- Any document that is important to save.
- Your whole documents folder!
- Quicken data (or other banking/finance software.)
- Mail, Safari, iCal, and other sytem preferences (apple applications.)
- Preferences for your own applications.
- Your whole Home folder
- Note: Do not attempt to backup your Hard drive with backuplist. Use Carbon Copy Cloner or Silverkeeper for that.
backuplist offers an easy way to add your system preferences and important application preferences to the backup list automatically. These include your Mail, iCal, and Safari folders. The Mail folder contains all your accounts and messages so beware- it can be very large. You may want to make a separate archive of just this from time to time. Once you set up your list, backuplist does the rest!
Adding System and Application files
- To add Application or System preferences to your list, just press "A" or "S" in the list window.
- All your important system and application files will be added.
- You will see two folders with an asterisk* (below). These contain all the small .plist files.
- The *System Preferences are a pre-set collection including Dock, Finder, Ical, and others. If you had to do a clean install of your system, you could restore the "look" of your desktop, folders etc. with this set of files.
- To set up and edit the *Application Preferences, see below.
Editing the Application Preferences
- Go to File menu > Edit Application list.
- Add the names of any applications you want included and remove the ones you don't need. "Adobe" is fine, or "Adobe photoshop CS" if you want more accuracy.
- Then go to File menu > Edit Application Preferences.
- If you want to update the list, press "refresh" and backuplist scans for all application files.
- You can then edit this list of files. Don't leave any extra spaces or blank lines. Each file path should be on its own line (separated by a carriage return.)
- Then press "close" and the list will be saved for the next backup session.
- You can also view the System Preference files in File menu > System Preferences list.