such an idiot! time machine

[northernbaldy]

i'm looking for a nas or a firewire external disk for time machine backups and i couldn't decide what to go for.

now I have just thought, why not just stick a big disk in the empty drive bay!


doh!

[mobilehaathi]

Yes, you can do that easy.....

[SDAVE]

You can even put 2 in there to have dual backups


Also it might be possible to Time Machine when external drives are connected.

[DanielCoffey]

An external backup would be handy however... just in case the whole Mac Pro goes up in smoke (or gets stolen).

[SDAVE]

Originally Posted by DanielCoffey

An external backup would be handy however... just in case the whole Mac Pro goes up in smoke (or gets stolen).

If the drive is sitting on a desktop, it might get stolen too

Also doubt if the desktop stops working all of a sudden and all of it's components go kaput.

[Zwhaler]

Yes, extra bays is one of the nicest features of the Mac Pro because it allows multiple internals on OS X natively, I'm using all four right now with a 4TB as my Time Machine backup drive (backs up the other 3)

[northernbaldy]

This will go in the last bay too, i have an SSD and two raided drives in 1,2 and 3

[malch]

O.K., riddle me this, though.
I have a Mac Pro, with a Time-machine backup drive in one of my extra internal slots, and a week-and-a-half old SSD boot drive.
And the SSD boot drive just gave up the ghost—it seems, anyway. I had to finally take the Mac Pro into an Apple Repair place, and they eventually got it to launch, but told me to get it replaced asap. Fine. I'm not in full-panic because I was able to get it to launch myself, when I got the machine home, and I did a new Time-Machine backup to the internal drive reserved for this.
But here's what has me spooked. When my Mac Pro wouldn't start, it simply wouldn't start. I tried starting holding this or that key down, hoping to at least be given the opportunity of starting from my most recent Time-Machine backup, but I couldn't get anything to come up on my desktop.
This is probably due to my own ineptitude, I realize.
But it made me wonder whether an external (fw, for example) backup, launcheable drive might not be an even better idea than in internal one.
regards,
malch

[DJenkins]

Originally Posted by malch

This is probably due to my own ineptitude, I realize.
But it made me wonder whether an external (fw, for example) backup, launcheable drive might not be an even better idea than in internal one.
regards,
malch

If you keep your time machine backup internally, there is always the risk that if a power surge or something damages your primary disk it will kill the backup as well. This is why I keep a time machine backup externally. I even usually have it unplugged from the system and mains power, but this sort of defeats the purpose of the continuous frequent backups.

I also have another drive partitioned with the last few major OSX updates. Each partition is an exact bootable clone made with CCC. This drive only gets updated occasionally. So having this extra clone disk means it would be pretty safe to leave my main time machine running 24/7 but I'm just super paranoid!