I wrote this article after my HD failed and I didn't have a backup. Luckily I could still access my drive as a external drive, so was able to drag information from it. A few months later exactly the same thing happened to my friend and again he had no backup, so thought I would write a article about it and hopefully people will follow it and not suffer the same fate I did.

What would you do if you powered your Mac on and instead of booting up as normal, the busy icon just kept spinning and it never booted. You could take it to your nearest Apple store and they will happily take it off you and fix it but it will cost and also could take up to several weeks. But if your feeling confident and have a bit of computer knowlodge, then read on and see how simple it is to swap the HD out for a new one and create a backup solution for when the new HD fails.

Its really easy to backup your Hard Drive and should the un-thinkable happen and your Hard Drive fails, it's a simple job to be back up and running in no time at all. Your Hard Drive could last years or it could go 1 day out of your warranty. People say its not "if your Hard Drive fails" but its "when your Hard Drive fails".

Its still up to you to backup though, this article will only help you if you backup. We can only put your machine back to the state it was on when you last backed up. I tend to backup once a week but only use my machine for internet browsing, emails and some web development. All the web development stuff is backed up online as I have to upload it to test it. If I was using my machine for more serious stuff I would be backing up at the end of every working day.

When my internal Hard Drive decided to give up I did notice I could hear a clicking noise when ever the computer was trying to read from it. Also it seem to be taking a long time opening applications and files.

Couple of things you need to buy -

1. Hard Drive (same as you already have in your Mac or bigger).

2. External SATA Case to put the Hard Drive in.

3. Software to backup your Hard Drive (HD).

You need to find out what Hard Drive you already have in your machine and buy a identical or compatible one. It doesn't matter if the one your buy is bigger than your current one as long as it will work inside your Mac. You also need some kind of software to back your Mac up to the new external Hard Drive. I don't really have much experience using Time Machine, so not sure if that has the same features as Super Duper. I am still using Tiger OS and have not upgraded to Leopard OS.

I use SuperDuper from Shirt Pocket, just do a Google search for Shirt-Pocket and you will find the company. This will backup your Hard Drive and then make the destination Hard Drive bootable. You can also schedule the backup for nightly backups if you leave your Mac on most of the time. I have noticed on mine it now takes about 30mins to backup and I have used about 200gb of data on my HD.

I mostly use Amazon UK for all my purchases, hence the links here goto Amazon. You can use any supplier to get the HD and External Case from.

For my MacBook, I bought this one from Amazon. I only had a 160gb in my laptop so decided to go for a bigger drive and then at least when I do the swap it will have it's advantages.

You need a external case to put the Hard Drive in. I purchased this one from Amazon. Again check compatibility, I went for this one as it was recommended when I bought the Hard Drive.

Installation -

To put the HD inside the case is very simple. You just undo the 2 screws at the front of the case and slide out the tray. You then screw your Hard Drive to this tray (screws are supplied). You then slide the tray back and put the 2 screws back into the front of the enclosure.

You also need to install Super Duper and I have found that I have had to reboot my Mac before it seems to recognize the new external HD. Remember it won't recognize it until you have formatted the drive (see next section).

You need to format the new drive as "OSX journaled", you do this in Disk Utility which can be found in the Application folder. If it's not in the Application folder, check in the Utilities folder which sits inside the Applications folder.

Backup-

Once the drive is all installed and formatted you need to run Super Duper and tell it what you need to backup. I do a Smart Backup on my whole drive and tell it to make the destination bootable when complete. What this does is make sure the drive is identical to the drive in your Mac and also when it's complete it will make drive bootable so you can easily boot straight off it if things go wrong. The Smart Back does more a synchronize than a complete backup every time, this speeds up the process a lot. First time it takes a while because it's essentially doing a full backup but from then on it only backs up new files or files that have changed since the last backup.

It's up to the user to decide how often they need to backup, it depends how much you use your computer and also what you use it for. If it's mostly web browsing then weekly backups is fine but if you editing or creating a lot of files daily, then backup daily. Remember when (not if) your Hard Drive goes down and you need to use your backup it is only as good as the last time you backed up.

Recovery -

When (and not if) your internal hard drive goes down you have 2 options on how to get back up and running as quickly as possible. Remember use option 1 if you need stuff off the drive quickly but your gonna have to do option 2 eventually.

Option 1. You can keep the backup drive in the enclosure and boot from by holding down 'Option' key while you Mac OS booting (release it when you see the Apple logo). Remember only INTEL macs can boot from external USB drives, older Macs can only boot from FireWire drives (use option 2 below).

Option 2. You need to take the HD out of your Mac and put the external one in your Mac. It's very simple to do, on my black Macbook I took the battery out, took the little metal cover (held by 2 screws) where the memory goes and then there was a tab for me to pull out. Pull that out and your Hard Drive should slide out. Put your external one in it's place and make sure the tab is connected properly off the old drive, so you can pull it back out etc... When the drive is in and you have put your Mac back together it should now boot fine and your back, up and running.

You now need to go and buy another external drive, identical (if possible) to the one you purchased above. This now goes into the external enclosure and you back to backing up again.

Something else you should consider buying -

A device which is fantastic for keeping your data on is a Drobo. The Drobo is a external Hard Drive with a difference, it basically has upto 4 Hard Drive's inside it and uses all of them for your data and to safeguard it. If a HD goes down, you simply swap it out for a new one and carry on going, with no loss of data. The Drobo does not replace the Hard Drive from the solution above, remember the solution above is to help if your internal Hard Drive on your Mac goes down. A Drobo is just a fantastic solution if you need a safe and secure external HD.

If you have a Drobo and do the above, you are pretty safe in regards to your data and not more having external Hard Drive's everywhere.