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bs0604

macrumors member
Original poster
Sep 19, 2014
39
1
I have all my files & pictures (close to a terabyte) on an external drive. A few months ago I backed up this external drive to a 2nd external drive which took a few hours. To do so I dragged the icon of the first external drive on to the icon of the 2nd drive. Its been a few months and I would like to refresh this backup. If I drag the icon again on to the 2nd drive's icon will it just back up those files that have been changed, taking only a matter of minutes, or is it going to replace every file, taking hours?
 
From what you have written, I would expect it to make a second copy of ALL your backup files, so taking the same time or more that the first backup took.
 
I recommend using a backup software, it will determine what's changed and backup the deltas.

I use Time Machine for day to day stuff, and Carbon Copy Cloner for my other backups that I want the ability to do a full restore. CCC also does deltas as well.
 
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