What is your storage plan and hardware? I have an OWC Thunderbay RAID 5 that is tanking, and has no room on it (6TB). I have two 1TB Lacies Big Drives and one is dead, the other maxed out on my iMac as TM. I have a third Lacie rugged I put a 1TB SSD into and am using that for TM on my laptop. I have iCloud 3TB for my desktop, IOS photos, and phone, laptop, iMac. It seems to copy everything. I have no idea how the thing works. Same goes for Dropbox. I have 2TB with them as well. Use both iCloud and Dropbox as offsite, but honestly, neither has the bulk of my digital assets, which are sadly all over the Lacies and on the clouds and the OWC. I'm trying to learn from all here what they are doing so I might apply that wisdom to my own situation. Thanks.
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Back-up (non-cloud) Storage Plan
- Thread starter olindacat
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I run a 4 bay OWC thunder bay JBOD with 2 TM backup drives, 2 Carbon Copy clones of my boot drive (to a 2 partition disk, backups done on each partition every other day), 4th disk dedicated to my pictures backup. I also run a 3rd TM backup to my NAS.
My main external disk is backed up to a Drobo 5D.
Boot and main disks are also backed up to CrashPlan and Backblaze.
I do have iCloud files activated, but don't rely on it. Only certain things are send too iCloud. Lots of important things are not. For example Application data isn't there. Don't fully understand how it works.
Using an SSD for a TM backup is usually considered a waste of money. Don't normally need that speed for doing backups.
For years I had my backups scattered in pieces between separate disks since some of my main disk directories were so large I had to split the folder backup into multiple sections in order to fit. Now that large disk sizes are available (up to 16 TB) that is no longer a problem. Much simpler.
Just remember one version of the backup rules. 3 different backups on 3 different media types in 3 different locations.
My main external disk is backed up to a Drobo 5D.
Boot and main disks are also backed up to CrashPlan and Backblaze.
I do have iCloud files activated, but don't rely on it. Only certain things are send too iCloud. Lots of important things are not. For example Application data isn't there. Don't fully understand how it works.
Using an SSD for a TM backup is usually considered a waste of money. Don't normally need that speed for doing backups.
For years I had my backups scattered in pieces between separate disks since some of my main disk directories were so large I had to split the folder backup into multiple sections in order to fit. Now that large disk sizes are available (up to 16 TB) that is no longer a problem. Much simpler.
Just remember one version of the backup rules. 3 different backups on 3 different media types in 3 different locations.
That's a response that took years to fashion, I know. .. Thanks.
What flavor or HDDs do you have in the OWC, and is yours a newer version? (Mine is from 2011, I replaced the fan once, it still makes noise, and I have no idea how to use the thing just leave it at RAID 5 and it is not making a funny noise. I used disk utility to check it and no errors, but I don't trust the thing.)
"2 Carbon Copy clones of my boot drive (to a 2 partition disk, backups done on each partition every other day"
So you have one computer backing that internal HDD to two partitions of the same HDD? Is that to give you two 'versions'? I thought the 3-2 back-up strategy was to have things on different physical drives, not a partition, or am I just misunderstanding you?)
"My main external disk is backed up to a Drobo 5D."
Is this the OWC? Is the OWC your 'main external' or do you have the OWC plus another disk? What kind? Is it a portable, or a desktop, USB3.0 or TB? My machine is so old it is Thunderbolt 2. I have a SATA plug in it, on the bottom (iMac), but the thing is wonky.
"Boot and main disks are also backed up to CrashPlan and Backblaze."
Those are clouds? Two?
Ya, I am seriously exposed right now. I bought an 8TB cheap portable from Costco last year, took all night to copy my OWC, and wasn't done even when I got onto a plane. I would up retiring it the thing was so slow. I have yet to back my stuff up onto anything redundant yet. I'm ready to run to Costco this morning. Try again! I just know it is good money after bad buying Costco. Been there done that. Thanks.
What flavor or HDDs do you have in the OWC, and is yours a newer version? (Mine is from 2011, I replaced the fan once, it still makes noise, and I have no idea how to use the thing just leave it at RAID 5 and it is not making a funny noise. I used disk utility to check it and no errors, but I don't trust the thing.)
"2 Carbon Copy clones of my boot drive (to a 2 partition disk, backups done on each partition every other day"
So you have one computer backing that internal HDD to two partitions of the same HDD? Is that to give you two 'versions'? I thought the 3-2 back-up strategy was to have things on different physical drives, not a partition, or am I just misunderstanding you?)
"My main external disk is backed up to a Drobo 5D."
Is this the OWC? Is the OWC your 'main external' or do you have the OWC plus another disk? What kind? Is it a portable, or a desktop, USB3.0 or TB? My machine is so old it is Thunderbolt 2. I have a SATA plug in it, on the bottom (iMac), but the thing is wonky.
"Boot and main disks are also backed up to CrashPlan and Backblaze."
Those are clouds? Two?
Ya, I am seriously exposed right now. I bought an 8TB cheap portable from Costco last year, took all night to copy my OWC, and wasn't done even when I got onto a plane. I would up retiring it the thing was so slow. I have yet to back my stuff up onto anything redundant yet. I'm ready to run to Costco this morning. Try again! I just know it is good money after bad buying Costco. Been there done that. Thanks.
OWC Thunderbolt: 2x 6 TB Toshiba, 1 HGST 6 TB, 1 Seagate 10 TB (with 2 partitions)
Yes. Extremely bad to have 2 backups on 1 physical drive, so I only consider it as one backup. Allows me to go back one day if I find that I need to restore something which isn't on today's backup. Ideally each would be on separate disks since if I had a crash and had to completely restore my boot disk with Carbon Copy Cloner these would be the backups I would use. Complete disk TM restores are really slow. TM best for single file or folder restores.
I'm not quite as worried about losing my boot disk as opposed, to say, losing the disk with my pictures. A large portion of the boot disk is the Operating system and Application files. These usually can be restored via software downloads from the software vendors. If you lose your pictures files and have no backup then they are gone forever.
My main disk is a Pegasus R6.
Turns out different backup services have different exclusion rules. They also have different backup/restore bandwidth/procedures. Since they are relatively inexpensive and allow unlimited storage seemed to make sense.