Off Site Cloning

[KennyC]

Hope this is the right spot, kinda a os & hardware question. I have a Toshiba usb 3.0 external attached to my linksys router and I backup win stuff there. Would the mac os be able to see it and also backup a clone to it say like if I used CCC?

 

[pigoo3]

Depending on the size of that drive...personally I would either partition that Toshiba drive with a Windows partition & a macOS partition...or get a dedicated drive for your macOS stuff. When you start talking using apps like CCC...things get a bit more complex than if just talking files.

If you use CCC...you can also make bootable backups...which can come in handy. And since the macOS & Windows OS are different (of course)...this is where having a drive or parition dedicated to the macOS comes in handy.

- Nick

 

[KennyC]

Thanks Nick, I forgot to mention the Toshiba is a 1T. I may look into partitioning the Toshiba just as an extra spot. I can also see the advantage of a bootable backup, have used them in past under win.

 

[MacInWin]

One of the purposes of having clone backup as opposed to just a backup of your own files, or a TimeMachine backup is to have an immediately available bootable backup in case your internal drive fails. No waiting for a restoration and no loss of operations while you wait to obtain a replacement for the internal drive. That said, I'm not sure the drive mounted to your router would be visible to your Mac before it starts booting. Thus, even if you partitioned it like Nick suggested, one of the reasons for a clone backup will be lost if the CCC clone is on a networked drive like that. Clones are better on direct attached drives as the system does look for those in the optional boot process. Now, if that's not a concern for you and you don't mind the possibility of having no boot drive if the internal drive fails, then CCC certainly can use that drive as long as it it mounted. It doesn't even need to be reformatted. This is from the Bombich website:

Backing up to Network Attached Storage (NAS)
NAS devices are very trendy these days; many people find the convenience of a wireless backup to be alluring. Based on user feedback, however, we discourage people from relying on NAS devices for their primary backup for several reasons:

• Write performance to a NAS device is typically, at best, comparable to writing to a USB 2.0 HDD
• Performance of a NAS accessed via WiFi can be 10-100 times slower than the average locally-attached hard drive
• Periodically validating the integrity of data on a NAS device may be impractical due to network performance.
• WiFi backups are only as reliable as the network connection and macOS's network filesystem client
• Filesystem transactions on a network filesystem incur a lot more overhead than filesystem transactions on a locally-attached filesystem, leading to very long backup windows when your data set has lots of files (e.g. > 250K files)

For primary backups, we recommend that you procure a USB, Thunderbolt, or Firewire hard drive and create a bootable backup on that locally-attached disk. Local, bootable backups are much simpler and more reliable, and a lot easier to restore from should your Mac's startup disk fail. The logistics of restoring the operating system from a disk image on a network volume are pretty complicated if you don't have a functional startup disk. Providing that functional startup disk is the primary appeal of the CCC backup solution.

 

[pigoo3]

That said, I'm not sure the drive mounted to your router would be visible to your Mac before it starts booting.

I think my earlier post may have been a bit confusing (was covering two options). If this router connected HD was used for backing up macOS based files...I think they would be visible. But this router connected HD would not be the best place for a bootable clone for the macOS...or for running macOS apps directly from it.

- Nick

 

[KennyC]

Thanks Jake for the NAS tip, think I'll just let the router attached HD just keep win stuff for wife and my old win stuff too and stick with attached to my iMac

Thanks Nick, agreed not a place for bootable clone to sit.