Backup two 1TB drives with two 1TB partitions on 2TB drive?

[ontheplains]

Simple question here. I have a 1TB boot drive and a 1TB iTunes music folder (neither over 750GB full) and I would like to back them up by creating two partitions of 1TB each on my 2TB hd in another drive bay.

I'm going to partition with Disk Utility and backup with daily Carbon Copy Cloner backups.

Is this ok to do? I don't have a ton of experience using separate partitions so I figured I'd ask first. Thanks!

 

[mjsmke]

That will work fine. My main back up drive is 2TB with 3 partitians, (time machine, boot clone, home folder/itunes clone).

It will be slower to backup than having 2 seperate drives, but i get on fine with my setup.

 

[300D]

No reason it won't work.

 

[camelsnot]

I'd also invest in an offline HDD or offsite for sensitive or keep sake data, which you back up to at least once every 2-4 weeks, depending on usage. Having a single drive backup can lead to failure eventually. While it may work now.. don't complain when it fails.

 

[DeeEss]

I'd also invest in an offline HDD or offsite for sensitive or keep sake data, which you back up to at least once every 2-4 weeks, depending on usage. Having a single drive backup can lead to failure eventually. While it may work now.. don't complain when it fails.

haha Camelsnot nice name

 

[DocNo]

I'd also invest in an offline HDD or offsite for sensitive or keep sake data

This is good advice. I would take it one step further - I would pick one of the many online backup vendors. I have used Mozy and BackBlaze. Mozy dropped their unlimited plan so they are not as interesting to me now. Carbonite doesn't support external drives (external USB/Firewire/eSATA, not network or NAS volumes) but BackBlaze does.

I have six terabytes with BackBlaze. Yes it took a couple of months to get it all up there, but it's done. Now only new data or changes go up. Sure, if I get back from a big photo shoot and dump 20GB to 30GB of data, it can take a few days to go up - but I also have my local Time Machine backup until that window closes.

The problem with manual off site backups is: unless you are extremely OCD or highly structured/regimented in your habits, your going to eventually not do them. Backups are as only good as the backups you have. What I love about the cloud solutions like BackBlaze is for $50 a year I don't have to think about it. The backups just happen, in the background, on a continual basis. That is the real value of a service like BackBlaze, Mozy, Carbonite, etc.

EDIT: That's also why I prefer time machine to cloning. With Time Machine I don't have to think about it...

 

[ontheplains]

Thanks for the help guys! I wasn't sure if I was missing some little thing.

And now that I think of it, I did miss something. WTF. In the middle of the reorganization, I decided to back up my boot drive with another drive using Time Machine. I guess I just had it stuck in my head that one step to the process was partitioning and backing up two drives. I guess I don't have to do that now.

This is why I ask questions, because it stops me from doing stupid crap.

 

[nanofrog]

I'd clone the OS to the first partition, and do a backup for the second (iTunes downloads). Otherwise, you'll over-write the boot sector and loose the OS clone (faster to restore than a backup, as it's one step; for a backup of the OS, you'd have to do a clean install <basic> first, then restore the backup to get your applications and settings back).

Hope this helps.

 

[mjsmke]

Thats what i do. My 2TB backup drive has a 1TB partition for TM, 160GB for a boot drive clone, 840GB for Itunes etc.

I keep this backup drive with me when i go out. And when i go on holiday i leave it in a different location.

My friends have moaned at me in the past because i always have it with me when i go round their houses. My reply is always "Wait till you loose all your data".