Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Backup hard drive advice

another tip

Another tip... Some external drives require a separate power cord, and some of them are powered via firewire or USB. I prefer the usb/fw powered varieties. Its just one less cord, and allows you to backup even if you aren't near a power source.

I also agree go with firewire. Its faster and frees up a USB port for something else that usually doesn't give you a choice, such as the newer ipods/iphones, most digital cameras, USB memory sticks, etc.

Chris
 
flounder021 said:
i bought a WD extra hard drive and i am using the TM to back it up.. i basically connected the USB cable and it pretty much started by itself from there.. and its taking a good amount of time (obviously i knew it would) anyways, it will back up everything correct?? photos, music, school work?? and also lets say my internal hard drive does crash (knocking on wood) how do i go about uploading everything back on assuming i lose it all? use time machine like a few of you said? and i dont really understanding the cloning stuff that a lot of you are talking about where does that get put on to an external drive like the one i have??
thank you thank you thank you!!!!!
:apple: forever!
Click to expand...

You would have to put a new hard drive in your macbook, and then boot from external hard drive and format the newly installed drive. Then put the leopard cds in and install leopard and migrate your information from the external drive when it asks you about setting up a new computer. Then update all your software. That's what I did and it worked fantastically.
 
sushi said:
Another option is to clone (backup) on a regular basis.

Since I have a 500GB in my MBP, I use two external 500GB HDs that are in one enclosure. I alternate the clones (backups) between the drives on a weekly via FW800 which works great.

Two popular cloning apps are Carbon Copy Cloner (CCC) and SuperDuper (SD).
Click to expand...

I'd recommend these programs as well, SD works really well and I use it to compliment my TC/TM backup. The TM backup is for recent "@&(#!" mistakes and the SD backup is for protection against complete and utter hard-drive failure.

I use a big LaCie 1TB drive, although I have helped people establish backup routines with some of the Western Digital "My Passport" drives. The WD have some nice design features for a portable drive, including a door for the access ports and a little LED that tells you it's working.

I've also built a bunch of drives using old PC HDs and cheap enclosures.
 
duncanapple said:
Another tip... Some external drives require a separate power cord, and some of them are powered via firewire or USB. I prefer the usb/fw powered varieties. Its just one less cord, and allows you to backup even if you aren't near a power source.

I also agree go with firewire. Its faster and frees up a USB port for something else that usually doesn't give you a choice, such as the newer ipods/iphones, most digital cameras, USB memory sticks, etc.

Chris
Click to expand...

I like firewire, but lots of the drives out there come with USB (Firewire costs more) so I don't consider it as important as having the single power/data cord.
 
Get a Firewire Drive if you can. The difference may be around $30 or so, but it's well worth it. I have a USB 2.0 Fantom, doing a large backup will make my laptop use a lot more CPU then should be required for simply moving files. FW is much more efficient.
 
Aea said:
Get a Firewire Drive if you can. The difference may be around $30 or so, but it's well worth it. I have a USB 2.0 Fantom, doing a large backup will make my laptop use a lot more CPU then should be required for simply moving files. FW is much more efficient.
Click to expand...

Don't get me wrong, FW is great for really big file-transfers and is an excellent all-around standard, but there are far-fewer drive choices in this regard, especially for small portable drives.

But, for 1TB-sized drives, FW rules.
 
I agree Hulugu, there are fewer (and therefore they tend to cost a little more) out there that are FW. I didn't pay too much of premium though, I have a 250 gb LaCie (the small black "Sam Hecht" deigned one - not that I cared about the designer, but it happened to be cheap) with both firewire, and USB (actually, it has a short retractable USB cord built in) and doesn't require external power either way. I think I paid right around $120 for it brand new, and the non FW version was I think $15 less.

http://www.amazon.com/LaCie-301282-...?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1221761390&sr=8-12

Also, USB 2.0 can give power too. I double checked my drive and it can be powered via USB. Which makes sense, b/c ipods are powered/charged over USB as well.
 
As an Amazon Associate, MacRumors earns a commission from qualifying purchases made through links in this post.
If I do a SuperDuper clone, do I have to use Firewire or will a USB drive work if I have to boot with the external drive?
 
Bengt77 said:
Never, ever exclude your pictures in a backup. They are the most important files on your hard drive. You might not believe me now, but you'll think otherwise once you've lost them all. At least, when you mention pictures, I take it you mean photos?
Click to expand...
Last night I had an external drive fall from a table and seems to have dis-lodged the platters or motor. This drive had ALL my photos plus my MBP backup. Since I have more images than fit on my MBP's 160 drive it seemed reasonable to store them on the external. For some reason it never dawned on me that this external drive should have a backup ran as well, even though my laptop is backed up every day and has nothing on it I would care to lose :(
Some of my photos I have stored on line, but most of my personal family pix were only on this drive - including photos of my mother who is no longer alive.
needless to say, I have already looked at my replacement external driveS and hoping a data recovery service can salvage something off the damaged one.
 
FireWire only

hulugu said:
AFAIK, you can boot from either a USB Drive or Firewire with the SD clone.

However, Target Disk mode only works with Firewire.
Click to expand...

From various things I've read, you *may* be able to boot from an external USB drive if your firmware allows it. Otherwise, you should always be able to boot from an external FireWire drive.
 
flounder021 said:
Hi everyone, I am just thinking that i need to be safe and backup all my music and pictures and school work... even though i know a mac would never crash :) (knock on wood haha) so should i get something like time machine or something smaller (gb size) and cheaper like the western digital 160gb back up??? any advice is appreciated. thank you in advance!!
Click to expand...

Macs never crash. And hard drives don't last forever. One day, the hard drive in your Mac _will_ die. It is unavoidable. You can either buy a Time Capsule or an external hard drive (it doesn't matter too much whether its FireWire or USB; FireWire is better, but more expensive).

Time Capsule has two advantages: First, your data _will_ be backed up even if you forget to do anything. Important if you have a portable computer. Second, you can put the Time Capsule away where thieves can't find it. Backup is no good if a burglar steals your Mac and your backup drive. The disadvantage: Cost.

For an iMac or a MacPro, an external drive that is permanently plugged in is Ok (except for nasty thieves stealing Mac and backup drive). For a MacBook, you need to remember to plug the external drive in from time to time. But it is a lot cheaper and definitely better than no backup at all.
 
flounder021 said:
i bought a WD extra hard drive and i am using the TM to back it up.. i basically connected the USB cable and it pretty much started by itself from there.. and its taking a good amount of time (obviously i knew it would) anyways, it will back up everything correct?? photos, music, school work?? and also lets say my internal hard drive does crash (knocking on wood) how do i go about uploading everything back on assuming i lose it all? use time machine like a few of you said? and i dont really understanding the cloning stuff that a lot of you are talking about where does that get put on to an external drive like the one i have??
thank you thank you thank you!!!!!
:apple: forever!
Click to expand...

Let's say worst case: Your internal drive crashes and is completely destroyed and will not work again. You will need a new internal drive; so you buy a new internal drive (take the opportunity to get a bigger one; a 320 GB drive for a MacBook can be had for just over £60) and install it in your MacBook. Then you find your Leopard DVD and boot from it. Use the menus to go to Disk Utility; you need it to partition the new internal drive (all you need to do is choose "1 partition", that will do the right thing). Then you choose the option "Restore from Time Machine backup" and everything will be restored.

If you don't want to install an internal drive yourself, have nobody nearby to do it, and need to be up and running very quickly, you can buy an external 2.5" drive and do exactly the same thing; use the external drive until you find someone you can put the hard drive from the external drive into your MacBook (all they need to do is unscrew the external drive, take the hard drive out, and put it into the MacBook).
 
Mugwumper said:
From various things I've read, you *may* be able to boot from an external USB drive if your firmware allows it. Otherwise, you should always be able to boot from an external FireWire drive.
Click to expand...

You're right. One should have the right backup system for their machine.

gnasher729 said:
Macs never crash. And hard drives don't last forever. One day, the hard drive in your Mac _will_ die. It is unavoidable. You can either buy a Time Capsule or an external hard drive (it doesn't matter too much whether its FireWire or USB; FireWire is better, but more expensive).

Time Capsule has two advantages: First, your data _will_ be backed up even if you forget to do anything. Important if you have a portable computer. Second, you can put the Time Capsule away where thieves can't find it. Backup is no good if a burglar steals your Mac and your backup drive. The disadvantage: Cost.

For an iMac or a MacPro, an external drive that is permanently plugged in is Ok (except for nasty thieves stealing Mac and backup drive). For a MacBook, you need to remember to plug the external drive in from time to time. But it is a lot cheaper and definitely better than no backup at all.
Click to expand...

I like the TC for laptops. You can use ethernet for really big backups (especially with a MBP; yay, Gigabit), but for incremental stuff, it's a really nice device. Plus, it's basically a cheap server, you can dump media on it, wirelessly print, and use it as a wired/wireless hub.



When the TC first came out, people talked about it being loud and while I can hear the drive spin up, it's relatively quiet.
 
gldelx said:
Last night I had an external drive fall from a table and seems to have dis-lodged the platters or motor. This drive had ALL my photos plus my MBP backup. Since I have more images than fit on my MBP's 160 drive it seemed reasonable to store them on the external. For some reason it never dawned on me that this external drive should have a backup ran as well, even though my laptop is backed up every day and has nothing on it I would care to lose :(
Some of my photos I have stored on line, but most of my personal family pix were only on this drive - including photos of my mother who is no longer alive.
needless to say, I have already looked at my replacement external driveS and hoping a data recovery service can salvage something off the damaged one.
Click to expand...
Ooooh, I'm sorry to hear that. I really hope some service will be able to save most of your pictures. That said, this is what they call 'learning the hard way'. Good luck! (I really do hope you'll have luck.)
 
best backup plan for G5 iMac

Ok, I have my SuperDuper clone done, Time Machine is running and I feel safer. Thanks.

New Question for a friend's iMac G5-with-iSight (Tiger). The internal 250 GB hard disk only has 13 GB left and they take a lot of photos and use iMovie for family events. It will be full soon.

The plan was to move music and older photos to an external to free up the internal HD for current projects. The External is USB.

I understand the a G5 iMac requires Firewire to boot with SuperDuper.

Could you recommend the best backup plan for the entire system? How many external hard drives? Leopard and Time Machine? 2 Bay enclosure JOBD?

Anybody know what Apple charges for replacing the internal hard drive with a bigger one? I understand that replacing internal HD in the iMac G5 with iSight is not easy for a casual user.
 
This is a question I'm pretty sure I know the answer to, but because I'm extremely new to Macs, and generally computer stupid:

Is it necessary to purchase the TimeCapsule to use Time Machine, or does any external hard drive work just as well? I'm planning on having three external hard drives, 1 for Time Machine and 2 for cloning, and Time Capsule costs a bit too much money.
 
ski2moro said:
Ok, I have my SuperDuper clone done, Time Machine is running and I feel safer. Thanks.

New Question for a friend's iMac G5-with-iSight (Tiger). The internal 250 GB hard disk only has 13 GB left and they take a lot of photos and use iMovie for family events. It will be full soon.

The plan was to move music and older photos to an external to free up the internal HD for current projects. The External is USB.

I understand the a G5 iMac requires Firewire to boot with SuperDuper.

Could you recommend the best backup plan for the entire system? How many external hard drives? Leopard and Time Machine? 2 Bay enclosure JOBD?

Anybody know what Apple charges for replacing the internal hard drive with a bigger one? I understand that replacing internal HD in the iMac G5 with iSight is not easy for a casual user.
Click to expand...

Interesting, I didn't realize the iMac G5 (iSight) was so difficult, apparently you have to mess with the LCD.

You could get one drive (.5TB or 1TB) and partition it. Make one partition a media area and then you can drop movies and music to it. Then use the other partition for backup. Or you can get two separate drives and essentially do the same thing.

For iTunes, check out this article. You'll see how to move iTunes to an external drive.

Adelaide said:
This is a question I'm pretty sure I know the answer to, but because I'm extremely new to Macs, and generally computer stupid:

Is it necessary to purchase the TimeCapsule to use Time Machine, or does any external hard drive work just as well? I'm planning on having three external hard drives, 1 for Time Machine and 2 for cloning, and Time Capsule costs a bit too much money.
Click to expand...

No, you don't need the Time Capsule. It's a neat box, but any drive will work. If you have Firewire drives, you can "daisy-chain" them together, so you just need one plug to the Mac and it will be able to see all the drives.
 
ski2moro said:
Ok, I have my SuperDuper clone done, Time Machine is running and I feel safer. Thanks.

New Question for a friend's iMac G5-with-iSight (Tiger). The internal 250 GB hard disk only has 13 GB left and they take a lot of photos and use iMovie for family events. It will be full soon.

The plan was to move music and older photos to an external to free up the internal HD for current projects. The External is USB.

I understand the a G5 iMac requires Firewire to boot with SuperDuper.

Could you recommend the best backup plan for the entire system? How many external hard drives? Leopard and Time Machine? 2 Bay enclosure JOBD?

Anybody know what Apple charges for replacing the internal hard drive with a bigger one? I understand that replacing internal HD in the iMac G5 with iSight is not easy for a casual user.
Click to expand...

hulugu said:
Interesting, I didn't realize the iMac G5 (iSight) was so difficult, apparently you have to mess with the LCD.

You could get one drive (.5TB or 1TB) and partition it. Make one partition a media area and then you can drop movies and music to it. Then use the other partition for backup. Or you can get two separate drives and essentially do the same thing.
Click to expand...
I would definitely consider having a bigger hard drive installed in the iMac. Way easier than having the internal drive and an external one, and being forced to get two externals (or one, partitioned) for backups. Have the internal replaced by a 750GB or 1TB drive (they don't cost that much anymore) and get an external of the same size.

And no, I would never get one drive for both storage of media, and backups. Never ever store both the original data and a backup on one drive. The whole point of having a backup is that you still have a safe 1:1 copy when one drive fails. The option you suggest, hulugu, is only an option when you're afraid of ruining the files yourself, e.g. by accidentally deleting them. When the backup drive itself fails, you'll have lost both the backup, and the original media files themselves. Not a good option.

And yeah, the perfect solution would be to have a bigger drive installed. Then get a dual drive enclosure, get one drive of the same size as the internal for 1:1 clones using SuperDuper!, and one (smaller) drive for Time Machine backups. Install them in JBOD mode and backup away!
 
Bengt77 said:
I would definitely consider having a bigger hard drive installed in the iMac. Way easier than having the internal drive and an external one, and being forced to get two externals (or one, partitioned) for backups. Have the internal replaced by a 750GB or 1TB drive (they don't cost that much anymore) and get an external of the same size.

And no, I would never get one drive for both storage of media, and backups. Never ever store both the original data and a backup on one drive. The whole point of having a backup is that you still have a safe 1:1 copy when one drive fails. The option you suggest, hulugu, is only an option when you're afraid of ruining the files yourself, e.g. by accidentally deleting them. When the backup drive itself fails, you'll have lost both the backup, and the original media files themselves. Not a good option.

And yeah, the perfect solution would be to have a bigger drive installed. Then get a dual drive enclosure, get one drive of the same size as the internal for 1:1 clones using SuperDuper!, and one (smaller) drive for Time Machine backups. Install them in JBOD mode and backup away!
Click to expand...

Yep, you're right. The media should be on two drives.
 
Guys, I have a Western Digital MyBook Studio 2, 2TB drive (2 x 1TB drives).

Is it possible to have:

one of the drives for Time Machine
one of the drives for separate, full backups (clone?)

At least if one drive fails I have one of the different types of backup, and I don't have to buy another disk.

I'd rather this than a mirrored array in case the Time Machine backup goes wrong and I have 2 mirrored and protected disks of rubbish!

I don't think WD's software let's me do this, but I'm not sure what will happen if I create a concatenated array in disk utility.

Reviews of this drive indicated this was possible but I'm not so sure.

Cheers :)
 
MeMota said:
Guys, I have a Western Digital MyBook Studio 2, 2TB drive (2 x 1TB drives).

Is it possible to have:

one of the drives for Time Machine
one of the drives for separate, full backups (clone?)

At least if one drive fails I have one of the different types of backup, and I don't have to buy another disk.

I'd rather this than a mirrored array in case the Time Machine backup goes wrong and I have 2 mirrored and protected disks of rubbish!

I don't think WD's software let's me do this, but I'm not sure what will happen if I create a concatenated array in disk utility.

Reviews of this drive indicated this was possible but I'm not so sure.

Cheers :)
Click to expand...

What happens if your house catches fire or the roof leaks? The best thing would be to keep one of your backups at a separate location. I think Time Machine would be good to have at home, since you probably would be using that more to go back and find previous versions of documents. Away from home, I would maybe have a cloned drive. This could be kept in your office, maybe your car (depending on the weather), at a relative's home, somewhere, where if something happened to your home computer, this one should be safe.
 
True, but I'm cost constrained at the moment and thought this could be a good stop-gap
 
MeMota said:
True, but I'm cost constrained at the moment and thought this could be a good stop-gap
Click to expand...

Ahh, so am I. Right now, I'm not even backing up, but I'm planning on buying a WD Apple edition (or whatever it's called) Passport. On another website, I saw a link to get them on sale. I'm not sure if I can mention it here, but you can PM me if you're interested. It wasn't that big of a discount, but enough to make me think I should buy it in the next few days rather in the next few weeks.

Having one is a lot better than having none, but don't forget that you should have an onsite one.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back