back up strategy?

[johnh57]

I've been careless about backups in the past. It's getting more important to me to be a bit more careful.

I have CCC and, of course, time machine. Currently I just have CCC doing a nightly backup to a Lacie external HDD. The Lacie is small, 1/2 the capacity of the SSD in the macbook. I've ordered a new 4tb WD external drive to use as a backup drive. I don't really ever anticipate have room issues on the internal SSD, it's a 500GB drive and I don't work with photos or videos.

I'm wondering if I should partition the 4TB drive into 2 or 3 partitions - one for Time machine, one for CCC (is that even necessary - running both ?), and maybe one for archiving - even though I don't see the need for it now.

I have a bootcamp partition on the SSD also with windows 7 running a few applications that are not os/x compatible. After setting up bootcamp and windows 7, I installed parallels to run windows 7 in a VM. Somehow I'd like to make sure that mess gets backed up as well.

 

[satcomer]

You need a larger external. You can build your own external thus getting the size of hard drive and replace hard drives it it at your leisure. Plus with your Windows Boot Camp then use the software Winclone.

If I were you using Winclone also on Windows 7 or eight use MacDive. This way you could still format the external HFS+ and access the drive from Windows too.

 

[johnh57]

You need a larger external. You can build your own external thus getting the size of hard drive and replace hard drives it it at your leisure. Plus with your Windows Boot Camp then use the software Winclone.

If I were you using Winclone also on Windows 7 or eight use MacDive. This way you could still format the external HFS+ and access the drive from Windows too.

I have a 4 TB external coming.

Actually I do have Winclone - I bought that when I upgraded to an SSD in the macbook. I hadn't used it since and forgot I had it.

I also have an external SATA enclosure I can plug any 2.5 or 3.5 SATA drive into. I have the original 300GB mac HDD available for archiving if necessary.

 

[tobefirst ⚽️]

Also, if at all feasible, consider offsite backup as well, whether via a cloud service, or a drive you back up to monthly (or more often) and store at another location (work, relative's, etc.).

 

[Gregg2]

Larger than 4TB? I partitioned mine: only 2TB.

 

[johnh57]

Is there a rational reason to run both a carbon copy and a time machine backup? Considering they would both reside on the same physical disk.

I do have the option of plugging in the original mac HDD 300 GB drive into an external enclosure that I already have and using it as a weekly or monthly full back up if I felt the need.

 

[ChrisA]

I've been careless about backups in the past. It's getting more important to me to be a bit more careful.

Here are just two rules, if you follow them BOTH. Your data will be safe. DOn't try and short cut them.

(1) Always have your data on THREE different media, even while a backup operation is under way

(2) Always have you data stored in TWO different geographic locations even while the backup operation is under way.

So you have the data on the main SSD inside the Macbook, on a Time Machine volume and on some offsite backup service. This adds up to three different media.

Having the data both at home and at the off site place (Blackballs, CrashPlan or the like) is one why to follow rule #2.

The above is the DEAD MINIMUM. There are other ways to get this, for example rotating hard drive copies to some location like your office.

If the data really maters then you might add more, such as keeping snapshot in a fire safe in some other room in the house.

Common ways to lose data are
1) Theft of the equipment. I think this is the #1 cause
2) building fire or flood
3) User error, deleting the wrong files and not noticing until weeks later
4) software problem that corrupts the data
5) Lightening hitting the utility pole down the street and damaging anything that is plugged into AC power.

A better plan that you really need for business critical data is to have a story such that if ANY of the above happens you still meet both rules above. This means for really important stuff you have multiple off site copies.

Needles to say you encrypt all of this so that if some one finds your computer or a copy of the backup the data are useless to them.

But just those two rules are good enough for most home computers.

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...
I'm wondering if I should partition the 4TB drive into 2 or 3 partitions - one for Time machine, one for CCC ...

That would be completely pointless and counter productive. There s zero point wring two backups to one physical device. Each backup needs it's own physical device, otherwise you are just wasting time.

Let Time Machine have all of the largest disk you can afford. It will keep all the old versions of your data for you until the disk ifs then it will delete the oldest copy to make rom as needed. The large disk allows you to keep al the old versions of your files. So if something gets deleted you can go back a few months and find it.