I use Time Machine. One thing I learned recently is there are a bunch of files that Time Machine doesn't backup - http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/13139

I use Time Machine. One thing I learned recently is there are a bunch of files that Time Machine doesn't backup - http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/131399/what-folders-can-be-safely-excluded-from-time-machine-backup http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/131399/what-folders... In my case, I use nvAlt as a note taking tool. nvAlt stores the interim changes (have not yet been persisted to the database) in ~/Library/Cache or something, which is on the exclusion list for Time Machine. Since I never really restart my machine or close the programs I use daily, the changes never really got backed up (I had months of notes that were not persisted). Long story short, I had to restore from a Time Machine backup, which mostly worked but I did lose some stuff. I keep the time machine exclusion list pretty slim now because, frankly I don't care if my backup has caches and other garbage in it. I much rather prefer recovering things in a stateful manner that's least disruptive to my work.