Backing up on a mac??

I've had my iMac for a couple of years now and today had a lovely email from Apple saying that my hard drive could fail....
They have offered a free fitting of a new drive but I will need to back up all of my stuff myself.
Well I have tons of music and dvds, documents and all sorts of other stuff which I will need to backup but I'm not sure which way is best to do it.
I thought about one of those time machine thingys but they are about £200 second hand, does anyone know of a cheaper alternative or a better way to back up my stuff??
Thanks in advance :smile:
 
Just get any external hard drive with a decent capacity. Will still work with time machine. Out of interest, which iMac do you have? I have one which is 5 years old and I'm on my 3rd hard drive!
 
I'll have a look around then and get one sorted. I've had my mac for just over 2 years but I think it's classed as a late 2009 intel model. To be honest I'm not completely sure, all I know is I love it :smile:
I guess I'm doing okay as I'm still on my first drive. I guess a new one could be a good thing and even better that apple will do it for free
 
Free fitting and free drive or just free fitting? Sounds a bit odd for them to be replacing hardware unless there is a fault or indication of one. Hard disks and firmware these days are pretty good at warning you before everything goes bits up.
 
Free drive and free fitting.
I went into the store and asked about it yesterday - basically just to confirm what the email had said. They told me that seagate have informed them that there's been failures of drives on my model mac so they're now offering a replacement.
To be fair I've never had any problems with my mac or any indication that the drive could be dying.
But if they're offering a new drive for free then I guess it's best to play it safe
 
You need an external HDD of greater capacity than your stuff ie. if you have 1TB of stuff you'll need a 2TB backup drive.

You'll also want to use a bit of software (An app) called Carbon Copy Cloner. This makes an exact copy of your HDD and you just pick to store it on your backup drive.

Do not use Time Machine as thats not a full/proper backup solution.
 
I have a 1TB drive but only 500GB of stuff on there maximum. I'll have a look at that carbon copy programme. I was going to use that time machine programme. I really just want to backup my CDs and movies mainly as its so time consuming ripping so many CDs all over again. I don't mind downloading some stuff again from the App Store again.
Much thanks for the advice guys, I'll go external drive shopping I think :smile:
 
Carbon Copy Cloner (CCC) really is superb. It makes an exact copy (Unlike Time Machine) and is really THEE way to backup your computer.