James Wittmer

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

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Q: How do I back up with Time Machine and a flash drive?

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  • Helpful answers

  • by Grant Lenahan,

    Grant Lenahan Grant Lenahan Nov 13, 2015 3:46 PM in response to James Wittmer
    Level 4 (1,468 points)
    Mac OS X
    Nov 13, 2015 3:46 PM in response to James Wittmer

    are you looking for a full backup or just your files?  If the latter, why not just learn a few rsync scrips and move along.

     

    I have always found time machine "so simple its complicated".

     

    That said if it alternates you may have what you want - simply halve the interval.

     

    G

  • by babowa,

    babowa babowa Nov 13, 2015 4:01 PM in response to James Wittmer
    Level 7 (32,009 points)
    iPad
    Nov 13, 2015 4:01 PM in response to James Wittmer

    Time Machine disks need to be about 2 - 3 times the size of your internal drive; otherwise you will encounter problems as it does one full backup initially and then does incremental backups every hour until the drive is full - at which time it will delete the oldest backup to make room. I don't use it as I prefer to use bootable clones, but I assume from the messages you are getting is that you had (have) an external drive which is not working and you are trying to use the flash drive instead? You will need to get rid of the initial backups if the drive does not work, so I'd say use the 'replace TM' and start over. That would mean you'd lose previous backups and, as I said, a 512GB drive is rather small - TM won't be backing up too many before it has to start deleting the oldest.

     

    FWIW, partitioning the internal and putting a backup there is a very bad idea as you will lose both your current files and your backups when your drive fails - and they all will, sooner or later.

  • by MrHoffman,

    MrHoffman MrHoffman Nov 13, 2015 4:44 PM in response to babowa
    Level 6 (15,627 points)
    Mac OS X
    Nov 13, 2015 4:44 PM in response to babowa

    babowa wrote:

     

    FWIW, partitioning the internal and putting a backup there is a very bad idea as you will lose both your current files and your backups when your drive fails - and they all will, sooner or later.

     

    It's also entirely unnecessary, as Time Machine will stash snapshot backups when the usual destination volumes are not accessible.  (And asbabowa quite correctly notes, yes, you can lose those snapshots should the disk containing them fail, the backups get overwritten or erased or should the disk structures get corrupted, too.)

  • by Barney-15E,Helpful

    Barney-15E Barney-15E Nov 14, 2015 7:36 AM in response to James Wittmer
    Level 9 (50,072 points)
    Mac OS X
    Nov 14, 2015 7:36 AM in response to James Wittmer

    Time Machine will not behave any differently for a Flash-based drive or a spinning hard drive.

  • by MrHoffman,Solvedanswer

    MrHoffman MrHoffman Nov 14, 2015 7:36 AM in response to James Wittmer
    Level 6 (15,627 points)
    Mac OS X
    Nov 14, 2015 7:36 AM in response to James Wittmer

    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.

  • by Peter Campbell,

    Peter Campbell Peter Campbell Nov 13, 2015 7:01 PM in response to MrHoffman
    Level 1 (70 points)
    Nov 13, 2015 7:01 PM in response to MrHoffman

    If you are having problems since an El Capitan update, it might be that is the problem. I can't get Time Machine to work since the update.

  • by Peter Campbell,

    Peter Campbell Peter Campbell Nov 14, 2015 2:38 AM in response to Peter Campbell
    Level 1 (70 points)
    Nov 14, 2015 2:38 AM in response to Peter Campbell

    The problem seems to be fixed now for me. Perhaps it is nothing to do with the flash drive and instead a problem described in this thread where I found the fix for the trouble I was having:       Link to this post     

  • by James Wittmer,

    James Wittmer James Wittmer Nov 14, 2015 7:38 AM in response to Peter Campbell
    Level 1 (93 points)
    Desktops
    Nov 14, 2015 7:38 AM in response to Peter Campbell

    Got it-thanks.