Backup two hard drives using - Time Machin

[drizzzt]

Hi,

Im looking for an external Hard Drive solution for my mac mini and my MacBook pro. Im considering a USB or TB3 solution with Raid 0 on it. Either My Book Duo (8TB) or LaCie 2big Dock (8TB) I still didn't decide (any advice ;P ?) if i need the extra speed from TB3 with the LaCie. I decided to use Raid 0 and because its not super reliable all the time I would like to backup this hard drive to another one which I already have a slower 8TB hard drive (OLD). My question here is if I can use Time Machine to do it or do I need to use a software like CCC or super duper.

The drives will be connected to my mac mini, occasionally I will unplug the new drive and plug it to my MacBook to use it for video editing as well as for creating a time machin backup. Is there a way I can make a Time Machine backup of the new disk and save it on the old disk, and create a back up of my mac mini using time machin to the new external drive? I know I can exclude folders from Time Machin and I know how to add external hard drive to the backup however is it possible to have one drive back up the main drive and then another separate external drive back up only a second back up drive without interfering with the first back up?

Best regards,

 

[Erehy Dobon]

You will gain no benefit from a Thunderbolt 3 external spinner for Time Machine backups. There's a lot of overhead in the Time Machine backup process since the system has to analyze which data has been changed since the last backup and what hasn't. It's not like a raw copy of a movie file from one volume to another.

Thunderbolt 3 drives have their applications but Time Machine backups isn't one of them.

I cannot comment on the two devices you are considering. I just buy blank external 3.5" HDDs and shove them into generic USB3 drive enclosures. I don't buy name-brand external drives.

RAID 0 provides no redundancy nor fault tolerance since it stripes across two drives. Failure of either drive will result in total loss of data.

Personally, I would consider two backup drives. Some people would do one backup drive per computer but the wiser approach would be to back up both computers to each of the two external drives, alternating between the two backup drives.

This eliminates the single point of failure if you only have one backup drive for both computers. If that external drive dies, you lose all your backups. At least with a two backup drive setup, you still have multiple backups of both systems in the other external drive.

This is also one of the few cases where partitioning the external drive would make sense. Time Machine will recognize each partition as a separate volume. I would probably label them as "TM-MM" and "TM-MBP".

I still make periodic CCC bootable clones of my system drives. I don't trust Time Machine as a full recovery system. I have seen TM backups fail too often to have any faith in that.

Old system administrator's adage: "If it's worth backing up, it's worth backing up twice."

Some go as far as three times including a set of offsite backups in case your place is robbed, flooded, or burned down to the ground.

None of this advice is Catalina specific or even Mac specific. This is just standard advice for archiving computer data.

 

[glenthompson]

You have two separate issues here. First is the large amount of disk space you want to have available. Lots of options here but it really depends on what you're storing and how fast of access you need. I would use any multi-drive enclosure was a JBOD instead of RAID 0. If you really need a lot of contiguous space then consider RAID 5 so you have some fault tolerance (note that this is not a backup solution).

If you need that data available from two machines, then better to use the Mini as a file server to the laptop. Easy enough to setup and no hassles moving the hardware around.

For backups you need to list the scenarios you're trying to protect against. I like to classify them into 3 groups:
1. Stupid user tricks - accidentally delete a file, overwrite the wrong data, or download some malware.
2. Hardware failure - Computer dies, drive dies, or anything that can break does.
3. Disasters - Robbery, fire, nuclear attack.

Time machine is great for 1 and good for 2. CCC is great for 1 and 2, and ok for 3 if off-site. Backblaze is great for 3 since you may not have any hardware left. I use all three. In addition I have a lot of data in iCloud. While not backup (doesn't protect against 1) it can help with scenario 2.

You also have to take into account your own personality and habits. If shuttling drives for off-site, will you be committed to doing it regularly? Or do you need a hands off approach?

As example of a good backup strategy, I have CCC run a clone every night. One morning I tried to use my MBP and the graphics chip had died - common problem with 2011 MBPs. We had recently replaced my wife's iMac and hadn't done anything with her old one. Used the CCC clone to on the old iMac and was back up and running in less than 2 hours.

Before retiring I was involved with corporate disaster recovery testing. In some of our periodic tests we had different restrictions on the test like a list of people that were unavailable (dead). Critical systems still had to ups and running on the backup hardware in the prescribed time.

 

[drizzzt]

Thank you for the very in depth answers !

Erehy Dobon - The think I want actually to to is

starting from 2:08. However instead of using to Raid 0 as he describes it I want to use one Raid 0 (the new disk I want to buy) and then using a software solution CCC/TM to back this disk up to my OLD HDD that will be the same size as the Raid 0 which is 8 TB.

The Raid 0 drive will be used to edit movies out of it when I'm at home, as well as store all my data (photos, movies, documents etc). I was also thinking about making the daily TM backups of my macs on this drive.

The second drive OLD will be used just as a copy of the Raid 0 and the question is if this is possible and what program will be the best to do it?

glenthompson - I was thinking about Raid 0 as it increases the speed a lot and I need this speed for video editing which i do quite a lot. I mostly do 1080 however I'm playing more and more with 4k (mostly drone shots). I'am actually making my mac mini as a server for PLEX so I will have remote access to the Raid 0 disk if I will need it form my laptop. However I don't think it will be possible to edit video like this so at some points I will need to just unplug the drive and plug it to my MacBook pro 2018 as my mac mini late 2012 might struggle with the edits some time. Regarding the backup I want I kind of describe it above but I think option number 2 is for me ! I would like it to be as automated as possible so for example I upload my footage to the raid 0 drive and afterwards it automatically gets copied to the old drive as a backup.

So in conclusion I need to back up my computers - for this I was thinking to use TM as its easy and hassle free so if one of them breaks down I can for example buy a new one and just run TM to restore the data. The other back up is for my external hard drive described above.

I never used CCC so if this is possible to achieve with TM I would prefer it as its already build in and free , but if it is difficult to achieve it with TM what should I use ?