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External Data Backup/Storage Solution

L

LERsince1991

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Jul 24, 2008
1,245
37
UK
How do you backup your external hard drives?

For example you have an external hard drive you store lots of archived projects on as well as media.

How do you then backup this (or these?) hard drives? Because if it went wrong, you've lost everything on it!

Do you use Time Machine? Say you have a mac and 2 external hard drives. You use one external for storage and another to backup both your mac and your storage hard drive.

What about when you need to backup say 4 external hard drives each with 2tb of archived projects and media on? As well as needing to backup your mac(s) of course?
 
F

flynz4

macrumors 68040
Aug 9, 2009
3,244
127
Portland, OR
LERsince1991 said:
How do you backup your external hard drives?

For example you have an external hard drive you store lots of archived projects on as well as media.

How do you then backup this (or these?) hard drives? Because if it went wrong, you've lost everything on it!

Do you use Time Machine? Say you have a mac and 2 external hard drives. You use one external for storage and another to backup both your mac and your storage hard drive.

What about when you need to backup say 4 external hard drives each with 2tb of archived projects and media on? As well as needing to backup your mac(s) of course?
Click to expand...

I use a dual backup strategy.

1) Local: 3TB TC for my iMac & 2TB TC for all of the MacBook Airs
2) Cloud: Crashplan+ for disaster recovery

In addition I use a third backup of data that I do not particularly care about (ex: ripped movies)

3) A rotated (onsite/offsite) pair of HDDs incrementally backed up with CCC periodically when I have made significant changes to my libraries. At any given time... one of the HDDs is locked offsite in my work office.

In my case, all of my primary data is about 1.5 TB total... and it all backs up easily to the 3TB TC. I do not bother backing up my ripped movie collection (except to item #3 above) because the data size is large, and the data is trivially re-obtainable.

/Jim
 
L

LERsince1991

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Jul 24, 2008
1,245
37
UK
Thanks,

What I am more interested in I suppose is how can you (anyone?) back up your external hard drives? Do some hard drives come with a feature to backup the contents to an additional drive connected to it? or is this something Mac OS X can do built in or with more software?

What is the preferred way to backup an external hard drive? Hardware managed backups or software backups to a mirrored drive?

I guess I want to stay away from RAID 1 firstly as I see the extra complications, cost and risk as unnecessary. Secondly as RAID 1 will mirror changes to both drives so it only partially covers drive failure and does not cover accidental deleting etc...

I guess the perfect system is like a separate Time Machine on each drive (keeps multiple versions and REALLY easy and fast to recover anything).

I have attached an image of what I am proposing.

p.s. I have been trying to work out the best way for nearly a year! Learning a lot but slow progress as it has to be right before I commit! considering multi-drive enclosures with hardware RAID, NAS etc... I like the idea of separate drives as the array (physical, not software so all drives are separate). As separate drives can be added or taken away a lot easier, for minimal cost and simply. Only limit would be the number of ports available on the mac (unsure

I currently have 4th, (2x2tb in a single enclosure). 2tb is TM, 0.5tb is archive, 1.5tb is media. However I will probably move my itunes library and also archive more projects of my mac soon (but externals are full currently!). So the external archive and media will grow as soon as I expand.
 

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Last edited:
K

kirsch92

macrumors member
Apr 30, 2009
96
2
MCAsan said:
Internal SSD and external RAID 1 set are all backed up to 3TB Time Capsule.
Click to expand...

How did you set TM to back up external to the TC?

TM allows for multiple external drive to rotate thru backing up an internal now, but I see no way of doing external to external in addition to that.
 
MCAsan

MCAsan

macrumors 601
Jul 9, 2012
4,587
442
Atlanta
How did you set TM to back up external to the TC?
Click to expand...

I don't, but I could by connected a USB 2 drive to TC. For me TC is backing up the rMBP's internal SSD and the external RAID 1 drive set.

In Time Machine Preferences you select the target drive that will write the backups. For me that is the HD inside Time Capsule. In Time Machine Preferences go to Options. There you can specify which folders or drives are to be excluded from the backup. I have zero contents in this list; therefore, both my internal SSD and the external RAID set are included in the backups.
 
K

kirsch92

macrumors member
Apr 30, 2009
96
2
MCAsan said:
I don't, but I could by connected a USB 2 drive to TC. For me TC is backing up the rMBP's internal SSD and the external RAID 1 drive set.

In Time Machine Preferences you select the target drive that will write the backups. For me that is the HD inside Time Capsule. In Time Machine Preferences go to Options. There you can specify which folders or drives are to be excluded from the backup. I have zero contents in this list; therefore, both my internal SSD and the external RAID set are included in the backups.
Click to expand...

I guess I should be more clear.

I want TM to back my internal to an external, AND also back up my media drive (external) to yet another external drive.
I don't see any way of doing this.
I think that is what the OP was also asking.
 
Last edited:
MCAsan

MCAsan

macrumors 601
Jul 9, 2012
4,587
442
Atlanta
That is exactly what my TM does. It backs up the internal SSD and external RAID set to the Time Capsules's 3TB drive.
 
L

lucasfunkt

macrumors 6502
Jun 11, 2012
315
5
I'm looking for the cheapest possible 3tb external HDD to back up and store from the new iMac in December when I eventually get it.

Anyone seen any bargains, (has to be USB 3.0)?

I can get 2TB for around £65 but the cheapest 3TB is £115.
 
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