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Backup and Digitize DVDs to MP4 in 5 Mins without Errors

• Free Dvd Backup Software For Mac Free
• Free Dvd Ripping Software For Mac
• Best Backup Disk For Mac

The best backup software for Mac 2020 Looking to keep your data safe? From ChronoSync to Backblaze, and including free as well as paid-for services, here are the best Mac backup software.

Before we dig deeper into the free DVD ripping software for macOS review. Here are some facts and problems in connection with DVDs.

It's reported the U.S. consumers have collected 87 DVD titles on average over the past decades. However, the advent of Netflix, Hulu, Amazon and HBO Go changes the way of home entertainment from physical disc to digital video. That's why many DVD owners jump onto the bandwagon to digitize their DVD library. But what will you benefit from ripping DVD to computer hard drive?

* Free up some room in your house because your DVD collection is cumbersome.
* Copy DVD to hard drive or NAS so that you can organize & achieve your movie library by genre, year without going to the shelf yourself.
* Back up DVDs to computer to avoid any scratch, fingerprint or damage.
* Free DVDs from region code restrictions, since you're unwilling to end up watching Hollywood summer films on Xmas Day in your country.
* Convert disc to digital format to extend your viewing options to your Macbook, iMac, iPhone, iPad, Apple TV, Plus, or other media server anywhere, without even dropping a disc in the drive, downloading a MPEG2 decoder, taking along the whole discs, or repurchasing the movie contents from iTunes Store.

To follow the trend and live without a disc drive in your Mac computer, smartphone or tablet, no need to make any compromise when these ideas conflict with the facts. The advent of Mac DVD ripping tools will get it all solved.

Best Solution to Copy & Convert DVD without a Hitch!

* Copy and digitize any DVD to MP4, MKV, MOV, H.264, ISO, etc.
* Convert DVD content to Mac, Hard drive, TV and mobile devices.
* (Unique!) Support any new DVDs, 99-title DVDs, damaged DVDs, etc.
* (Hardware acceleration)Only 5 mins to rip DVD with original quality.

Strapped for time? Click one of the sections below to jump straight to your most interested part.

• Part 1: How to Judge the Best DVD Ripper for Mac in 2020
• Part 2: Top 3 Free DVD Rippers for Mac in 2020
• Part 3: Performance Comparison among the 3 Free Rippers
• Part 4: FAQ about DVD Copying and Ripping

Is There a Mac Built-in App to Digitize DVD? No. The DVD ripping process on Mac doesn't go as simple as burning. The latter can be achieved with Mac's built-in app like Finder or iDVD, as long as you have an Apple external USB SuperDrive. While the former is still out of reach with Mac unless you own a third-party DVD converter software.

This is because almost all DVD movies or TV shows you bought or rented are technically copyrighted and DVD rips will inevitably involve in breaking DVD copy protections, e.g. the Content Scramble System. Such action is currently unlawful in the US and UK. Apple is of course unwilling to set against law or money in consideration of continuous cooperation with U.S. studios for iTunes movies, it won't allow you to rip DVD to Mac the way you can burn it. This makes it a sense to download a third-party DVD ripper for Mac instead.

Note: We don't accept ripping DVD in such a way to steal the movie you don't legally own.

Part 1: How to Judge the Best Mac DVD Ripper 2019

There are plenty of free DVD copying and ripping software for Mac, which claims to rip any DVDs to any formats, say DVD to MP4, MOV, FLV, MPEG, H.264, etc. But most often, you endure a whole day long sitting aside your Macbook, trying to get the contents off DVDs yet find it crashes constanly, makes scratching high frequency sounds, gets choppy video on output, or keeps giving messages like no valid source found, etc. Therefore, you shall take 'something' into consideration prior to download a free Mac DVD ripping software. Here are the four decisive elements that make up the best one.

Ripping Ability: A good ripper will access all commercial DVDs, no matter they are encoded with CSS, region code or other schemes, and has all discs digitized to MP4, or whatever other formats. Preset profiles for mobiles, TVs, webs, gaming systems, computers, and more are preferred. You have to bear in mind the latest macOS Catalina weeds out 32-bit apps, so make sure you download the 64-bit DVD ripper with good compatibility with macOS 10.15.

High Quality: DVD transcoding involves in codec compression that leads to quality degradation inevitably. Good rippers manage to create high-quality movie file with almost imperceptible loss of quality (preferably the bitrate is around 1500kbps), by virtue of advanced video transcoding kernel.

Fast Speed: DVD converters used to rely on CPU to improve ripping efficiency while some accelerate the speed twice or more with GPU that's good at concurrent computing. If you have hundreds of DVDs to be digitized, why not choose the one with GPU acceleration enabled.

Ease to Use: Great tools will feature intuitive interface under the hood, where its features are clearly marked and locally placed, leaving little room for guesswork. Preferably, Mac users can get the hang of DVD to digital process with no more than 3 clicks, regardless of the computer skills.

To prevent any illegal redistribution of commercial discs, DVD studios adopts copy protection schemes to set up roadblock on DVD software, among which CSS is the most well known one. With facing with these mechanisms, many DVD rippers or DVD decrypters, especially the free ones, no longer stand the gaff and end up with various errors in the whole process, categorized by disc analyzing before ripping, DVD transcoding and the final rips after the conversion.

Except the above mentioned issues, ordinary DVD converters will go wrong with the recent movies, behaving with errors like dirty title, subtitle track issue, repeated ripping, halfway encoding, unwatchable rips, and more. It will be even trickier when you want to backup DVDs with particular non-UDF and ISO9600 formats such as workout disc beachbody. They are deliberately placed with bad information and the true titles are hidden. As a result, almost 99% of DVD rippers for Mac and Windows in the market will fail to load DVD, encounter a large number of tracks, show impossibly 40gb or more of data but output just several KB. So the capability of defeating encryption codes and recognizing the tricky DVD formats is one success factor for the ripping software.

Click to see the complete DVD ripping errors and fixes >>

Part 2: Top 3 Free DVD Rippers for Mac in 2020 [Review & Guide]

With these 5 elements taken into consideration, we've sought out 3 from an overwhelming number of Mac DVD ripping software. They are MacX DVD Ripper, HandBrake and MakeMKV, respectively. Handbrake is an open source DVD and video transcoding program, and MakeMKV is a widely used free DVD and blu ray ripper, both of which work well on macOS. What about MacX DVD Ripper? Scroll down.

No.1 - MacX DVD Ripper

MacX DVD Ripper is a professional DVD copier and converter designed for Mac (incl. macOS Catalina) and Windows (7/8/10). With unique DVD analysis kernel, the program deals with most commercial titles with encryption schemes that deliberately hamper the ripping, incl. CSS, Region Code, RCE, ARccOS, Disney X-Project DRM, etc. Besides, all DVD formats are supported, including UDF, intractable non-UDF, and ISO9600, so whether it is a new movie title, workout disc, or the DVD unplayable or damaged, MacXDVD will cope with it calmly.

Engineered for Apple ecosystem, it can freely convert DVDs to Mac-specific formats like MOV, M4V, H.264 that are compatible with QuickTime, iPhone, iPad, iTunes, Apple TV, and digitize DVD to MP4 format your SSD, NAS or USB accepts for a better DVD storage. You can also transcode DVD to other mainstream formats like HEVC, MKV, AVI, ISO, or convert a movie to format playable on your iPhone, iPad, Huawei, Samsung, TV, PS4, and more. Besides, a full range of basic editing features like cut, crop, merge, subtitle, etc are offered to cater to your DVD movie customization needs.

MacXDVD supports unique level-3 hardware acceleration, hyper-threading and multi-core CPU techs. When it starts transcoding DVDs, computer hardware, together multiple cores, is fully utilized to execute DVD decoding, processing and encoding task simultaneously and multiple threads are enabled to run on each core. This dramatically shortens the DVD ripping process, while unburdening CPU greatly. High-quality engine and De-interlacing engine are available for you to check, purpose built to produce remarkably high quality.

[Tutorial] How to Use MacX DVD Ripper

Step 1: Insert DVD
Click 'Add DVD' button to load the disc. MacX will easily find the accurate main title. In our test, we successfully open the titles like Inside Out, Frozen from Disney. For TV shows with several episodes, select the item and MacX will decode it in sequence.

Free download the DVD ripper on Mac >>
Free download the DVD ripper on Windows >>

Step 2: Choose the output format
Preferrably, you can rip DVD to MP4 H.264 for better compatibility, quality and smaller file size. With no further tweaking, it achieves an H.264 file with crisp picture. The Mac specific library also offers options to backup DVD, convert DVD to Apple, Android, Microsoft, Sony, Web and more.

Step 3: Start protected DVD converting
For DVDs with tough protections, MacXDVD's unique title check mechanism and DVD analysis algorithm automatically scan the title, crack severely protected DVDs and smooth the ripping process. It also cuts the commercials and merge the useful parts via its editing features.

No.2 - HandBrake

Handbrake is an open-source DVD ripper for Mac, Windows and Linux, which can freely convert DVD to MP4 and MKV, with support for iPhone, iPods, PSPs, Apple TVs, PS3s. Handbrake rips DVD that is homemade/unprotected only. It cannot rip commercial DVDs unless you rely on third party tool like VLC or DVD decrypter, not to mention the Disney newer protections. MacX would be the HandBrake alternative to solve this problem.

The version Handbrake V1.0.7 adds support for HEVC encoding. This means that you can re-encode DVD into HEVC to store more movies on Mac's hard drive and newer iPhones or iPads. You shall understand the DVD to HEVC converting process takes a longer time as HEVC entails high computational demands. The good news is Handbrake still performs ultrafast DVD conversion speed if your Macbook or iMac is equipped with a video card like Intel's Kaby Lake processor series. Now in the latest version 1.2.0, Handbrake adds support for AMD and NVidia GPU acceleration for H.264/HEVC encoding like what MacX DVD Ripper Pro does.

[Tutorial] How to Use HandBrake

Handbrake works with Mac OS X 10.7 to 10.14. Make sure your Mac has enough space to store the program (around 12.41MB). You can go to its official site to download and install the freeware.

Step 1: Insert DVD disc into Mac's DVD drive and run Handbrake. Click the Source button to load the DVD. It takes a few seconds to scan the disc. To rip protected DVD on Mac, libdvdcss is required to remove the CSS.

Step 2: Click 'Browse' to set where you want to save the output files.

Step 3: Click 'Presets' and select an output format. Here are MP4 (M4V) or MKV, and mobiles like iPhone, iPod, Apple TV, Android, Windows Phone.

Step 4: Now click 'RUN' to rip DVD for free on Mac now.

Having problems with Handbrake, check the full solutions to Handbrake DVD ripping errors on macOS:
* Handbrake cannot rip DVD with 99 titles? Fix it here
* Handbrake libdvdcss error on macOS Sierra? Check the solution

No.3 - MakeMKV

If you're seeking for a tool that rips protected DVDs & Blu rays and preserves all video/audio tracks and subtitles with meta-information, there is no better tools than MakeMKV, an easy free DVD/Blu ray ripper for Mac. As its name suggests, this program aids Mac users to free rip DVD to MKV format only. Since MakeMKV works rather a format converter than a transcoder, it remuxes the movie content from one format MPEG2 to MKV without affecting too much quality, so the whole DVD to MKV converting process is pretty fast with excellent quality. In this regard, MakeMKV is your premium choice if you just want to backup and store your movie contents on your hard drive, NAS or USB.

Since there is little compression in the DVD to MKV ripping process, the output file size is tremendous, almost the same as the original DVD disc. This is not good especially when you want to import the DVD movie into your iPhone or iPad - Just 3 full-length movies will eat up your 16GB iDevice space. So you'd better compress the movie into a size-friendly file with a video transcoder. MakeMKV is available as a free DVD ripping tool. For free Blu-ray disc digitization, you can try its beta version that stops functioning after 60 days.

[Tutorial] How to Use MakeMKV

Free download MakeMKV on Mac. The tool is completely free to rip a DVD disc to Mac during the beta-testing phase, and after that, if you want to decrypt Blu-Ray disc, you will need to pay $50.

Step 1: Open the software and insert the disk. It accepts both DVD and Blu-Ray discs. Then click 'Open Disc' to load in the information.

Step 2: MakeMKV will scan and identify the titles correctly and pop up a list of disk chapters. Choose the chapter, normally the longest and biggest title.

Step 3: Select a folder on Mac to save the output MKV files and click 'Make MKV'. It shows a fast DVD to digital processing speed on Mac, with an average of 30 minutes to rip Blu-ray disc. The output MKV keeps high video and audio quality, but MKV file is enormous (6.73GB MKV file for the 7.84GB DVD in our test).

Part 3: Performance Comparison among the 3 Free Rippers

To better understand the performance of the top 3 Mac DVD ripper freeware, below is a table and detailed comparison in ripping speed, output quality and supported encryptions.

Note: This test is based on our hands-on test on 27' iMac (incl. Catalina) with 3.2 GHz Intel Core i5, 8GB 1867 MHzDDR3 and AMD Radeon R9 M380 2048MB. You shall also have to note that the DVD encoding speed is greatly dependant on your computer configuration. Higher config will lead to great performance. And make sure to spare some space to save the final rip. The DVD used here is a 7.84Gb movie named Transformers 2, distributed byDreamWorks Pictures, one of the studios that use intractable protection scheme on discs.

1. Comparison on DVD Ripping Speed

According to the company, it applies level-3 hardward acceleration tech, which intelligently offloads the DVD decoding, processing and encoding to GPU, in cooperation with the hyper-threading technology. That is, GPU is fully utilized to rip DVD with full speed, and CPU is spared for multi tasks without affecting the ripping.

The DVD ripping is impressive on a iMac 5K (3.2 GHz Intel Core i5, AMD Radeon R9 M380, 2048MB, on Mojave). MacX's DVD conversion frequency reached averagely 240 fps, twice as high as that of Handbrake. It took 12 minutes to convert the full-length Transformers 2 DVD to MP4, while we could still view web pages or do other tasks since the CPU usage remains as low as 131-134%.

Handbrake auto enables Intel QSV HW acceleration for DVD and video processing tasks and switches to pass 2 for better encoding. But the time it took to make a digital MP4 copy of DVD is less than satisfactory, generally 25 min lagging behind MacX. The CPU usage went up to 397%. We are happy to find MakeMKV converted DVD to MKV on Mac pretty fast, completing within 4 minutes only, with read rate reaching up to 45.7 M/s.

2. Quality and File Size of the Output Rip, Who Wins?

MakeMKV works as a format converter that just repackages the movie content from DVD MPEG2 to MKV. The output quality isn't affected at all. Higher saturation of color can be noticed on the rips, with dark darker and white whiter. But the file size is tremendously large - 6.73Gb that is almost the same as the original. You can also resort to MacX DVD Ripper's backup feature to clone DVD to ISO/MKV/MPEG2 with no loss of quality.

Both MacX and Handbrake involved in DVD video compression, which cut file size down but inevitably led to quality loss. What matters most is whether they manage to maintain a good balance between the size and quality. MacX created an .mp4 file with 720x480 (16:9) in 1.61GB from the 7.84GB DVD and Handbrake outputted the MP4 content in 1.87GB in fast 1080p30 encoding. There is no noticeable change between the the source and ripped file. Quality is slightly inferior to MakeMKV. So if you care about quality, MakeMKV is your ultimate choice. But if you emphasis on both sides, choose MacX and Handbrake, which run neck and neck.

3. Which Ripper Supports the Widest Encryptions?

From the developer, MacX supports wide range of DVD protections, from CSS, region code, UOPs, APS to Sony ARccOS, Disney Fake. If this is true, it will sideline Handbrake that requires third-party tool to bypass certain restrictions, or MakeMKV that supports AACS and BD+ only, and other DVD ripper Mac freeware.

In the test, Handbrake popped up 'No Valid Source Found' error and quitted unexpectedly when scanning the new titles like Divergent and MakeMKV produced many problematic rips. MacX chose the right title. Its unique title check mechanism is proven to be very useful with these intractable DVDs. The movies tested include Toy Story (Disney), Wall-E (Pixar), Star Trek (Paramount), Life of Brian (Sony), and newer releases (Venom, Incredibles 2, Avengers: Infinity War). We do not encourage you to decrypt commercial DVDs on Mac or PC for any illegal use and it's not allowed to legally copy commercial DVDs or Blu-ray discs in some countries.

Specs Comparison Among the Top Three Free DVD Rippers for Mac

The 3 Mac DVD rippers are equally matched. What matter most is whether the program fits your bill. For a quality-loss DVD ripping, MakeMKV is second to none. But if you have hundreds of discs and want to have your entire DVD library backed up onto hard drive at fast speed without exhausting your storage space, MacX DVD ripper and Handbrake are your good options. While if the last thing you want is to end up with errors just because the new title comes with tricky protection scheme or the DVD is formatted unnaturally, the ultimate choice is to download MacX DVD Ripper, which not only features great DVD decryption ability, but also comes with unique level-3 hardware acceleration tech that can speed up the whole process and maintain good balance between quality and size.

To backup and digitize DVD for safekeeping or on-the-go watching - Try MacX DVD Ripper [Fast & High Quality]!

Part 4: FAQ about DVD Copying and Ripping

Q1. How Can I Hardcode Subtitles on DVD Movies?

Subtitles are helpful to understand a foreign language, inaudible dialog or narrative comprehension. But getting subtitles on DVD is a bit tougher, let along hardcoding them. You can add subtitles to DVD rips with programs like Handbrake, MacX DVD Ripper or so. For example, MacXDVD gives a lot of subtitle options, including choose and place subtitle track in preferred position, disable or hardcode it with forced subtitles, and even add external srt to the movie.

Q2. Can Free DVD Rippers Deal with Latest DVDs?

It depends. Typically, DVDs from major film studios like Disney, Sony, Warner Bros., 20th Century Fox, Paramount, Universal, etc. often impose strong protections on their DVDs. For those DVDs, most DVD rippers (including many which claim to support copy protections) will go awry like DVD won't load, all titles are invalid/corrupted or have the same run time, output video is several MB only.. This year, the problematic DVD titles include Venom, Incredibles 2, Avengers: Infinity War, Ralph Breaks the Internet, Black Panther, and some other new releases. To copy these DVDs, you'd better resort to some strong tools. (Before you do so, make sure it's allowed by your law.)

Q3. Should Mac Users Rip DVD to MP4 or MOV?

* MP4 - When digitizing DVD with these free DVD rippers for Mac, many users are at a loss whether to choose MP4 or MOV. Both MP4 and MOV use lossy video compression to sacrifice minimal quality for file size. MP4 is popular for streaming over the internet and playable on Mac, Windows and almost all media players, say VLC, 5KPlayer, QT, etc. But P-frames or B-frames in MP4 makes it difficult to edit.

* MOV - As MOV is originally developed by Apple for its QuickTime player, it's much friendlier in Apple ecosystem. MOV contains one or more tracks, meant to store each type of data including audio, video, subtitle, etc in a hierarchical structure, which is good for editing. So for Mac computers, to convert DVD to digital MOV for Mac QuickTime is more preferred than MP4.

Q4. What Is the Best Format to Back up DVD to Hard Drive?

When the modern computer hard drive, external flash drive, HDD, SSD and NAS drive can hold as large as 60TB storage, there's no need to store DVD collections anywhere else. After users copy DVDs to Mac's hard drive, they can also stream them on TV using Plex, Roku, PC or transfer to phones or tablets. To rip DVD to Mac hard drive, it depends:

• To view your DVD on players, phones, tablets, TVs, or so, choose digital format MP4 H.264 for the widest compatibility.
• To play your DVD on newer iPhones iPads running on iOS 11/12, choose digital format MP4 HEVC for higher quality and smaller space.
• To save an original copy with menus and extras, copy DVD to ISO image. The disc image contains the whole data of the disc at 1:1 ratio for later burning but ha s less compatibility with media players and devices.
• For homemade discs, just copy and paste the VIDEO_TS folder to save DVD onto hard drive. For commercial discs, you will need a specific ripper to deal with the copy protections.

Q5. Is it Prossible to Rip Scratched DVD on Mac?

DVDs are too fragile, that's why we need to backup the DVD collection. If your discs are already damaged or scratched, there are measures to remedy.

• For a bit of stretches on the surface, polish the surface with cotton balls and abrasive white toothpaste or Brasso plolish. You need to polish across the grain and do not in circular direction. This need patience.
• For deep scratches and serve damages, you can take the damaged disk to a local DVD store with a polishing machine or other places like Phoenix to resurface the badly scuffed disc. This will cost for a couple of dollars. Or if the standalone DVD player with error-recovery scheme can ignore the errors and play the DVD, you can capture the movie with a DV. But this will lost the selectable audio, subtitles streams and original menus.

Note: if the program refuses to rip a well-conditioned DVD with an error stating that there is a bad sector, it's because the DVD is protected by a copy protection scheme from Sony named ARccOS. The system deliberately mixes corrupted sectors with the correct one to mislead DVD copying software.

Q6. Does My 32-bit DVD Player App Still Work on macOS Catalina?

Yes, the 32-bit DVD player is not totally over in macOS 10.15 Catalina. Yet, what you need to notice is that the earilier version Mojave is officially the last OS to support 32-bit apps on your iMac or Macbook. And recently macOS Catalina comes with new 64-bit DVD player and DVD ripper to support DVD playback or ripping on latest macOS. You're suggested to apply its 64-bit version if there is something wrong with your 32-bit app.

Q7. How about Vudu Disc to Digital Serivce? Is Online Tool a Good Option to Digitize DVD?

Vudu is another way that you can convert DVDs into digital files. With the 'In-Home Disc to Digital' service, you can effortlessly gain digital copies of your DVDs for a low price: $2 for DVD to a standard-definition digital copy and $5 for a high-definition 'HDX' copy. But there are concerns:

• It's ridiculous paying twice for a movie, especially when the $5 HDX is close to $8 for a new Blu-ray version on Amazon, which even includes a digital copy.
• Vudu only allows to digitize up to 100 dics a year.
• Vudu supports DVDs from 7 Hollywood studios only. Exercise DVDs, TV shows DVDs and more are exclused from Vudu.
• The streaming buffering and playback limits are another factor to consider.

In consideration of these problems, you'd rather use DVD ripper software than online services.

Q8. Is It Legal to Rip DVDs that You Own?

Many users who want to space-shift or format-shirt their legally purchased DVD or Blu-ray discs often concern about the legality of DVD ripping. The fact is, currently it is considered as illegal to convert copyrighted DVDs in US, even if you legally own the discs. Some other countries have already made it legal. In practice, as the DVD conversion happens locally on your computer, you won't get sued or caught if you don't distribute the digital copies. However, you're highly suggested to obey to the law where you live. Check if it's legal to rip copy protected DVDs in your country.

Q9. Are There any Other Free DVD Rippers for Mac?

1. Mac The Ripper: MTS has been regarded as the oldest DVD copy software for Mac so far. The last free version of MacTheRipper is V2.6.6 that can work with Mac OS X Snow Leopard or lower. It breaks protection and rips DVD content for free on Mac, but doesn't encode video files to other formats. It only digitize the DVD menu to hard drive in VOB file. So a third party tool is required to convert VOB to MP4, AVI or others.

2. FFmpeg: It is considered more as an open-source command-line utility for Linux based on popular libraries such as libavformat and libavcodec. FFmpeg stands for Fast Forward MPEG and now it can be complied under Mac and other OS. This tool is complicated to operate and not friendly to newbies. But if you are more experienced and spend hours on the disc ripping tasks, FFmpeg comes to our top free dvd converter for Mac list and is really worthy of your persistence.

3. Any Video Converter: It handles almost all video formats, including DVDs. Reviewed as 'ridiculously easy to use', this tool can easily and freely rip DVD into the right format in its long list of options including MP4, AVI, WMV, MOV, etc thanks to its intuitive GUI. However, AVC sometimes gets glitches and only make a backup of part of the full-length movie, e.g. It only finishes 40 mins of a 2 hrs DVD movie copy. This is probably because you are ripping a DVD with complicated protection measure. So its pro version is needed to ensure a smooth DVD digitizing on Mac.

4. DVDFab HD Decrypter- Although discontinued in 2014, it's still the favorite when dealing with many old DVDs that refuse to be copied with other free DVD rippers, owning to its aculeate DVD decrypting ability. It offers options to freely copy full disc with all menus, trailer, extras, etc or just extract the actual movie from DVD onto Mac's hard drive, cracking many known DVD protections, like AACS, CSS, RC, UOPS, etc. There are some minor drawbacks, e.g. heavy processing power and CPU resources are consumed during the ripping process. Plus, it only copies protected DVD in VOB rather than MP4 MOV or other formats.

External Sources: DVD movies are almost all encoded in MPEG-2 format defined by Motion Pictures Expert Group. Generally, the content is interlaced for display on ordinary TV sets. Resolution of DVD is either 720x480 pixels at 29.97 frames per second from America's NTSC television system or 720x576 pixels at 25 frames per second from Europe's PAL.

Note: The software developer calls for copying or ripping DVD on Mac and Windows under the concept of Fair Use and does not encourage any illegal reproduction or distribution of copyrighted content. Please abide by the local DVD copyright law before doing it.

Why You Should Trust Us

I’m Adrian Try, and I’ve been using and abusing computers for decades. I’ve used quite a variety of backup apps and strategies, and I’ve suffered a few disasters as well. As a tech support guy, I’ve come across dozens of people whose computer died without having a backup. They lost everything. Learn from their mistake!

Over the decades I’ve backed up onto floppy disks, Zip drives, CDs, DVDs, external hard drives and network drives. I’ve used PC Backup for DOS, Cobian Backup for Windows and Time Machine for Mac. I’ve used command line solutions using DOS’s xcopy and Linux’s rsync, and Clonezilla, a bootable Linux CD capable of cloning hard drives. But despite all of this, things have still gone wrong, and I’ve lost data. Here are a couple of stories.

On the day my second child was born, I came home from the hospital to discover that our house had been broken into, and our computers stolen. The excitement of the day vanished instantly. Fortunately, I had backed up my computer the previous day, and left the tall pile of floppies on my desk, right next to my laptop. That was too convenient for the thieves, who took my backup as well—a good example of why it’s good to keep your backups in a different location.

Many years later, my teenage son asked to borrow my wife’s spare USB hard drive. The first thing he did was format it, without even glancing at the contents first. Unfortunately, he picked up my backup hard drive by mistake, and I lost the lot again. I discovered clearly labeling your backup drives is a very good idea.

These days Time Machine constantly backs up anything I change to an external hard drive. In addition, most of my files are also stored online and on multiple devices. That’s a lot of very valuable redundancy. It’s been quite a while since I’ve lost anything important.

What You Need to Know Up-Front about Computer Backups

1. Back Up Regularly

How often should you back up? Well, how much work are you comfortable losing? A week? A day? An hour? How much do you value your time? How much do you hate doing your work twice?

It’s good practice to back up your files daily, and even more often if you’re working on a critical project. On my iMac, Time Machine is constantly backing up behind the scenes, so as soon as I create or modify a document, it’s copied to an external hard drive.

2. Types of Backup

Not all backup software works in the same way, and there are several strategies used to make a second copy of your data.

A local backup copies your files and folders to an external hard drive plugged into your computer or somewhere on your network. If you lose a file or folder, you can restore it quickly. Backing up all of your files on a regular basis is time-consuming, so you may want to copy just the files that have changed since you last backed up. That’s known as an incremental backup.

A bootable clone, or disk image, creates an exact duplicate of your hard drive, including your operating system and software. If your hard drive fails, you can boot directly from your backup hard drive and get straight back to work.

A cloud backup is like a local backup, but your files are stored online rather than on a local hard drive. That way, if your computer is taken out by fire, flood or theft, your backup will still be available. Your initial backup may take days or weeks to complete, and you’ll need to pay an ongoing fee for the storage, but they are worthwhile. We’ll cover cloud backup solutions in a separate review.

3. Offsite Backup is Crucial

Some disasters that can take out your computer may also take out your backup. That includes natural disasters like fire and flood, and as I discovered, theft.
When I worked in a bank’s data center in the 80s, we’d fill suitcases with dozens of tape backups, and carry them to the next branch where we stored them in a fireproof safe. The suitcases were heavy, and it was hard work. These days, offsite backup is much easier.

One option is cloud backup, and as I said, we’ve covered those online backup services in a separate review. Another option is to use several hard drives for your disk images and store one at a different location.

4. Syncing Your Files is Helpful, but Not True Backup

Now that most of us use multiple devices—desktops, laptops, smartphones, and tablets—many of our documents are synchronized between those devices via the cloud. I personally use iCloud, Dropbox, Google Drive and more.

That makes me feel more secure and is helpful. If I drop my phone into the ocean, all of my files will magically reappear on my new one. But syncing services are not true backup.

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One major problem is that if you delete or change a file on one device, the file will be deleted or changed on all of your devices. While some syncing services allow you to return to a previous version of a document, it’s best to use a comprehensive backup strategy as well.

5. A Good Backup Strategy Involves Several Backup Types

A thorough backup strategy will involve performing a number of backups using different methods, and possibly different apps. At a minimum, I recommend you keep a local backup of your files, a clone of your drive, and some sort of offsite backup, either online or by storing an external hard drive at a different address.

Who Should Back Up Their Computer? Everyone.

Everyone should back up their computer. All sorts of things can happen that result in data loss. No one is immune, so you should be prepared.

What could possibly go wrong?

• You could delete the wrong file or format the wrong drive.
• You could modify an important document, and decide that you prefer it the way it was.
• Some of your files could become corrupt due to a hard drive or file system problem.
• Your computer or hard drive could suddenly and unexpectedly die.
• You could drop your laptop. I’ve laughed at a few YouTube videos of laptops being dropped in the ocean or being left on the roof of a car.
• Your computer could be stolen. It happened to me. I never got it back.
• Your building could burn down. Smoke, fire and sprinklers are not healthy for computers.
• You could be attacked by a virus or hacker.

Sorry if that sounds negative. I hope none of those things ever happen to you, but I can’t guarantee it. So it’s best to prepare for the worst. I once met a lady whose computer crashed the day before her major university assignment was due, and lost everything. Don’t let that happen to you.

How We Tested and Picked

1. What types of backup can the app create?

Does the app backup your files and folders, or create a clone of your hard drive? We include apps that can perform both types of backup, and some can do both. In this roundup we won’t include apps that back up to the cloud—those apps deserve their own review.

2. What types of media can it back up to?

Can the app back up to external hard drives or network-attached storage? CDs and DVDs are slower and offer less storage than these, so are rarely used today. Spinning drives are larger and less expensive than SSDs, so are a good medium for backup.

3. How easy is the software to set up and use?

Creating a backup system is initially a big job, so apps that make setup easy score extra points. Then implementing your backup strategy takes diligence, so apps that offer a choice between automatic, scheduled and manual backups can make your life much easier.

Backups can be time-consuming, so it’s helpful not to have to back up all of your files each time. Apps that offer incremental backups can save you hours.

And finally, some apps offer sequential backups. These are multiple dated backup copies, so you are not overwriting a good file on your backup disk with one that has just become corrupt. That way you’re more likely to have an uncorrupt version on one of your drives.

4. How easy is it to restore your data using the app?

The whole point of all of these backups is to recover your files if something ever goes wrong. How easy does the app make it to do this? It’s good to experiment and find this out in advance. Create a test file, delete it, and try to restore it.

5. Cost

Backup is an investment in the value of your data, and worth paying for. It’s a type of insurance that will minimize the inconvenience you’ll suffer if (or when) something goes wrong.

Backup apps cover a range of prices, from free to $50 or more:

• Apple Time Machine, free
• Get Backup Pro, $19.99
• SuperDuper!, free, or $27.95 for all features
• Mac Backup Guru, $29.00
• Carbon Copy Cloner, $39.99
• Acronis True Image 2019, $49.99

Above is what the apps we recommend cost, sorted from cheapest to most expensive.

The Winners

Best Choice for Incremental File Backups: Time Machine

Many people don’t back up their computers because it can be difficult and a little technical to set up, and in the busyness of life, people just don’t get around to doing it. Apple’s Time Machine was designed to change all of that. It’s built into the operating system, easy to set up, and works in the background 24-7, so you don’t have to remember to do it.

Time Machine was originally designed to work with Apple’s Time Capsule hardware, which, along with their Airport routers is being discontinued. But the Time Machine software will continue to be supported and works with other hard drives. It should remain an excellent backup option for years to come.

Time Machine is included free with macOS

“Time Machine backs up all of your files to an external storage device so that you can restore them later or see how they looked in the past.”

Time Machine backs up your files and folders to a hard drive connected to your computer or on your network. It’s convenient, uses a local hard drive, and constantly backs up your files as they change or are created, so you’ll lose very little (probably nothing) when disaster hits. And importantly, restoring individual files and folders is easy.

Here’s how Apple Support describes the app:

“With Time Machine, you can back up your entire Mac, including system files, apps, music, photos, emails, and documents. When Time Machine is turned on, it automatically backs up your Mac and performs hourly, daily, and weekly backups of your files.”

“When you use Time Machine on a computer using Apple File System (APFS), Time Machine not only keeps a copy of everything on your backup disk, it also saves local snapshots of files that have changed on your internal disk, so you can recover previous versions. These local snapshots are saved hourly (unless you deselect Back Up Automatically) and they’re stored on your computer’s internal disk.”

The app is very easy to set up. When you first connect a blank hard drive, you may be asked if you’d like to use the drive to back up your computer. Alternatively, click on the Time Machine icon at the left of your menu bar, and select Open Time Machine Preferences.

Once you have set up the software, Time Machine keeps:

• Local snapshots as space permits,
• Hourly backups for the last 24 hours,
• Daily backups for the past month,
• Weekly backups for all previous months.

So there’s a lot of redundancy there. Although it uses more storage space, it’s a good thing. If you’ve just discovered something went wrong with one of your files months ago, there’s a good chance you’ll still have an older good copy still backed up.

I back up my 1TB internal hard drive (which is currently half full) to an external 2TB drive. 1TB isn’t enough, because there will be multiple copies of each file. I’m currently using 1.25TB of my backup drive.

Restoring a file or folder is quick and easy. Select Enter Time Machine from the menu bar icon.

Helpfully, the Time Machine interface looks just like Finder, with previous versions of your folder going off into the background.

You can move back through time by clicking on the title bars of the windows in the background, the buttons on the right, or the calendar on the far right.

When you find the file you’re after, you can have a look at it, get more information, restore it, or copy it. The ability to “quick look” at a file before restoring is useful, so you can make sure it is the desired version of the file you’re looking for.

Best Choice for Hard Drive Cloning: Carbon Copy Cloner

Bombich Software’s Carbon Copy Cloner is a more capable backup app with a more complex interface, though “Simple Mode” is also available, allowing you to back up your drive in three clicks. Significantly, the app allows you to back up your computer in an additional way: by creating an exact clone of your Mac’s hard drive.

Carbon Copy Cloner can create a bootable drive that mirrors your Mac’s internal drive, and then update only the files that have been added or modified. In a disaster, you will be able to start up your computer with this drive and work as normal, then restore your files onto a new drive once you purchase one.

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A Personal & Household license is $39.99 from the developer’s website (one-time fee), covering all computers in the household. Corporate purchasing is also available, starting at the same price per computer. A 30-day trial is available.

Where Time Machine is great at restoring files and folders that have vanished or gone wrong, Carbon Copy Cloner is the app you want when you have to restore your entire drive, say when you’ve had to replace your hard drive or SSD due to a failure, or you’ve bought a new Mac. And because your backup is a bootable drive that’s a mirror image of your main drive when disaster hits and your main drive fails, all you need to do is reboot your computer from your backup, and you’re up and running.

All of that makes the two apps complementary rather than competitors. In fact, I recommend you use both. You can never have too many backups!

This app has more features than Time Machine, so its interface is more complex. But Bomtich has made their app as intuitive as possible by using four strategies:

1. They’ve tweaked the app’s interface to make it as easy to use as possible.

2. They’ve provided a “Simple Mode” interface that can perform a backup in three clicks.

3. The “Cloning Coach” will alert you to any configuration concerns and concerns about your backup strategy.

4. They also offer guided setup and restore, so that getting back your lost information is as easy as possible.

Besides making the interface easy to use, you can automatically keep your backups up-to-date by scheduling them. Carbon Copy Cloner can back up your data hourly, daily, weekly, monthly and more. You can specify what type of backup is to be done, and chain together groups of scheduled tasks.

The Competition and Comparisons

SuperDuper! (Bootable Backups)

Shirt Pocket’s SuperDuper! v3 is an alternative to Carbon Copy Cloner. It’s a simpler app, where many of the features are free, and the full app is more affordable. SuperDuper! has been around for a healthy 14 years, and although new features have been added, the app looks a little dated.

The interface is very easy to use. Just choose which drive to back up, which drive to clone it onto, and the type of backup you want to perform. Like Carbon Copy Cloner, it will create a fully bootable backup, and can update it with just the changes you’ve made since the last backup.

Download SuperDuper! for free from the developer’s website. Pay $27.95 to unlock scheduling, smart update, sandboxes, scripting and more.

ChronoSync (Syncing, File Backup)

Econ Technologies ChronoSync 4 is a versatile app with many talents. It can synchronize files between your computers, backup your files and folders, and create a bootable clone of your hard drive. This one app can perform every type of backup you need.

Restoring files backed up by ChronoSync can be as easy as browsing for the backed up file using Finder and copying it, or using the app itself to sync your files back to your hard drive.

You can schedule your backups to take place at a regular time, or whenever you connect a specific hard drive to your computer. It is able to back up only the files that have changed since your last backup, and can copy multiple files simultaneously to speed up the operation.

$49.99 from the Econ Store. Bundles and student discounts are available. ChronoSync Express (an entry-level version that can’t do bootable backups) is $24.99 from the Mac App Store. ChronoSync Express is included with a SetApp subscription. A 15-day free trial is available.

Acronis True Image (Disk Cloning)

Acronis True Image 2019 for Mac is another alternative to Carbon Copy Cloner, allowing you to make cloned images of your hard drive. The more expensive plans also include online backup.

True Image is a little more expensive than Carbon Copy Cloner, and aimed more at corporations than individuals and small businesses. It lacks a personal license that allows you to use the app on all your computers. The app costs $79.99 for three computers, and $99.99 for five.

You use the app through an intuitive dashboard, and the restore feature allows you to quickly recover your entire drive, or just the files you need.

Acronis True Image 2019 Standard (single license) costs $49.99 (per computer) from the developer’s website. A 30-day free trial is available.

Mac Backup Guru (Bootable Backups)

MacDaddy’s Mac Backup Guru is another app that creates a bootable disk image of your main drive. In fact, it supports three different types of backup: direct cloning, synchronization, and incremental snapshots. You can use it to backup either your complete hard drive, or just the folders you specify.

What makes it different is that it can continually keep that backup in sync with any new changes you make, or alternatively keep incremental backups that don’t overwrite older backups with your changes, in case you need to go back to an earlier version of a document. It’s also a little less expensive than its competitors.

$29 from the developer’s website. A free trial is available.

Get Backup Pro (Disk Cloning, Folder Sync)

Belight Software’s Get Backup Pro is the most affordable app on our list (not including Apple’s free Time Machine), and it offers you a range of backup types, including incremental and compressed file backups, bootable cloned backups, and folder synchronization. It’s another app that may do everything you need.

“Backup, clone, archive, sync—all in one app.”

Backup and sync can be scheduled, and the app supports external or network drives, as well as CDs or DVDs. Backup templates let you include data from iTunes, Photos, Mail, Contacts and your Documents folder. You can encrypt your backups for additional security.

The app is easy to use, including when it comes time to restore your files. You’re even able to restore your files onto a computer that doesn’t have the app installed.

$19.99 from the developer’s website, or included in a SetApp subscription. A free trial is available.

Free Alternatives

1. Free Apps

We’ve already mentioned a few free ways to backup your Mac: Apple’s Time Machine comes preinstalled with macOS, and SuperDuper!’s free version is able to do quite a lot. You can also perform a quick and dirty backup using Finder, by dragging your files to an external drive.

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Here are a couple of additional free backup apps that you may like to consider:

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• FreeFileSync is a free and open source app that creates backups by syncing your changes to an external drive.

• BackupList+ can create full system clones, regular backups, incremental backups and disk images can be performed. It’s useful, but not as user-friendly as some of the other apps.

Some cloud backup providers allow you to back up your computer locally with their software for free. We’ll cover those apps in a future review.

2. Use the Command Line

If you’re more technically inclined, you can bypass apps and use the command line to perform backups. There are a number of commands that are helpful for doing this, and by placing these in a shell script, you’ll only have to set things up once.

Useful commands include:

• cp, the standard Unix copy command,
• tmutil, which allows you to control Time Machine from the command line,
• ditto, which copies files and folders intelligently from the command line,
• rsync, which can back up what has changed since the last backup, even partial files,
• asr (apply software restore), which allows you to restore your files from the command line,
• hdiutil, which allows you to mount a disk image from the command line.

If you’d like to learn how to use the command line to roll your own backup system, refer to these helpful articles and forum discussions:

• Mac 101: Learn the Power of rsync for Backup, Remote, Archive Systems – Macsales
• Backup to external HDD with terminal commands – Stack Overflow
• Control Time Machine from the command line – Macworld
• Make Back Ups from the Command Line in Mac OS X with These 4 Tricks – OSXDaily