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My name is Bob LeVitus. I have written 49 popular computer books, including Mac OS X Tiger For Dummies and GarageBand For Dummies for IDG Books, The Little iTunes Book and The Little iDVD Book for Peachpit Press, Stupid Mac Tricks for Addison-Wesley, and dozens more. Believe it or not, more than a million copies of my books have been sold worldwide over the past twenty years.

I am also a columnist for the Houston Chronicle, and The Mac Observer, and have been published in a dozen or more computer magazines over the past twenty years.

In the beginning, I was editor-in-chief of MACazine, a seminal Mac publication (from '87 to '89). After that I was a contributing editor/columnist for MacUser magazine, writing the Help Folder, Beating the System, Personal Best, and Game Room columns at various times before Macworld gobbled up the remains of MacUser and spit them out.

I don't mean to bore you with my credentials-I'm merely trying to make a point: I know a lot about Macintoshes. And in the twenty years I've been using 'em, I've learned a lot about how to protect my files by backing them up properly. I've tried almost every hardware device known to man, used most of the myriad backup programs that have come and gone, and have written articles about backing up for magazines nobody even remembers anymore. I'd have to say I've probably forgotten more about backing up than most Mac users know.

And so, here we are. I had originally intended to offer this 14,000-word behemoth as a PDF, and charge users $5 or $10 for it... But The Mac Observer made me an offer I couldn't refuse. That's why you got all this information about backing up at absolutely no charge, and you can still download a PDF for your printing and viewing convenience for $3.99. So I'd like to thank Bryan and Dave for having the foresight to purchase this work and provide it to you at no charge. Thanks Bryan and Dave!

Last but not least, please, please, let me know what you did and didn't like about this article.

Thank you.

Bob LeVitus

Winter 2006