back up screw up

hi i've got a macbook and am using a passport external portable harddrive for back up.

I do not have much money to throw around.

I'm trying to do the right thing and save back ups of my photographs - which are the most important thing on my computer. I have many and expect to have a great many more.

Until yesterday I was simply manually dragging a copy of my new images across to the passport for back up after I had uploaded my new images to my computer.

I haven't yet figured out an efficient way to get my new versions saved. I would like to get most of my images off the macbook harddrive to make space for a trip that's coming up soon and to keep photoshop working most efficiently.

I intended to keep the images on my external hard drive but it rather seems as if i should be buying a new one already.

Anyway what i have done wrong is yesterday i opened up time machine and got it to do a back up to my passport external hard drive. It unloaded every dam thing on my computer including all the applications. And now I cant' take anything off my passport. It seems it will be full of junk in no time at all and there's nothing I can do about it. Or is there?

How should i have set up time machine to only selectively make backups? What's the best way out of this mess. My current passport cost me nearly $200 and I am not in a position to buy another one, though it looks like a proper external harddrvie to keep at home looks like hte best long term solution.

I am going away in six weeks and have hope to have this sorted well before then. I am trying to learn so many things at once and am just getting everything in a mess very quickly.

Part of answering these type questions is visualising what u have and what is best way to sort it. What do u use the eMac for and what size HD? What size HD on MacBook and what size is Passport HD and is it Firewire or USB. Are there copies of your photos on the eMac as well? And u backed up to the Passport by dragging files to it or did u use an App for backing up? Does your MacBook have Firewire?

Hi Collin,

My emac did is not part of this question. The emac and macbook are not on speaking terms. And I haven't been able to deal with that.

This question is about my macbook.

Model Name: MacBook
Model Identifier: MacBook5,1
Processor Name: Intel Core 2 Duo
Processor Speed: 2 GHz
Number Of Processors: 1
Total Number Of Cores: 2
L2 Cache: 3 MB
Memory: 2 GB
Bus Speed: 1.07 GHz
Boot ROM Version: MB51.0073.B06
SMC Version (system): 1.32f6

I have an macbook. I am using it for everything. Its the 13". Can't remember maybe its 160MB.

Passport is USB only i think. I don't know anything about firewire.

Before yesterday i backed up using dragging only and had no problem then.

yesterday I backup with Time Machine with my passport plugged in, a back up program on my macbook. (I am taking both travelling)

I plug my passport into my macbook. The main problem that i want to address most and first if possible is how to empty it off the stuff I just put on it. How to free it up. I don't like this back up system if its going to be locked. I think the passport can hold 500GB. But I can't remember off the top of my head. It says there's about 100GB free.

298GB used and 104GB free on my passport.

If your photos are real important to you, I highly recommend you buy a container of 2X DVD blanks and burn those photos to DVD. Even external hard drives fail at some time or other.

Regards.

So u are living dangerously it seems - all your photos are relying on the HD of the MacBook - if that fails tomorrow you are in deep trouble. So what i would do first is Boot eMac in target mode by holding T key after powering on and then connect MacBook and eMac by firewire then do a bootable back up onto eMac using SuperDuper or Carbon Copy Cloner. That is one layer of insurance as it were - then i would do as chscag suggests and copy essential photos to DVD then you can sort Passport as you need to. Then u need to decide what your long term back up policy is going to be and whether u will use passport as a Time Machine back up or a Bootable back up. They are not the same thing, so do some reading on it to help you decide the best path for u.

No colin, I have the pics on my passport external hard drive and on my laptop. I would like to have them copied to my emac but the CD/DVD drive is stuffed and I can't make the emac and the laptop talk to each other at all. I have tried almost everything. In the end, I gave up because.

I need a good back up system and I wanted to somehow get that stupid time machine back up thing off my passport because its taking up too much memory saving back ups of things I don't even need copies of. Once I can clear it off, I will make copies of all my images to the external harddrive again. So I will have at least two places where my pictures are.

I have realised that DVDs are a limited solution for me. I have just too many pictures to save them all to DVD. Since you can only put 7GB on a DVD, the amount it stores is minimal. Either I should store on a DVD only the original raw files as I take them off my camera, or save only my best images. That at least makes some sense.

In hte longer term, I will have to get another external hard drive. It seems the only sensible option but I can't afford that yet.

The most pressing questions i have now are:

Is it safe to compress the back ups of my images on my passport with zip file compression.

How do i clear off my time machine back ups on my passport ex hard drive.?

techdummy said:

The most pressing questions i have now are:

Is it safe to compress the back ups of my images on my passport with zip file compression.

How do i clear off my time machine back ups on my passport ex hard drive.?

Click to expand...

It depends on the images. Compressing images that are already compressed is not going to work. You can not squeeze certain images any smaller because of their already compressed format. (JPG for example)

In my previous reply to you I suggested using 2X DVD media. (double layer) That would give you close to 8.5 GB per disk. Just how many photos do you have?

Either that or purchase a top of the line dependable external drive. OWC sells the "Mercury on the go" series of portable drives which are highly rated and very dependable. Not inexpensive by any means, but again, how much do you value your photos?

Link to OWC

Regards.