Helping Mac users upgrade their machines, doing data transfers, backing up data – that’s all part of a typical day’s work at NeedMacHelp. When a new client contacts us to book an appointment for data migration or help with backing up, I always ask how much data he/she has on the old machine.  For some users, this question causes some confusion so I thought I would do a quick “how to find out info about your Mac” post.

1.  To find out what version of OS X (the Mac operating system) your machine is running:

• From the Apple menu located in the upper left hand corner of your screen, select About This Mac.

• The window that opens will show your OS X version.  In the example below, the version is 10.6.8 (Snow Leopard).

2.  To find out what processor your machine has and how much memory (RAM) it has:

• From the Apple menu located in the upper left hand corner of your screen, select About This Mac.

• The window that opens will show Processor and Memory.  In the example below, the Processor is a 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, and it has 2 GB of RAM.

3.  To find out how big your hard drive is, and how much data is on your Mac:

• Select Finder by clicking on your Desktop or on the Finder icon located in your Dock (the Dock is the bar of icons that sits at the bottom or side of your screen).

• The window that opens will show a list on the left hand side that includes a section called “DEVICES.” Under devices, there will be a hard drive icon that looks like the one in the example below.

• Make sure you are still in the Finder and select “File” in the upper left hand corner of your screen, and then select “Get Info.” A window will open that lists the following:

* Version (the version of the operating system)

* Format (the format of your hard drive)

* Capacity (the size of your hard drive)

* Available (how much space is currently available on your hard drive)

* Used (how much data is currently on your hard drive)

In the example above, the size of the machine’s hard drive is 158.86 GB, of which 43.07 GB of data has been used.

We’ve had many new clients recently who have purchased new Macs and either need to move their data from an old Mac or migrate it from a PC.  One of the first questions I ask is “are you backed up?”  Unfortunately, I would say 90% of these new clients are not backed up — even though many of them already own external hard drives.

Backing up is not painful, nor difficult but it IS incredibly important.  I came across this very straightforward article on TUAW and wanted to share it with our readers.  The backup methods mentioned in the article (Time Machine, Carbon Copy Cloner, Super Duper) are pretty much what we recommend to our clients who are home users or have small user groups that don’t require Retrospect.  We wouldn’t necessarily recommend the drive that is pictured in the article, but that discussion will have to be reserved for another post.