Blog

October 19, 2026

Three copies on two kinds of storage, one offsite, checked yearly, moved to new drives every five years. What to store, on what, and what each costs.

October 18, 2026

Usually sleep, a hub, or power. Fixes in order (disk sleep settings, direct connection, cable, the drive's own timer), plus how to check nothing got damaged.

October 17, 2026

Time Machine skips external drives by default and can't back up exFAT at all. Four ways to back up an external drive on Mac, and how to check the copy.

October 17, 2026

Keep Lightroom Classic photos on an external drive, move folders without breaking the catalog, fix missing folders, and back up catalog and RAWs.

October 17, 2026

Time Machine, Arq, FreeFileSync, and Tusk. Pricing, how each one works, and which ones verify your backups.

October 17, 2026

Which offload app is worth paying for? OffShoot (ex-Hedge), ShotPut Pro & Silverstack compared on speed, reports and 2026 prices, with DIT input.

October 16, 2026

DAS plugs into one Mac and is faster per dollar. A NAS sits on your network for several devices. Real speeds, costs, and which fits photo and video work.

October 15, 2026

Backblaze B2 vs Cloudflare R2: B2 is cheaper to store, R2 charges nothing to download. Wasabi's download is free too, with a 1TB minimum and a 90-day lock.

October 15, 2026

You still get the cheapest storage per GB in 2026 with an external hard drive, even after the AI-induced price jump. An SSD costs more per GB. Cloud costs more in the long run, especially if prices keep rising.

October 15, 2026

External hard drives usually last 3-5 years in regular use. What the failure data says, how long SSDs keep data unpowered, and how to store a drive.

October 14, 2026

Bit rot is files silently changing on disk. How often it happens, why APFS won't catch it, and how to check a drive on Mac with two Terminal commands.

October 13, 2026

Use APFS for drives that only connect to Macs, including Time Machine. Use exFAT for drives shared with Windows or cameras. Comparison and how to format.

October 12, 2026

Cloning changed on Apple Silicon. When a bootable clone still helps, how to clone with CCC, SuperDuper, or Disk Utility, and how to clone an external drive.

October 11, 2026

Rclone's built-in web GUI, Rclone UI, RcloneView, and Rclone Browser on Mac: what each does and costs, and Mac apps that do the backup job without rclone.

October 10, 2026

macOS 15 swapped rsync for openrsync and some common flags now fail. Tested flag list, how to get rsync 3, GUI options, and backup commands that work.

October 9, 2026

Copy or move files from your Mac to an external drive, move a Photos or Final Cut library, fix 'can't copy' errors, and check the copy before deleting.

August 14, 2026

Recover deleted photos and videos from an SD card, and fix a corrupted video file that won't play. What's actually recoverable, what tools to use, and the one rule that decides whether recovery works at all.

August 11, 2026

Set up Time Machine, back up a MacBook that moves around, copy files to an external drive without Time Machine, add a cloud layer, and actually verify the backup worked. The full setup, step by step.

August 8, 2026

Reader and port checks, the lock switch, Finder settings, Disk Utility, and what to do when the card has a shoot on it. Includes the one rule for cards with footage: never format, offload first.

August 7, 2026

NeoFinder, DiskCatalogMaker, and Tusk compared for cataloging external drives on Mac. Pricing, what each one actually indexes, integrity checking, and which fits a drawer full of unlabeled SSDs.

August 5, 2026

Work through the fixes in order: Finder settings, cable and power, Disk Utility mount, First Aid, and the terminal. Plus how to tell a dead drive from a dead cable, and what to do about the files on it.

August 3, 2026

System Data over 100GB? Clear Time Machine snapshots, app caches, old iOS backups, and developer junk with exact commands, or run Mole to do it in one pass. What's safe to delete and what isn't.

August 2, 2026

A shoot-day data wrangling workflow for Mac: offload every card to two destinations, verify with checksums, export a report, and wipe nothing until it passes.

July 29, 2026

How to use Collect Files to make an After Effects project self-contained, what it misses (fonts, plugins, missing footage), how auto-save actually works, and a workflow for archiving motion projects with verified backups across drives and cloud.

July 26, 2026

What Ableton's Collect All and Save actually does, where Live keeps its automatic backups, how to recover a project after a crash, and a workflow for keeping verified copies of your Live Sets across drives and cloud.

July 23, 2026

Purchased ebooks, movies, music, and games can disappear when a store shuts down or a license changes. What digital buying actually gets you in 2026, which purchases you can archive, and a Mac workflow for keeping verified copies of the media you own.

July 20, 2026

Uploading 1TB of footage takes days on a typical connection, and most video libraries are far bigger than that. Here's the local-first backup setup that protects multi-terabyte libraries in hours, with real upload-time math and where cloud still fits.

July 17, 2026

The best Mac backup software in 2026 depends on what you're protecting: Time Machine for your Mac itself, Backblaze for offsite, Tusk for files across external drives, Carbon Copy Cloner for scheduled drive backups, Arq for encrypted cloud folders. An honest guide to which tool fits which job.

July 17, 2026

Time Machine is free and automatic. Carbon Copy Cloner gives you more control over what gets backed up and when. Here is when to use each, both, or something else for creative work on Mac.

July 15, 2026

Three ways to always know which external SSD holds which files on a Mac: a manual labeling system, disk cataloging apps like NeoFinder, and backup software that tracks every file per drive, even while the drive sits in a drawer.

July 14, 2026

Carbon Copy Cloner and ChronoSync both run scheduled backup tasks on Mac, but they emphasize different things. Here is an honest comparison for 2026, plus when a third option makes sense.

July 11, 2026

Most "backup Google Drive" guides miss the point. Tusk backs up local folders to Google Drive as a destination, not Drive itself. Here is what that means and how to protect files on Mac in 2026.

July 8, 2026

SuperDuper vs Carbon Copy Cloner: SuperDuper is simpler at $27.95. CCC has SafetyNet and still ships macOS updates. Tusk tracks which unplugged drive holds a file.

July 5, 2026

Time Machine shows "no available Time Machine destinations" when it can't see a valid backup drive. Here are the fixes, in order, plus what to use if Time Machine keeps failing.

June 27, 2026

The best external hard drive for Mac in 2026 is a Samsung T7 Shield 2TB if the drive goes in your bag. At home, a desktop hard drive of 8TB or more is the cheap archive.

June 25, 2026

Cloud storage and cloud backup are not the same thing. Five real cases where photographers, video editors, and creators lost files because they treated Google Drive, Dropbox, or iCloud as a backup.

June 23, 2026

A practical guide to calculating how much backup storage you need for photo and video work on Mac. Real numbers by resolution, codec, and shoot frequency, plus a simple formula.

June 20, 2026

A practical NAS backup workflow for photographers and video editors on Mac: how to set up Synology or QNAP as your central hub, what RAID does and doesn't protect, and how to pair a NAS with external drives and cloud.

June 19, 2026

The best cloud backup services for Mac in 2026 compared: Backblaze, iDrive, Arq, and more. Pricing, what each one actually backs up, and which fits photographers and video editors.

May 27, 2026

A practical guide to the best Mac backup software for video editors and photographers in 2026. What each tool actually handles, what it doesn't, and which combination works for the full creative workflow from SD card to long-term archive.

May 23, 2026

Time Machine works for whole-Mac recovery but leaves real gaps for photographers and video editors: no external drive tracking, no per-file backup status, and no way to know what's safe to delete before you do it. Here are the best alternatives.

May 19, 2026

OffShoot, ShotPut Pro, Silverstack, and Tusk compared: advantages, disadvantages, and pricing ranging from €799/year subscriptions to a $79 lifetime license.

May 12, 2026

How to back up footage, project files, and edits across a multi-day shoot on Mac. A practical backup workflow for freelance filmmakers, from SD card ingest to wrapping a project safely.

May 10, 2026

A practical backup workflow for photographers on Mac: how to protect your RAW imports, editing catalog, and final exports, when it's safe to reformat a card, and how to find a shoot months later.

May 10, 2026

One read of the card, simultaneous verified copies on every drive: how to offload and back up an SD card to multiple drives at once on Mac, with checksum verification before you reformat.

May 6, 2026

Manual backups lead to errors and missing data. Here's how to set up automatic project folder backup on Mac so every file change is covered without you having to think about it.

May 2, 2026

The 3-2-1 backup rule is standard advice for photographers and videographers but most people set it up wrong. Here's how to do it properly on Mac, automatically and with verified transfers.

May 1, 2026

Shotput Pro costs $169 for a perpetual license and generates PDF transfer reports after every offload. Here are the best alternatives depending on whether those reports are actually part of your deliverables.

April 30, 2026

The right Carbon Copy Cloner alternative for Mac depends on the job. Tusk tracks which unplugged drive holds a file. Time Machine and FreeFileSync are free.