Backing up your media and Catalog

As I mentioned in the introduction to this section, media backup is very important. Once lost, there's little chance you'll ever get your images back again if there's a major technical problem, so be warned!

If you have a Mac, follow these steps:

1. Buy an external hard drive that's at least twice the capacity of your Mac's internal drive (that is, if your Mac's drive is 1 TB capacity, buy a 2 TB drive, or better still, a 4 TB drive).
2. Plug the drive into the Mac.
3. Format the drive for FAT32 (which means it'll work on a Mac or Windows) or Mac OS Extended (a Mac format only) using the Mac's included Disk Utility.
4. Find and start the Time Machine app.
5. Follow the onscreen prompts. It takes two minutes to set up. You can set it to back up only your photos, only specific folders, or everything!
6. A full backup might take several hours, depending on the amount of stuff that's already on the computer. It backs up all your documents...