Something Im a bit disappointed by is the hdd setup - either fusion or single drive - all backup,tm,cloning etc has to go external. Thats the situation I have with current old machine and I find I dont back up as often as I should so I was hoping that the new machines would have two drive(two volumes) option - so some form of backup would be achievable internally with partition. Its nice to have that sort of redundancy.
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Backing Up
- Thread starter nedlah
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There are a number of reasons why having your backup within the primary machine is a bad idea. For example... a power surge could fry both drives at the same time. Secondly... if the machine is stollen... the primary data and backup are both lost.
Personally... I like a dual (minimum) backup strategy with a combination of networked local backup to a different part of the house (ideally secured)... and cloud based automated backup for disaster recovery..
/Jim
Yeah I guess it is important to have some back up outside the machine. I find starting up the external drive I have to be something I just havent got into the habit of doing regularly. My biggest concern or consideration though is hard disk failure. I assume with fusion if one drive fails the whole thing is gone? Or not? I still hope apple makes machines which will outlast the warranty so I always like to think I can have a boot disk or partition ready for action.
Not only should it be external to your machine... but it should be always on.
With an iMac... it can simply be a USB drive attached to the machine.
With a laptop... Ideally it is a network drive (ex: Time Capsule)
I would strongly recommend you develop a backup mechanism that does NOT rely on human intervention.
/Jim
It'd certainly be simpler if I didn't have to remember to do it. Thing is I dont leave my machine on - some days I turn it on and off several times during the day - just depends on what I'm dong at the time - so scheduling back-ups and clones etc still needs intervention or at least very regular habits I guess. Just a personal thing.
On other hand if there's catastrophic failure in either drive in the fusion volume it'd be nice to have another internal boot volume. Without boot disk I'm not sure can Lion or mLion find an external boot volume?
On other hand if there's catastrophic failure in either drive in the fusion volume it'd be nice to have another internal boot volume. Without boot disk I'm not sure can Lion or mLion find an external boot volume?
You could consider leaving your Mac on all the time, or only shut down at the end of the day if you must. Just configure it to go to sleep after a reasonable interval of idle time.
If you have a bus-powered external USB drive, just leave it plugged in all the time. Time Machine will do a backup a few minutes after you start (or wake up) your system, and every hour or so while it is running.
Your internal Lion (or Mountain Lion) disk should have a recovery partition. You can boot that and restore from an external Time Machine drive if you need to, provided the whole internal disk doesn't fail. If you have an internet connection, you can also boot over the network to recover if necessary. You can also make a recovery disk on a USB flash drive; you need to do this in advance, while you still have a working disk in the system.
If you're serious about recovering your system easily, you should TEST these recovery methods now, so you know how they work and confirm that things are set up correctly. If this is your only computer, you should find AND PRINT the appropriate recovery instructions from Apple's support pages in advance, since you won't be able to get them if you can't boot.
Everything in the previous two paragraphs is to make your life easier if you ever need to recover the system -- but it only matters if you have a copy of your data! The MOST important step is to get your Time Machine drive connected and set up, and leave it that way! TODAY!! IMMEDIATELY!! FOREVER!!
I agree with the 2 minimum backup strategy. 1 local and 1 remote.
My suggestion is an external drive for local Time Machine backups. This will be useful for immediate file or system recovery. Get something bus powered for minimal clutter, and you can even purchase a shelf for it which clamps to the iMac pedestal (name escapes me), and it would be behind the screen completely out sight depending on your comps location.
For offline backups I suggest a software called Arq, coupled with Amazons new Glacier storage service. Very very good pricing, about 10x less than Amazon S3 storage. Downside is that access to files for recovery might take around 4 hours.
The Arq/Glacier combo is a new strategy for me, but from my research appears to be an incredibly robust option.
My suggestion is an external drive for local Time Machine backups. This will be useful for immediate file or system recovery. Get something bus powered for minimal clutter, and you can even purchase a shelf for it which clamps to the iMac pedestal (name escapes me), and it would be behind the screen completely out sight depending on your comps location.
For offline backups I suggest a software called Arq, coupled with Amazons new Glacier storage service. Very very good pricing, about 10x less than Amazon S3 storage. Downside is that access to files for recovery might take around 4 hours.
The Arq/Glacier combo is a new strategy for me, but from my research appears to be an incredibly robust option.
