Forums
New posts
Articles
Product Reviews
Policies
FAQ
Log in
Register
What's new
Search
Search
Search titles only
By:
New posts
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
Forums
Other Apple Products
Other Hardware and Peripherals
Can I use an external hard drive, as both a back up, and save files & photos ?
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="MacInWin" data-source="post: 1815810" data-attributes="member: 396914"><p>The challenge is in how you set up CCC to do the backup clones. If your instructions in CCC are to delete any file on the External Hard Drive (EHD) that is NOT on the internal, then you can't put anything else on the EHD or the next time CCC runs it will delete those files. And if you configure CCC not to do that, you still have to have a folder name that is not matched by anything on the internal or CCC will just overwrite it. So if you decide to use the EHD for both CCC and pictures, just be careful in setup and naming. The concerns about drive failure mentioned by Ian still apply, but it can be done. Frankly, the decision to get more drives is the correct one, IMHO.</p><p></p><p>You said </p><p>If 999GB is the size of your backup to a 1TB drive, that only leaves 1GB of space, or 0.1% of the drive. That's not enough free space on that drive to do anything else, in fact it's too little space even for a backup. Drives need working space for the writing of temporary files used in the copy/clone process, so for spinning drive you need to leave about 10-15% of the drive free, SSDs can do with as little as 5%. But not 0.1%.</p><p></p><p>You haven't mentioned how many pictures or how big the internal drive is, but what I would do is get two drive large enough to hold your clone backup AND your pictures and then configure one to be a CCC backup and pictures (carefully naming things and setting CCC up as I mentioned) and the other I would use as a Time Machine drive and then use CCC to clone the pictures from the other backup to the TM drive in the same folder location, again being careful about naming. That way you have two independent backups for the internal and two backups for your pictures. Drive prices are getting lower, and you don't need really high speed drives for backups, so take advantage of the lower prices and go for it.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="MacInWin, post: 1815810, member: 396914"] The challenge is in how you set up CCC to do the backup clones. If your instructions in CCC are to delete any file on the External Hard Drive (EHD) that is NOT on the internal, then you can't put anything else on the EHD or the next time CCC runs it will delete those files. And if you configure CCC not to do that, you still have to have a folder name that is not matched by anything on the internal or CCC will just overwrite it. So if you decide to use the EHD for both CCC and pictures, just be careful in setup and naming. The concerns about drive failure mentioned by Ian still apply, but it can be done. Frankly, the decision to get more drives is the correct one, IMHO. You said If 999GB is the size of your backup to a 1TB drive, that only leaves 1GB of space, or 0.1% of the drive. That's not enough free space on that drive to do anything else, in fact it's too little space even for a backup. Drives need working space for the writing of temporary files used in the copy/clone process, so for spinning drive you need to leave about 10-15% of the drive free, SSDs can do with as little as 5%. But not 0.1%. You haven't mentioned how many pictures or how big the internal drive is, but what I would do is get two drive large enough to hold your clone backup AND your pictures and then configure one to be a CCC backup and pictures (carefully naming things and setting CCC up as I mentioned) and the other I would use as a Time Machine drive and then use CCC to clone the pictures from the other backup to the TM drive in the same folder location, again being careful about naming. That way you have two independent backups for the internal and two backups for your pictures. Drive prices are getting lower, and you don't need really high speed drives for backups, so take advantage of the lower prices and go for it. [/QUOTE]
Verification
Post reply
Forums
Other Apple Products
Other Hardware and Peripherals
Can I use an external hard drive, as both a back up, and save files & photos ?
Top