External hard drive questions

When I moved everything from my old Dell to my new iMac I decided to go ahead and buy a external hard drive to make things easier and to keep everything safe and sound. I purchased a 500GB WD My Passport for Mac. After contacting AppleCare about some other questions I had they told me about Time Machine which I now use. They told me to go ahead and hook the external hard drive up and leave it hooked up. Won't that fill it up quicker than just hooking it up once a week? This is my first external hard drive so I really do not know much about them. Also they told me that since I am now using Time Machine I should go ahead and uninstall Carbonite as that could be the reason I see the occasional Beachball. Just wonder what your thoughts are on this?

I've never used Carbonite so I'll leave that question for others to answer. Both Carbonite and Time Machine automatically back up the Mac once they are configured. One difference is that Carbonite provides "off site" backup.

Now on to the way Time Machine behaves:
1. In the initial run Time Machine backs up any files on your boot drive that you haven't specifically excluded.
2. In subsequent backups only new and modified files are backed up. For unmodified files Time Machine creates a "pointer" that connects to the original backup of the file. The pointer takes up much less space than the original file.
3. Backups occur hourly unless the backup drive is not connected. As the drive gets nearly full Time Machine deletes the oldest backup to free up space.

wornslick said:

........I purchased a 500GB WD My Passport for Mac. After contacting AppleCare about some other questions I had they told me about Time Machine which I now use. They told me to go ahead and hook the external hard drive up and leave it hooked up. Won't that fill it up quicker than just hooking it up once a week? This is my first external hard drive so I really do not know much about them. Also they told me that since I am now using Time Machine (TM) I should go ahead and uninstall Carbonite as that could be the reason I see the occasional Beachball. Just wonder what your thoughts are on this?

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Hello - you've already received some great advice from Sly...., so I'll just add a few comments:

* As to leaving the external HD attached vs. storage used - since April '13, I've had a 1 TB Seagate HDs doing TM on my wife's iMac (left attached) and on my MBPro (done each weekend) - the HD on the iMac has 785 GB of storage left, while the other has 780 GB - so really makes no difference - the important factor for you is whether you are creating 'critical' files on a daily basis and need these backed up more often?

* As to Carbonite, we have used the online service on the iMac - see the attached image and what is being stored on their services vs. what is NOT backed up (blue arrow) - we've had no problem w/ using Carbonite w/ TM; PLUS, you should not rely on just one backup - redundancy is important - in fact, I have another OWC HD attached to the iMac also doing TM and use a WD HD on my laptop for an additional TM backup.

* Finally, TM backups cannot be booted - many here use cloning software too; for me, I have CCC (Carbon Copy Cloner) and have redundant partitions on two other external HDs doing cloned backups (my schedule is once a week) - so just another consideration.

Good luck - Dave
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Sly and Dave have given you the best advice, I'll just add that TM can, in some cases, cause beachballs while it is actually performing the hourly backup. If you don't need hourly backups you can use TimeMachineEditor to set the backup interval to whatever you want. I have mine set to backup every twelve hours at noon and midnight, for example.

Great advice from all of you, Thanks!

I will go ahead and keep my Carbonite, never hurts to have a extra backup.

This is all new to me so I am a little lost by this statement, "TM backups cannot be booted"?
I thought that is why you back stuff up, so you can get it back.

I am going to Time Machine Editor, and set it to do my backups maybe once a day, in the middle of the night. I do not make any critical files, nothing that can't wait.

wornslick said:

This is all new to me so I am a little lost by this statement, "TM backups cannot be booted"?
I thought that is why you back stuff up, so you can get it back.

Click to expand...

You can use TM backups to recover files that have been deleted. You could, unless you have excluded some files, restore every file on your hard drive from a Time Machine backup. That's really the purpose of backups.

You cannot use a Time Machine backup to boot the Mac. For that you need either:
1. A clone of the boot drive
2. A reinstall of the OS which can then be used to restore your files, or
3. You can boot from the recovery partition and restore files

Slydude said:

You can use TM backups to recover files that have been deleted. You could, unless you have excluded some files, restore every file on your hard drive from a Time Machine backup. That's really the purpose of backups.

You cannot use a Time Machine backup to boot the Mac. For that you need either:
1. A clone of the boot drive
2. A reinstall of the OS which can then be used to restore your files, or
3. You can boot from the recovery partition and restore files

Click to expand...

Well, Sly.... 'beat me to the draw' - but take a close look at the links below to better understand your options and the uses and limitations of Time Machine:

7 Mac Startup Options

Drive Cloning Utilities

How to Make a Bootable Yosemite Install Drive

Dave

Thanks again. I will take a look at them.

Back It Up Part 1 - Mac-Forums Blog

Back It Up Part 2 - Mac-Forums Blog

As for Carbonite, with just a quick trip to macupdate.com, from the comments there I'd loose it and especially so considering it was last updated in 2012!!! I'd even question if it actually still works properly with any of the latest OS X versions.
Carbonite for Mac | MacUpdate

And for less money, one could be using Carbon Copt Cloner (my preferred cloning software) or Superduper! and end up with a bootable clone. CCC can even clone the Recovery HD partition.

pm-r said:

As for Carbonite, with just a quick trip to macupdate.com, from the comments there I'd loose it and especially so considering it was last updated in 2012!!! I'd even question if it actually still works properly with any of the latest OS X versions.
Carbonite for Mac | MacUpdate

And for less money, one could be using Carbon Copt Cloner (my preferred cloning software) or Superduper! and end up with a bootable clone. CCC can even clone the Recovery HD partition.

Click to expand...

Hi Pm-r - your link goes to an old version of Carbonite, i.e. 1.1.4 - the version shown in my screen capture is 1.1.16, their most recent release, so rather misleading. This online service has received some mixed reviews over the years, but a fairly recent comparison is rather positive - HERE.

As to my use, the storage service is a tertiary one for my wife's iMac - her computer is already being backed up w/ TM x 2 & CCC x 2; Carbonite is keeping her 'personal files' online for redundant assurance - and as shown in my posted image, the service is not a complete answer for a 'first line' backup in my mind. NOW, is it worth the rather modest charge for a 'personal account'? Well, that has to be answer by those considering the option. Dave

P.S. for those who may be interested in Carbonite, please visit their website rather than looking elsewhere - just saying.

Sitting here today on the computer and I got to thinking about my external hard drive. I came back and reread this thread and it occurred to me that I forgot a important question. I have the Time Machine to do my daily backup at midnight each day now. My computer is not on at midnight, does the computer have to be on? Thanks,

wornslick said:

Sitting here today on the computer and I got to thinking about my external hard drive. I came back and reread this thread and it occurred to me that I forgot a important question. I have the Time Machine to do my daily backup at midnight each day now. My computer is not on at midnight, does the computer have to be on? Thanks,

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Yes, it has to be booted. It can have the screen blanked, but the CPU has to be powered on as well as the external drive. If it helps, I never turn off any of my Macs at night, I just let them go to sleep. And for network connectivity, I have my power settings to blank the screen but the CPU never shuts down. The machine does the backups when the time comes and in the morning I press the space bar to wake the screen up and enter the login password. (You do have it set to ask for the password when awakened, right?)

wornslick said:

Sitting here today on the computer and I got to thinking about my external hard drive. I came back and reread this thread and it occurred to me that I forgot a important question. I have the Time Machine to do my daily backup at midnight each day now. My computer is not on at midnight, does the computer have to be on? Thanks,

Click to expand...

You can create a "Test" file and/or folder on you Mac and after your TM has run, go have a look and see if it/they show up in your TM backup.

If they aren't there, your TM backup isn't working. Pretty simple I'd say.

MacInWin said:

(You do have it set to ask for the password when awakened, right?)

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Yes, I have to put in my password when I wake it up. I don't remember setting it that way though, LOL

Thanks!

pm-r said:

You can create a "Test" file and/or folder on you Mac and after your TM has run, go have a look and see if it/they show up in your TM backup.

If they aren't there, your TM backup isn't working. Pretty simple I'd say.

Click to expand...

Might be simple to you Mac veterans but it will take me an hour just to figure out how to make a file let alone how to check my backups, LOL
I will give it a try tonight after work. Thanks!

You don't need to create a test file. Just click on the TM icon on the Dock and open the TM backup screen. Down the right side will be a set of tick marks that will show the date/time of the backup if you hover over them with your mouse pointer. If there is one for the last time you expected a backup, then it's working.

Thanks Jake, none of my scheduled times worked because I didn't think of the computer might have to be on. I reset Time Machine Editor for 7:00 each evening because I am on the computer every night at that time. I will see if it comes on tonight and post it here.

Or you can just leave the machine running like I do. It doesn't take much power and the OS handles long times between boots nicely. I have an iMac that only gets turned off maybe once every six months or so. It runs my home automation system and just sits there, plugged in a booted, doing it's thing with the screen all nice and dark. I don't remember the last time it was powered down!

wornslick said:

Thanks Jake, none of my scheduled times worked because I didn't think of the computer might have to be on. I reset Time Machine Editor for 7:00 each evening because I am on the computer every night at that time. I will see if it comes on tonight and post it here.

Click to expand...

MacInWin said:

Or you can just leave the machine running like I do. It doesn't take much power and the OS handles long times between boots nicely. I have an iMac that only gets turned off maybe once every six months or so. It runs my home automation system and just sits there, plugged in a booted, doing it's thing with the screen all nice and dark. I don't remember the last time it was powered down!

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@ Wornslick - have to agree w/ Jake above - my iMac & MBPro are on 24/7 unless I go out of town for a few days or more, then I will turn each off - is there a reason that you feel the need to turn off your computer at night? Indeed, one concept is that the electronics are stressed more w/ daily (or more often) power downs and possibly shortened the life span of your computer - some discussion HERE; plus, having your computer(s) entering 'sleep' mode pretty much powers the machine down - Dave