Using CCC, permissions, Dropbox! Please help

[SaffirePro40]

So, I use Dropbox to sync stuff across, two Macboook Pro's, iPad mini 3, and iPhone Plus 6. However, I am currently receiving a year free with 1 TB of space because I was one of the users they accidentally deleted a bunch of my files in the past. Luckily, they were not important files.

However, because Cloud storage can be hacked and it can go wrong, I do not want my files to be deleted again. I also do not want to keep two desktop folders. I use dropbox as my main folder for everything, music, movies, documents, etc on both MacBooks. I do not make copies of them.

I decided, incase this was to happen in the future it would be a good idea to backup my dropbox. Dropbox is already backed up on an onside and off site time machine. However, I have so many files, by the time I realized something was deleted, time machine would have done already started over with a new batch of backups.

I decided to get CCC and only clone to a dedicated Dropbox hard drive. It is working extremely well. Even if I delete a file on my regular dropbox, I have it set to where it does not delete on the dropbox hard drive that I sync too.

However, should I click, "Don't preserve permissions," or, "Don't preserve extended attributes," when doing so? When I had them unchecked, it seems something went wrong with the backup. When I checked them, it worked fine.

Does, this simply mean that if someone was get ahold of my DropBox hard drive they could view all files without typing in a permission code, unlike they would on my Mac?

I know another way to lock the folder on the hard drive. I am just curious as to what all this does when checking those two.

I opened a few files to test it out, as well as testing if it would delete off of the slave drive if I deleted off of the master drive and all is well. That means if dropbox deletes a folder here or there, I will know about it. This seems easier than copying and pasting and keeping a regular folder as well as a dropbox folder. Plus since the external drive is so big, I have it set up to save files before they were changed and after they are changed.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Here is an attachment of what it looks like.

Thanks.

(If it shows a question mark below, click it, and it will show you the photo.)

 

[SaffirePro40]

Oh yeah, I did set this up as, "exfat," as I want to be able to open my files on Windows computers as well. It worked flawless on both of my Mac's. I am not near a Windows computer yet. Will that be in an issue?

 

[Weaselboy]

Oh yeah, I did set this up as, "exfat," as I want to be able to open my files on Windows computers as well. It worked flawless on both of my Mac's. I am not near a Windows computer yet. Will that be in an issue?

That is why you are having that problem with permissions and extended attributes. ExFAT does not support either. Ideally you would want to preserve that information.

Even if you format to the Mac HFS+ (Mac OS Extended) format and just copy with CCC like that, anybody that gets that drive can see your data.

CCC has a built in feature where it can copy the file to inside an encrypted sparse bundle for security (that's what I do). Of course, that will not be readable under Windows.

https://bombich.com/kb/ccc4/backing-up-disk-image

 

[SaffirePro40]

That is why you are having that problem with permissions and extended attributes. ExFAT does not support either. Ideally you would want to preserve that information.

Even if you format to the Mac HFS+ (Mac OS Extended) format and just copy with CCC like that, anybody that gets that drive can see your data.

CCC has a built in feature where it can copy the file to inside an encrypted sparse bundle for security (that's what I do). Of course, that will not be readable under Windows.

https://bombich.com/kb/ccc4/backing-up-disk-image

But the thing is I'm having no problems. I've tried it on both my macs a lot of files, they all worked flawlessly. But with Windows they will not? I know Windows reads exfat.

From my understanding CCC took the authentication codes away, therefore that's why it works on my other mac without typing in any code. It won't do this on windows?

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Btw, this drive is going to put in a location where security won't be an issue.

 

[poiihy]

The permissions only makes it so that only you can access it when logged into your account. But this is not secure, as anyone with a Mac and administrator account can modify the permissions of it. It is ok to just turn off permissions.

The extended attributes I think is the metadata like when it was created, modified, tags, etc.

 

[nobodyjustwalks]

I too worried about having my data reside on a single point of failure, e.g. Google Drive, so I created identical backups two other Cloud service providers. Exact same folder structure and files. All files are encrypted before sending to my Cloud drives and are also encrypted on the Cloud if the service provider allows it.

No way in hell all three will ever simultaneously fail when and if I need an important file. 🙂

 

[Weaselboy]

But the thing is I'm having no problems. I've tried it on both my macs a lot of files, they all worked flawlessly. But with Windows they will not? I know Windows reads exfat.

From my understanding CCC took the authentication codes away, therefore that's why it works on my other mac without typing in any code. It won't do this on windows?

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Btw, this drive is going to put in a location where security won't be an issue.

You may be missing data from those files and not know it. For example some of the data embedded in JPG photos might be lost. If you search for "OS X metadata" you will find a lot of information out there. If it is just documents, probably not a big deal.

I have no idea what Windows won't read these files off that ExFAT drive though. It should. If you just drag and drop some test files on the drive, can Windows read them then?

I'm wondering if CCC does not support ExFAT? You might post over on the CCC help forums and ask. The dev. there is very helpful.