Q: How do I back up with Time Machine and a flash drive?
Last week I was told by both a Best Buy electronics supervisor AND Apple Support live chat advisor that I can definitely use a flash drive, as opposed to disc external drive, for Time Machine (not just manual backups). I now am trying to use a 512G flash drive and after selecting "Select Disk" I get a panel asking "Do you want to stop backing up to "Time Machine" and use "Corsair" (the flash drive") instead, or back up to both? If you use both, Time Machine will take turns backing up to Time Machine and Corsair." Three options are available: "Cancel"; "Replace Time Machine"; and "Use Both". I desire to have automatic backups on a schedule as Time Machine does with disk drives. Can I do this with just the flash drive (my disk drive is defunct now}? I.e., if I select "Replace Time Machine", will the flash drive be backed up automatically by the IMac installed app/utility, or must I get a disc drive also in order to have Time Machine work? Thanks!
iMac, OS X El Capitan (10.11.1)
Posted on Nov 13, 2015 3:13 PM
James Wittmer wrote:
I get a panel asking "Do you want to stop backing up to "Time Machine" and use "Corsair" (the flash drive") instead, or back up to both? If you use both, Time Machine will take turns backing up to Time Machine and Corsair." Three options are available: "Cancel"; "Replace Time Machine"; and "Use Both". I desire to have automatic backups on a schedule as Time Machine does with disk drives.
Time Machine supports multiple targets for backups, so — should one of your backups get corrupted — the other is likely still valid.
You're being asked whether you want to cancel the operation and avoid making any changes, or if you want to stop using your old backup target and use your new target — so long as the local target device looks and works like a disk, it's specific details don't matter to Time Machine — or if you want to both.
If you want to use just the new disk, select that option — replace, in this case — and you'll have an entire copy of your current boot disk transferred to your new backup device, and the scheduled backups will commence. Your old backup target will no longer be used.
Most folks use hard disk drives because they're big (capacious) and cheap. Flash device speeds can and do vary — some are fast, and some are not. But Time Machine doesn't care about the details of the local disks, so long as they look and work like a disk drive does.
Posted on Nov 14, 2015 7:36 AM