Best practices when backing up your files

i use Carbon Copy Cloner and find it to be great for backups

 

I use SuperDuper, which is similar to CCC. I clone-backup regularly to 3 different external HDDs, one of which I keep in a fireproof box in the basement.

I think it's important to have more than one backup in case the backup and your boot drive fail, which could happen.

 

yes update it atleast once a week, i choose the option to delete anythin gon the target disk thats not on the souce that way my backup is always the an exact match to my internal hard drive. of course you can have it more like time machine as well where each backup has a date and way if you every regret deleting something it will be in an older backup even though its not in the most current one

 

I use Time Machine daily at 1am (set by time machine editor) and crashplan. I also have a CCC image on a firewire drive that I update infrequently. I thought about using the "back up to usb and store off site" but I stay too busy to be consistent about taking the usb drive off site. Crashplan offers a paid service where things are stored on their server and I don't have to think about manually carrying data around to achieve "off site backup."

Basically a backup "best practice" is to avoid relying on only one backup whether it's a USB/Firewire/NAS or even an off site backup because something can always go wrong but the likelihood of 2 ore more backups becoming wiped at the same time is incredibly low.

 

Just thought I'd point out that, in my fatigue this afternoon, I read your title wrong.

Turns out you're not trying to brak up your files, but back them up.

 

I utilize external hard drives attached via usb to my MBP and iMac for TM backups. I utilize a firewire 800 drive for regular bootable clones of both. Just started looking into a NAS to replace current setup.

 

I have a question regarding CCC / TM backups.

I'm in the market for a new external that I can use for both my MacBook Pro and iMac for cloning purposes. I'll keep using my old external for just documents, music, videos and other important files. When it comes to using CCC, will it work with a partitioned external drive? I want to keep some of my old Windows computer documents on a separate partition (high school and college pictures / documents) and then use CCC mainly for my iMac using the same drive.

I didn't know if CCC would work on a partition like that or if I would be better off just putting my old documents on my older external / enclosure and using the new hard drive soley for the iMac backups. My MacBook Pro is almost an exact close of this computer as far as music, videos, pictures and regular documents. The rest of my editing stuff is backed up to a separate drive via Firewire.

Cliff notes; will CCC work on a partitioned external hard drive?