Portable Hard Drive Question

I filled my macbook pro with 20 years of family pictures and videos. I want to store all of the pictures/videos on my western digital(1tb) hard drive and then be able to erase them from my macbook pro. Is there a way to keep them on the hard drive, and access them when I need them, without the auto-backup erasing them?

I think this is all the info I need for the question. Please let me know if I need to add more information.

Thanks


Woo Hoo, its my first post.

It is an external HD, you can put what you want on it. However, if there is not enough room to back up your mac, the backup will fail, not overwrite your data.

DaFlake said:

It is an external HD, you can put what you want on it. However, if there is not enough room to back up your mac, the backup will fail, not overwrite your data.

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I only want the files to exist on the portable hard drive, and when I need them they will be there. I have more pics/videos than my mac will hold, like nearly 500 gigs and my macbook pro only hold 250 gigs.

Personally I wouldn't do that. If that drive dies, and they do, you will lose all of your photos etc...

franz fabisse

DaFlake said:

Personally I wouldn't do that. If that drive dies, and they do, you will lose all of your photos etc...

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So what would you recommend doing then?

Back them up on DVD media. 20 years worth of family photos would be a heartbreak loss should the drive fail. It'll probably take a bunch of DVDs depending on how large each JPG is. Or, buy a Blue Ray burner....

alanpeterson68 said:

Is there a way to keep them on the hard drive, and access them when I need them, without the auto-backup erasing them?

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I'm assuming you are talking about Time Machine's backup option because you are right it will eventually delete files when the hard drive gets full. Time Machine will only backup things that are on your computer's hard drive and since you want to take your files off your internal drive and onto an external drive then doing a manual backup is what you want. It is still a good idea to have a Time Machine backup for what you still have left on your computer though.

Nothing auto erases if you do a manual backup. All you do is manually transfer your files from your computer to the external. I'm assuming you know how to do a manual backup? If not then just ask.

alanpeterson68 said:

So what would you recommend doing then?

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Chscag's backup method is one way and is good if you are afraid of your hard drives dying. It does take longer because disc burning speed is slow and you will have to swap out a lot of DVDs or even Blue Ray discs.

What I do is use 2 separate hard drives to backup the same files. One drive is my master copy while the other is basically a clone copy of the master. The risk of a drive failure is reduced with a double backup. I keep the two drives separate from each other to prevent loss due to physical damage. The other option you can do is a combo of both. What I mean is have an external hard drive as the master copy and then have DVDs as the backup. I actually was doing it this way until my collection got so large that it was eating too much of my time to backup to discs. Whatever method you choose is okay as long as you have 2 copies of your files.

IMO the important thing to remember about doing hard drive backups is to replace them right away if they are showing any signs of problems. You don't want them all failing at the same time. This shouldn't be a problem if you have 2 copies. Hard drives rarely ever fail at exactly the same time. No backup method is foolproof because DVDs have their drawbacks too. The key is redundant backup and even triple redundant backup if the files are that important to you.

I basically do the same... I use my internal drive to keep my originals and the external drive for a backup.

Just a reminder to folks - it seems logical enough, but people forget. No matter what you call your external drive (i.e., "backup drive"), if your data is in only one place, you don't have a backup. You have external storage. If you have data you want to keep, keep it in multiple locations, multiple forms of media. Hard drives crash, homes catch fire, CDs/DVDs get lost, broken or scratched - data gets lost.