Do you have a backup hard drive? If not, then you need to get one. It should be larger than your computer's hard drive capacity. You can purchase something like this. Then all you need to start is to clone your computer's hard drive to the backup drive:
Clone using Restore Option of Disk Utility
- Open Disk Utility from the Utilities folder.
- Select the destination volume from the left side list.
- Click on the Restore tab in the DU main window.
- Check the box labeled Erase destination.
- Select the destination volume from the left side list and drag it to the Destination entry field.
- Select the source volume from the left side list and drag it to the Source entry field.
- Double-check you got it right, then click on the Restore button.
Destination means the external backup drive. Source means the internal startup drive.
Thereafter, you can incrementally update the backup drive using a backup utility like one of these:
Others may be found at VersionTracker or MacUpdate.
Visit The XLab FAQs and read the FAQ on backup and restore. Also read How to Back Up and Restore Your Files.
In the meanwhile for your Address Book you would drag the folder and files I mentioned in the earlier post to whatever media you are going to use for backup. This will copy them to the backup device. If you don't have a backup drive then you could use a USB flash drive or burn the files to a CD or DVD. Note that CDs and DVDs can only be used once because they are read-only once you put data on them.
