If backing up files is one part of the data protection equation, then the other is protecting those files, wherever they reside, from cyber-attack, and that’s what Cyber Protect Home Office is designed to do. The main reason for the name change from True Image, which was chosen to show that the backup tool creates a ‘true image’ of the disk it’s backing up, is that it now goes beyond just backing up your disk.

You’ll need to set up an account with Acronis to use its, but you can give Cyber Protect Home Office a spin without signing up for its paid-for service or even providing payment details, by using the free trial to back up to a local drive or network disk.

The latter makes it good option for anyone with a NAS that doesn’t support Apple’s Time Machine. It supports backing up your data to a local disk, Acronis’ own cloud-based service, or a network-attached storage device. Our reviews of tools here that create bootable clones should be read in that context.Īcronis is a name well known in the Windows world, but less so to Mac users.Ĭyber Protect Home Office is the new name for Acronis True Image and is its personal backup solution. There is no single solution to the problem, currently. As one developer told us, “it’s a bit hit and miss”. The net result is that, depending on which version of macOS you’re running and whether you have an Intel or Apple silicon Mac, bootable clones don’t always work. That means that the old way of creating bootable clones no longer works and developers have had to find ways to work with and around Apple’s new way of doing things. Copies of the Signed System Volume are not bootable without a cryptographic seal applied by Apple. One example of this is the introduction of the Signed System Volume in Big Sur. One of the consequences of those changes is that is harder for third-party applications that need deep access to the system to work.

However, over the last few versions of macOS Apple has been making changes to make it more secure. Some apps are focused on creating clones of your hard drive and offer incremental backup as an extra feature. Apple’s own Time Machine, which is included with macOS, is an example of this kind of solution. Many options are focused solely on making backing up your Mac regularly as easy as as possible.

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