MacOS Backup/Image

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My journey from Windows to MacOS is going well.  There have been a few tricks and traps but nothing that I haven’t been able to solve.  Also, I just found PKCano’s early posts in this forum which seem quite helpful, and I’ll work through those and some other posts over time.

Now that I have my Mac fairly well set-up, I am turning my mind to back-ups.  On Windows I’ve used many disk imaging applications over the years, but settled on Macrium Reflect Free in recent years. So what are the MacOS recommendations?  My needs are basic, I just need to create an image from time-to-time and ideally mount the image if I need to retrieve a file.

The Apple supplied Disk Utility, looks like it will create an image for me, although I read somewhere that by default this will just back up the Data Volume (which is probably all I need).  Any advice, and can I mount this image?

Many thanks

HS

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Get a portable hard drive and use Time Machine (it’s already on your Mac – go to system preferences and you’ll see it; it might also be in the upper right of your screen. You can backup and restore files with it.
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201250
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT203981

You can reinstall macOS as described here:
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204904

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I would recommend buying a HD or SSD external drive for Time Machine as big as you can reasonably afford, because once the disk is full, Time Machine will make room the next time you back up by deleting enough old backups to accommodate the new one. The capacity of mine, for example, is 4 TB and, after 4.5 years using this Mac, still is less than half full. Of course, your mileage might vary.

There is this article about “other ways” to do backups, besides using Time Machine; the ones DrBonzo already has given the URL links to, cover much of the rest of back ups.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT209174

One important thing to keep in mind:

You might have data (files, folders) backed up to external drives that you created when you were using (or while you are still using) Windows. You can copy those files to the Mac by plugging the Windows backups disk in, as you did with the Windows PC.   BUT YOU SHOULD NOT COPY ANYTHING FROM THE MAC directly TO THIS DISK, BECAUSE IT WILL REFORMAT THE WIN BACKUP DISK INSTEAD. Or such is my understanding of how this works.

But if you put Mac files in a flash thumb drive and then plug  this thumb drive in a Windows PC, you can copy it from there to the Windows PC and then copy it along other things to the backup disk of the Windows PC when you do a backup. This I know works.

More on reading Windows external HD or SSD with a Mac:

https://www.techradar.com/how-to/how-to-use-ntfs-drives-on-a-mac

More on Windows and Mac formats:

https://kb.wisc.edu/helpdesk/page.php?id=11300

https://macinfo.us/file-systems-mac-vs-windows-vs-linux/

Excerpt from last article:

” Compatibility
While you can read NTFS file systems on a Mac and also Linux-based computer systems, you will not be able to write to them.”

Mac files are in the APFS format, Windows these days are usually in the NTFS format.

 

As to making disk ISO images, I have never made one of those, but these articles might be of some use to you, at least the authors do not tell you to use some application of unknown provenance that might do some harm to your Mac or put malware in it for free …

https://beebom.com/create-macos-big-sur-iso-file/

https://www.makeuseof.com/how-to-mount-iso-files-on-mac/

 

Finally There is considerably more here, in AskWoody, on the topic “I am new to the Mac after using Windows for a long time and need to know …” For example, here:

https://www.askwoody.com/forums/topic/if-you-can-handle-a-windows-pc-you-can-handle-a-mac-or-linux/

If you look around in: Forums/Non-Windows operating systems/macOS  you’ll find a number of other threads about the Windows to Mac transition, some of which you’ll probably find useful.

Ex-Windows user (Win. 98, XP, 7); since mid-2017 using also macOS. Presently on Monterey 12.15 & sometimes running also Linux (Mint).

MacBook Pro circa mid-2015, 15" display, with 16GB 1600 GHz DDR3 RAM, 1 TB SSD, a Haswell architecture Intel CPU with 4 Cores and 8 Threads model i7-4870HQ @ 2.50GHz.
Intel Iris Pro GPU with Built-in Bus, VRAM 1.5 GB, Display 2880 x 1800 Retina, 24-Bit color.
macOS Monterey; browsers: Waterfox "Current", Vivaldi and (now and then) Chrome; security apps. Intego AV

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