Hi all, I’m getting a Western Digital 10 gig USB DRIVE, and am debating whether to use it as a Timemachine drive, or partion it as drives for photos, and other uses. Now my internal drives all four total 6 tb. Currently I’m using my one external as a Timemachine drive, but it’s only a two tb so I have to be very careful what I’m backing up. Also if I have my entire system folder backed up to Timemachine, how do I restore it should something go wrong? Thanks!
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Buying 10 TB external drive
- Thread starter tony3dd
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Restoring from Time Machine in the event of a drive failure is very easy, actually. Replace the drive, then just boot into the macOS installer and you can restore from your Time Machine backup. Your system will be exactly as it was before disaster, as if nothing happened.
For sanity's sake, I recommend having a large external drive so you can back up everything on your system. Good backups are priceless in the event of drive or system failures. After having my house struck by lightning some years back, I got the point; it's possible for everything to get destroyed all at once and your backups will save you. This is also why I clone my Time Machine backups onto a second drive (using SuperDuper) that's not plugged in except during the clone; lightning can't fry a drive that's unplugged!
For sanity's sake, I recommend having a large external drive so you can back up everything on your system. Good backups are priceless in the event of drive or system failures. After having my house struck by lightning some years back, I got the point; it's possible for everything to get destroyed all at once and your backups will save you. This is also why I clone my Time Machine backups onto a second drive (using SuperDuper) that's not plugged in except during the clone; lightning can't fry a drive that's unplugged!
Personally recommend TimeMachine and bootable clone(s) of your SYSTEM DRIVE and any/all media drives. Keep a schedule and stick with it. Pretty easy to schedule ahead with Carbon Copy Cloner and literally can just run on drive mounting if you setup that way.
If you're not storing off-site, at least get yourself a water/fire safe and store the clone(s) in there when not in use. Anything super important, make sure you have in multiple locations.
If you're not storing off-site, at least get yourself a water/fire safe and store the clone(s) in there when not in use. Anything super important, make sure you have in multiple locations.
In addition to TimeMachine and bootable backups (which I have as well), you might also want to consider a cloud backup service. I use BackBlaze, USD$6 per month, less if you pay annually; there are others you can consider. This takes care of my offsite backup, and it happens continuously in the background.