time machine

[philpalmiero]

I'd like to use a single external drive to backup two mac minis thru Time Machine. I have about 1 TB of data combined between both Macs. How large should my external drive be to handle the job? How does one figure this out so I don't need to post again for the same question? Thank you

 

[NoBoMac]

The rule of thumb has always been 2.5-3x size of the drive being backed up.

So in this case, no less than 2TB, but probably want to go at least 4TB to allow for growth.

 

[mk313]

I agree with NoBoMac. For the difference in cost between a 2 & 4 Gig, I'd go with the larger. As I understand it (I'm definitely no guru), Time Machine will continue to store backups indefinitely until you run out of space & then it will delete the oldest ones, so the larger the drive, the father back your backups can go, so having that extra space can be useful.

 

[philpalmiero]

Thanks

 

[Fishrrman]

I've never used tm, but wouldn't you want to partition the external drive to back up TWO Macs?

Then... keep each Mac's backup on it's own volume.

Could prevent a lot of trouble later on...

 

[SirAnthonyHopkins]

I've never used tm, but wouldn't you want to partition the external drive to back up TWO Macs?

Then... keep each Mac's backup on it's own volume.

Could prevent a lot of trouble later on...

You don't have to, Time Machine is pretty good at managing this itself. I back both mine and my girlfriend's up to the same drive just as a safety as basically everything is already backed up to the cloud already. Never had any problems, it keeps them in separate folders and it's very obvious which is which.

 

[philpalmiero]

Do you all just backup to a single drive or do you have a 2-drive enclosure with a RAID 1 setup? Or is this just overkill?

 

[SirAnthonyHopkins]

Do you all just backup to a single drive or do you have a 2-drive enclosure with a RAID 1 setup? Or is this just overkill?

It depends how serious your need for back up is. A lot of my work is done on the cloud anyway, everything that's stored on my MacBook is also backed up to iCloud and often elsewhere as well. The Time Machine is just to have local safety for files, and if something happens to the MacBook itself and I need to restore a backup. RAID 1 obviously offers more security if you absolutely need a local backup and you're worried about either of the drives failing, but it's way overkill for my needs.

 

[philpalmiero]

It depends how serious your need for back up is. A lot of my work is done on the cloud anyway, everything that's stored on my MacBook is also backed up to iCloud and often elsewhere as well. The Time Machine is just to have local safety for files, and if something happens to the MacBook itself and I need to restore a backup. RAID 1 obviously offers more security if you absolutely need a local backup and you're worried about either of the drives failing, but it's way overkill for my needs.

I don't use iCloud (or any cloud storage) for my Mac files. I'd like to move my iPhone backup off iCloud, too. Therefore, I'd like some redundency.

I own a Mac Mini M1. When searching for an enclosure, do I just find one with a Thunderbolt 3 connection? Are all Thunderbolt 3 outputs the same or are some slower than others?