Hard Drive Plan

[0989383]

Hello, I would like to hear your opinions on my plan for my MacBook Pro regarding Hard Drives.

Primary: 240GB SanDisk Extreme SSD

Secondary: 250GB HDD

So I'll fit a second drive into a bay where the current DVD drive it.

The second drive will be a clone of the SSD, for the event of a failure.

Anyone who's got the cloning idea in operation atm able to tell me the ups/downs to it? Especially with it being SSD & HDD!

Thank You!

 

[johnnnw]

Why go to the trouble of installing an optibay hard drive if it's just going to be backup?

Just use an external drive as backup and install the ssd.

 

[negativzero]

Why go to the trouble of installing an optibay hard drive if it's just going to be backup?

Just use an external drive as backup and install the ssd.

Nothing wrong with that. Some people don't want to carry around extra hardware.

Anyway to answer OP's question, you need to specify what kind of cloning you are going for??? TimeMachine, rsync, RAID???
They're all doable on your setup, you just need to know what kind of redundancy you are looking for.

 

[johnnnw]

How I currently do my clone backup is with Carbon Copy Cloner.

In my case I plug in my external and it will update the clone to the newest changes. You could do this by just selecting your source drive and the destination as the one in the optibay and then set an automatic nightly schedule for it to run.

I understand the reason just seems a pain

 

[yusukeaoki]

Or use the SSD as primary, secondary as big data storage, and external drive for TM backup.
I suggest this.

 

[TyPod]

Or use the SSD as primary, secondary as big data storage, and external drive for TM backup.
I suggest this.

I suggest this as well. Keep the TM backup at home or at a neutral area and plug it in when you get home. No need to carry it around everywhere if it's just a backup drive.

 

[maxosx]

I believe it's all a matter of personal preference, as there's no way to do it wrong. It's those who don't backup that may at some point get caught in a bind.

 

[johnnnw]

The reason I keep a backup is if anything happens to my laptop. Failure isn't the only thing that happens.

Stolen, dropped, water damage, etc.

If you have both locally you end up stuck without a backup if anything happens besides one drive fails.