Backup Strategies

[Nukeban]

Hi all,

I'm upgrading my backup strategy and would appreciate any advice.

Currently I have a 1TB boot drive which I backup to an external drive via USB using SuperDuper. This works ok, but because it takes many hours I don't do it very often, thus my backups tend to be pretty old. Smart updating stopped working for some reason, and so I've been copying the entire boot drive to the backup drive. This method is better than nothing, but hardly ideal.

I'm about to buy a couple of new drives, and am trying to think through a new and improved backup strategy before doing so. It's probably time for me to learn about Time Machine?

What would my situation be if I buy a 2TB boot drive, and a second 2TB drive for Time Machine backups? Does Time Machine create a bootable backup? If my main drive died, how would I restore the data to a new drive?

Is Time Machine going to be a drag on my system? I've read comments like that, but that was awhile ago so they may be out of date. I should probably say I'll be running El Capitan or Sierra.

Thanks for any discussion of backup strategies!

 

[Lufbrarunner]

My backup strategy is SuperDuper does a Smart Update on Sunday morning, Time machine does a backup once a day (I use TimeMachineEditor) to a 3TB time capsule. before any major update or change I do a full clone of the drive and a time machine backup.

The initial Time Machine backup may cause a little slowness, due to size, but the subsequent backups have little or no effect.

This strategy works for me across a 27" imac(2015), a 21.5" imac(2015) and a 20" imac(2008)

 

[Nukeban]

Hi there, thanks for your reply. Let's see if I get it...

You use SuperDuper so you'll have a bootable copy of your setup.

TimeMachine saves files more frequently, but does not create a bootable backup.

You set TimeMachine to do it's thing once per day, so it's not always running in the background copying every new file you make as you make it.

Am I understanding you correctly?

Thanks!

 

[Lufbrarunner]

Spot on!