Computer does not see "My Passport"

[honestone]

OK, excellent information!

It's important to understand that as of now, being able to recover from the Time Machine backups you have been running is "iffy" at best, given the issues the WD drive has. So, it's both critical and important that you get some kind of reliable backup strategy in place.

First of all, Carbon Copy Cloner is way more than just a program that copies information from one location to another. Like SuperDuper!, it also can be used to make a bootable backup/clone of your "system", and in your case, that would be the stuff on your internal drive. You actually have WAY more than enough room on both of your 3 TB drives to 1) partition each drive to create a 250 gig partition, and decreasing the 1.36 TB free to .86 TB free (easily enough space), and 2) have Carbon Copy Cloner make a bootable backup/clone of everything on your internal hard drive to each small 250 gig partition you created. Again, it makes a bootable backup/clone, so you can boot your Mac from that partition. If you ever have a disaster with your internal drive on your Mac, you can boot from that external Carbon Copy Cloner-created partition, use Disk Utility there to Erase, Format, and Partition the internal drive, and then do a complete restore of everything from that external partition to the internal drive. You'd be back in business in no time! And, there are no worries about any of the programs you originally backed up from your internal drive.

You could still use Carbon Copy Cloner to copy the 1.64 GB of stuff from one external drive to the other. The only thing is you just need to let Carbon Copy Cloner what partition to copy (the one with the 1.64 GB of stuff), and where to copy it to (that would be the other partition on the other external drive).

Now, the only possible issue is how and when to run Carbon Copy Cloner. I believe you can schedule it to run when you want, and in your case, that might be necessary. I can do the same with SuperDuper!, but given that I don't use my machine for real "critical" stuff, once a week for my manual backups works just fine.

One thing is for certain, whether you get rid of the WD drive (I suggest you do) or not, is that you still must have at least one backup. And, as I said, you already have one of the best backup programs to do just that!

One other thing: have you been keeping Carbon Copy Cloner updated? Also, what version do you have?

 

[honestone]

Oops! My math is a little incorrect in the above post. After you create the 250 gig partition, the amount of free space on each external 3 TB drive will decrease from 1.36 TB to 1.11 TB, not .86 TB.

Oh, and is this ever pertinent! A new version of Carbon Copy Cloner came out today, Version 4.1.4. You can get it from here (assuming you have kept your copy up to date):

http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/7032/carbon-copy-cloner

 

[DougStocks]

PS to last. I experienced difficulty in using one of my printers today. Discovered that it came off the same hub as the My Passport HD. Tried a few things, but wound up simply unplugging and reconnecting that hub. This was only a few hours ago, but so far, so good. Both are working again.

 

[honestone]

I'd still be careful with relying on the WD drive for backups. Again, you already have one of the best backup programs available, and the space on both of your "older" external hard drives for bootable backups.

 

[DougStocks]

Oops! My math is a little incorrect in the above post. After you create the 250 gig partition, the amount of free space on each external 3 TB drive will decrease from 1.36 TB to 1.11 TB, not .86 TB.

Oh, and is this ever pertinent! A new version of Carbon Copy Cloner came out today, Version 4.1.4. You can get it from here (assuming you have kept your copy up to date):

http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/7032/carbon-copy-cloner

OK, I THINK I now have 4.1.4 installed. And, even though it said it was $39.00, I did not have to give any CC info. Thank you for this tip. Re the 'new' type backups you are suggesting, I will need to re-read them a few times before I even come close to understanding. However, you suggested partitioning my HDs. Can this be done w/o loss of existing data on the HDs?

 

[honestone]

To check which version of Carbon Copy Cloner you have installed, start it up, and then do an "About Carbon Copy Cloner". That will tell you what version you have.

Also, you can use Disk Utility to partition each of the 3 TB drives into 2 partitions each, with one of the partitions being 250 gig in size (for the Carbon Copy Cloner Backup). Such partitioning is normally (in fact, 99.9% of the time) safe. And, given that you have an exact copy of everything between both drives, after you partition one of them, you could run some tests to make sure everything is OK. Such tests would be 1) "play" with the information you already have on each drive, like you have been doing, and 2) let Carbon Copy Cloner make a backup/clone of everything on your internal drive to that first 250 gig partition. Once that is done, test the backup by confirming that you can boot your machine from that bootable backup.

 

[DougStocks]

I keep a spare back-up in my office. It is about time to swap them out, so I think I will wait and partition the older backup before I start using it again. That way it will not matter if I loose anything. You suggest 'confirming' by booting from that bootable disc. To me, boot essentially means turning the machine on. If I do that, how will the machine know to look to that external drive to boot rater than just using the internal drive? I.e., how do I force it to boot from that other drive?

 

[honestone]

After Carbon Copy Cloner makes the bootable backup, go to System Preferences, and select "Startup Disk". Once you click on that, you should see at least 2 icons of "bootable" disks: one would be your internal drive, and the other would be the Carbon Copy Cloner "disk". Just click on that, and then you can boot from taht backup.

When you partition the 3 TB drive, name the 250 gig partition with something you'll easily recognize. Maybe you can call it "Macintosh Backup". That should be easy to "spot".

 

[honestone]

One thing I forgot to mention above is that I believe after Carbon Copy Cloner makes the bootable backup, you would need to re-start the MacMini, so that the new, bootable 250 gig partition is recognized.

 

[DougStocks]

As usual, I thank you for all your kind help.

 

[honestone]

You are most welcome. By the way, were you able to determine the version of Carbon Copy Cloner that you have?