A question about backing up external drives.

[eldean0]

Hey there!

Can anyone help me set this up correctly, please? I have time machine set up and working backing up my system drive and my other internal hard drive. But I do have an external that I want to back up to another external drive, I was hoping time machine could handle this too but apple support said it cannot do both.

As it stands the destination drive I want to use has most of the same data (about 2TB of 2.7TB )as the source drive is there any way to initiate an incremental backup now if never done before, only backing up what's different? If not, going forward I would obviously back up everything once and hopefully somehow set up automatic incremental backups.

I have a feeling you may suggest a 3rd party software if so can you please recommend something that is light and solid in terms of system performance?

Thank you!

iMac 2019 intel i9
Monterey 12.4

 

[TonyAguila]

Hey there!

Can anyone help me set this up correctly, please? I have time machine set up and working backing up my system drive and my other internal hard drive. But I do have an external that I want to back up to another external drive, I was hoping time machine could handle this too but apple support said it cannot do both.

As it stands the destination drive I want to use has most of the same data (about 2TB of 2.7TB )as the source drive is there any way to initiate an incremental backup now if never done before, only backing up what's different? If not, going forward I would obviously back up everything once and hopefully somehow set up automatic incremental backups.

I have a feeling you may suggest a 3rd party software if so can you please recommend something that is light and solid in terms of system performance?

Thank you!

iMac 2019 intel i9
Monterey 12.4

Unless you are well-versed in Terminal, I can only suggest third-party utilities. From personal experience I can recommend three to choose from: Carbon Copy Cloner, SuperDuper!, and Chronosync. They can all create clones/copies not only of internal or external volumes but also of folders or subfolders. They can overwrite or archive older files, and manually or automatically perform multiple backup tasks.

My choice is Carbon Copy Cloner, but I think, depending on how your mind works, the others might appeal to you. I have about a dozen tasks that are automatically run on daily schedules, some more than once, volume to volume, or volume to folder or vice-versa. Source or target volumes can be automatically mounted and unmounted, for both local and network drives. The only “drawback” to CCC is that clones of multi-volume macOS systems (Big Sur, Monterey, and Ventura) are not bootable. Okay by me. If I need to restore a system volume, I would rather do a clean installation of the system partition and then migrate my data from the clone.

I’m pretty sure that all are available for trial. You should find one to suit your need.

By the way, if it’s true that you are still running version 12.4 of Monterey, I suggest updating to 12.5.1. Those security updates are vital.

 

[DanL]

FYI, SuperDuper, which I use does backups which ARE bootable in modern Mac operating systems.

 

[TonyAguila]

FYI, SuperDuper, which I use does backups which ARE bootable in modern Mac operating systems.

Dan, I am aware of that, and I own a current version of SuperDuper, but I don’t really need (or trust) a bootable clone of my system disks. At least I haven’t encountered any problem with CCC, not even in Ventura.

 

[DanL]

Yes, Tony, I've used both CCC and SuperDuper, and they both work well. I just happen to like the user interface on SuperDuper better. The whole purpose of a clone involves trust. If my system disk goes south, I trust a SuperDuper clone to quickly get me back in business. I can run off the clone exactly as I would have run off my system disk and, when the system disk is replaced, I just clone my clone back onto it. Have you had issues that lead you not to trust clones?

 

[TonyAguila]

Yes, Tony, I've used both CCC and SuperDuper, and they both work well. I just happen to like the user interface on SuperDuper better. The whole purpose of a clone involves trust. If my system disk goes south, I trust a SuperDuper clone to quickly get me back in business. I can run off the clone exactly as I would have run off my system disk and, when the system disk is replaced, I just clone my clone back onto it. Have you had issues that lead you not to trust clones?

Let’s just say that I have tried both extensively. Actually, I first started with FoldersSynchronizer, then Chronosync, then SuperDuper, and finally Carbon Copy Cloner. I have special issues, one of them dealing with a network server and NAS drives, along with other Macs on the network. Also, my main Mac has four attached SSDs (2TB each) and four attached HDs (8TB each) via Thunderbolt 3. Aside from the two 8 terabyte hard drives for my dual Time Machine backups, the rest of the drives consist of about 20 volumes.

In addition to the Time Machine backups, I have about a dozen backup/clone tasks set to run automatically everyday, from once to three times daily. Some source drives are programmed to mount only at the start of the backup operation and some target drives are set to unmount after the operation. Some tasks are set to archive changes/deletions, while some have Safety Net turned off. And so on. It was a good thing to have taken courses in PERT/CPM in engineering school.

Anyway, I welcome anything to make life less complicated, but in my experience, CCC works best for me. And it runs just as well in Ventura as in Monterey. It’s true that I still have to test the other programs in macOS 13, but that’s not happening soon.