If you have a solid backup strategy, regularly creating bootable clones of your whole system drive is no doubt part of it. An automated, bootable clone of my entire system updated every night using SuperDuper!.For US$5 a month, I have almost 6 terabytes of files backed up. Continuous offsite backup of everything to Backblaze.Setting up Time Machine to backup wirelessly is an overlooked example of Mac automation Regular time machine backups to an external drive on my Synology rt2600ac router.Graduate students having to ask supervisors for a copy of their own thesis, or recompile dissertations from draft fragments. Undergrads losing devices, or having them pinched. I’ve lost count of the horror stories I’m privy to. To say nothing of the way most students wing it with their data. A solid backup and recovery scheme is table stakes for most nerds, but in my experience the same can’t be said of academics.

The past 18 months we’ve had some hardware failures that took me from feeling over-prepared to being relieved I have this all set up.

A good example of a simple automation is how to automatically mount an external drive to create a bootable clone for backup. Better still, Mac automation can save you from having to remember those tasks. The native MacOS automator app alone can save you from boring and repetitive tasks.

Fortunately, some of the most effective Mac automations are simple enough to get anybody started. I know some people find automation daunting.

Automator mac examples