How to mirror a hard drive

[chipandegg]

Hi all, my first post here!

I have an Intel Mac Pro which is proving to be an excellent buy, having only ever used a PC up until I purchased the Mac Pro.

Somebody suggested that I get another hard drive to constantly back up the 'main' drive (500gb), in a way, mirror everything on it to have an up to date back up. The only problem being is that I'm not to sure how to set this up. At this moment I only know how to install the actual drive into the Mac Pro but don't know any/the procedure of how to do this.

cheers

 

[robbieduncan]

The only way to mirror continuously/in real time would be to setup a RAID setup. This can be done in Disk Utility.

The other option is to mirror it when you want via Carbon Copy Cloner/SuperDuper!. In my opinion this might be a better option as if you delete a file by mistake it'll still be on the mirror (as long as you mirrored since the last change before deletion). With continuous mirroring the delete will run on both disks and you loose the file...

 

[irishgrizzly]

Hi chipandegg,

I'm sure you get better answers but I use Silverkeeper it can be schuduled to automaticly do backups everyday and only copies what has changed, so takes only a few minutes.

 

[Maui]

I use SuperDuper to do this for me nightly. Works great.

 

[twoodcc]

I use SuperDuper to do this for me nightly. Works great.

i also vote for superduper. i don't use it nightly though. but it's super

 

[Jerzy Modrak]

How to mirror a hard drive

In System Preferences in your Mac you'll find Time Machine. It's a perfecy tool for your needs. You can set up the time when exactly you want it start mirroring your first hard drive.

 

[goMac]

Time Machine. It's built in, and requires no additional setup besides installing the drive, and turning Time Machine on.

RAID is also good, but it will require much more initial setup, and doesn't offer historical backups.

Not sure why everyone else is suggesting backup software other than Time Machine. Time Machine is free, dead simple, already installed, works perfectly, and integrates very nicely with the system restore and migration tools.

 

[ActionableMango]

Not sure why everyone else is suggesting backup software other than Time Machine. Time Machine is free, dead simple, already installed, works perfectly, and integrates very nicely with the system restore and migration tools.

For many, many people it is problematic and unreliable.