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newsushi

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Aug 16, 2011
17
0
I have two identical 1TB Western Digital Elements external hard drives. I currently use one for Time Machine and the other is just sitting around. I would like to have a backup for my Time Machine drive in case it fails. To create this backup, I am considering using Disk Utility to create a Raid 1 (mirror) using the two identical drives. After making the raid, my Macbook should see the drives as one unit and I should be able to use the raid as my Time Machine. Thus, any time Time Machine performs any function, it should perform the function for both drives. If one fails, I should be able to replace one drive and allow it to rebuild.

Does anyone use this system? Does this sound like a good system? Given that I have a second identical drive just sitting around, are there really any drawbacks to this system? I should note that I also have an offsite Time Machine backup, but it's one that I can only update about once per month. Thanks for your guidance.
 

firestarter

macrumors 603
Dec 31, 2002
5,506
227
Green and pleasant land
It sounds pointless to me to use RAID 1. You already have the data itself, and one Time Machine backup - having the Time Machine in a RAID does little to improve resilience.

What happens if you have a fire / theft / flood / electrical fault / data corruption / virus and you loose all the drives connected to your computer?

With two drives you can have a much safer strategy by keeping one offsite in another location.
 

newsushi

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Aug 16, 2011
17
0
What happens if you have a fire / theft / flood / electrical fault / data corruption / virus and you loose all the drives connected to your computer?

With two drives you can have a much safer strategy by keeping one offsite in another location.

Read the second to last sentence. I already have an offsite backup that I use about once per month.
 

firestarter

macrumors 603
Dec 31, 2002
5,506
227
Green and pleasant land
Read the second to last sentence. I already have an offsite backup that I use about once per month.

Fair enough.

I think you're just wasting electricity considering RAID 1 TBH.

If it were me... I'd instead use one of those disks to create a bootable backup (using CCC). It's often handy to have one of those around - Time Machine is convenient but it takes a while to restore from.
 

sidewinder

macrumors 68020
Dec 10, 2008
2,425
130
Northern California
RAID1 is for high availability, not backup. That's not something you need with Time Machine.

I like firestarter's idea of using CCC or SuperDuper! (my preference) to make a bootable backup of the main drive. In fact, that is exactly what I do.

S-
 
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