Use them, and test them to make sure it's doing what it says it's doing. Programmes like Scrivener (see earlier blogpost) have built-in auto-backups. I've been burnt by Apple's Time Machine backup in the past (see above) so I don't use it any more because I lost my trust.

I also use SuperDuper to make a clone copy of my hard drive. In fact, if I was living somewhere with faster internet I'd probably add in AWS Glacier as an additional backup service. You may find it overkill to have two separate systems for storing my backups in the cloud, but space and the services are cheap enough that it's possible. I use Backblaze and Spideroak for my cloud backups. One should be a regular backup to a hard drive - something like Apple's Time Machine in conjunction with an external disk - and the other should be a cloud backup. My work files were ok - because I'd taken steps to check that this was working - but for whatever reason I hadn't taken the same care for my non-work files. A few years ago, I lost roughly a decade's worth of digital photos when my backup system failed. I've learnt the hard way how hard drives can fail. If you have to plug in a USB or Firewire external hard drive in order to start your backup process, you're probably not going to be doing it enough and you're probably going to lose files and data. The less friction to your backup system, the better. Having some kind of backup system is essential for all PhD students (and probably anyone else using a computer for writing of one kind or another).

Devonthink pro office dropbox problem