On top of that, you also have another version of that stored (I believe) in yet another hidden partition, 'System Recovery', for when that fails. I'm still a little fuzzy on this with Apple Silicon Macs (as it is a fair bit different from how it is/was on Intel Macs), but you have a hidden recovery partition, 'Recovery Mode', present on your Mac that you can start to. If you want to use something then probably the best free option is Avast, or if you want to spend money then have a look at Sophos. I have been using Macs for about 35 years and have not used antivirus programs at all, but I am careful about what I download and from what sources. You can, of course, use both Time machine and CCC to different disks for redundancy.Īpplications can be re-downloaded from App Store or reloaded from original images if purchased outside the App Store. CCC is expected to soon have the capability to produce a full bootable backup of your Big Sur system ( it already has this capability for non-M1 Big Sur systems).

Time machine is included with macOS, whereas CCC is a paid program but one of the best investments you can buy for USD39.99 for a licence which covers multiple machines. Both of these will back up all your data. MacOS Big Sur has a number of built-in features to improve security, including a non-writable system partition on the disk which has checksum protection, and in-built security checking in Safari.Įven if your disk is totally wiped, you can download a new system installation image via a wireless internet connection and restore your system.ĭata backups should be performed either using Time Machine to an external disk, or using Carbon Copy Cloner (CCC) to an external disk.

Avast big sur