Backing up my new Mac?

[Feek]

I'm just working out my backup plans for my new Mac Pro - I know this isn't true data redundancy but it should suit me.

My system consists of the following:

320Gb Boot drive - OS and Applications
1Tb internal drive - /home and user data
500Gb internal drive
500Gb external USB drive

I plan to use Time Machine to back up the boot drive which is the OS and applications along with the 1Tb drive onto the internal 500Gb drive. I appreciate that this doesn't quite calculate in terms of space but I'm nowhere near full yet so it's a starting point until I pick up a bigger Time Machine drive.

I'm also going to set up Carbon Copy Cloner to backup the 320Gb boot/application drive to the external USB drive so that if I have a boot drive failure then I should be able to get back up and running very quickly.


How does this sound as a basic way of doing things? I'm effectively backing up the os/applications drive to two different destinations (although both are either in or next to the system box) and the home and user data to an internal drive with Time Machine. It should be remembered that this isn't a business and data loss will be inconvenient at worst.


Incidentally, if I replace my boot drive with a faster one, will CCC be able to do a complete clone from the existing drive to the new one while it's still mounted and allow the new drive to be bootable?

[Daz]

I'd be backing my data to the external disk rather than the boot drive. At the end of the day you can rebuild the OS pretty quickly, your own data may not be recoverable - trivial though the information may be.

These days I tend to build all my systems around my data. Keep the OS around it as trivial as possible and rebuilds - even changes to the OS should be trivial. Similar thinking to that video I posted the other day - keeping the 'content' separate is more flexible.

Sounds pretty good otherwise though - better than most people's backup regime. Cant comment on CCC.

[LeperousDust]

Off topic as per with most of my posts. But on the subject of keeping content separate, i do hope that Microsoft make it easier to do this in Windows 7. At present its a pain trying to keep windows on the straight and narrow pointing all its user data at another partition/drive.

[Feek]

I chose the internal drive for the data simply because of the speed, not really sure it makes much difference whether it goes internally or externally apart from the speed? The data drive is going to contain a whole lot more than the boot drive so I'm thinking of how long it takes to keep that Time Machine backup up to date.

[Mark]

Time Machine is incremental, so backups beyond the first one should be fairly quick. I agree with Daz that the data backup should go to the external drive. Inconvenient or not, I'll wager you'd probably be mighty annoyed if you actually lost your data, and external backups are almost always better than internal (a PSU failure could kill both drives, for example, and if you needed to, you could lock away an external drive).

[Burble]

Originally Posted by Feek

Incidentally, if I replace my boot drive with a faster one, will CCC be able to do a complete clone from the existing drive to the new one while it's still mounted and allow the new drive to be bootable?

Yep. It's a 2 stage process so you'll use CCC to image the drive and then put that image onto the new drive.

[BBx]

I thought this said 'Breaking up my new Mac' and I was like 'yeah! do it do it!!'



BB x

[Darryn]

Originally Posted by Burble

Yep. It's a 2 stage process so you'll use CCC to image the drive and then put that image onto the new drive.

Are you sure? ive used CCC before to backup my main system drive onto a USB2 drive, and then booted off that drive... a little slow but it works perfectly.

[Burble]

Originally Posted by Darryn

Are you sure? ive used CCC before to backup my main system drive onto a USB2 drive, and then booted off that drive... a little slow but it works perfectly.

We're talking at slightly crossed purposes. Feek wants to image his boot drive onto a new boot drive, ie, an internal drive. I know you can boot from an imaged USB drive.

[Darryn]

Arhh.. KK sorry for the misunderstand, from what i thought the same method i used would work equally well cloning the boot drive onto a new internal drive, but i havent tested it. Im going to be having to do this myself soon as im replacing my stock 320gb boot drives with either 300gb F1s or 300gb Velociraptors... Not decided which yet, ive ordered F1s, but i might order a velociraptor and see the differances for myself side by side.