Time Machine and WD Anywhere Backup

AvgMoJoe wrote:
Pretending I had more space on my original, could I have safely saved (drag and drop) files on the same drive without worrying about time machine purging them for it's backups?

Yes, you can, and TM won't delete them, but you will be much, much better off to put such data in a separate partition. TM works best with it's own, exclusive, partition.

There are two reasons for this: first is, TM will, eventually, fill all the space available to it before it begins deleting old backups. When it gets near full, you may not be able to put anything else there. Second, if you ever want or have to delete all your old backups and start over, you can just erase the partition via Disk Utility; if there's other data there, it would be erased also. It is possible to delete individual backups via the TM interface, but it's one-at-a-time, so rather tedious.

WD has a Mac friendly backup solution 'WD Anywhere Backup' included on the 1TB.

I'm not familiar with it, so can't advise. But you'll find that many of us here use CarbonCopyCloner, SuperDuper, or the like to make a "bootable clone" *in addition* to TM.

There are advantages and disadvantages to all backup systems. None is perfect, and all depend on fallible hardware. This may seem a bit like wearing a belt and suspenders, but backups are one area where many have learned the hard way that +Paranoia is Prudent.+

The advantage to the "clone" systems is, when your HD fails you can boot and run from the clone immediately. Once your HD is repaired/replaced, you just clone back to it. With TM, you have wait for your HD to be fixed, then restore from your TM backups. It's also easy to test a clone.

TM, however, has the ability to easily recover a previous version of a file that got corrupted or you deleted or changed in error. It can also restore your entire system exactly the way it was at the time of any backup, even if it was a previous version of Leopard.

One other consideration: as great as external drives are, they may not protect you from fire, flood, theft, or direct lightning strike on your power lines. If your data is important, get something off-site. Some folks have a pair of external backup drives. They use one for about a week, then take it to their safe-deposit box, workplace, relative's house, etc., and swap it with the other one.

For things that don't change much, you can also use DVDs -- for example, I have my 2007 iPhotos on a DVD in my safe deposit box, 2008 on another (in addition to TM, of course).

You need to figure out what's best for your situation, depending on how much of what types of data you have, how paranoid you are, and what it will cost.

Hi Joe and welcome to Discussions!

WD has a Mac friendly backup solution 'WD Anywhere Backup' included on the 1TB. Should I:

a.) Run WD Anywhere Backup in addition to Time Machine?
a1.) Use WD Anywhere Backup on 1TB and use it for big files/directories (ie iTunes Library) and
keep Time Machine on 500 > a2.) Use 1TB for both WD Anywhere Backup and Time Machine (I assume Time Machine would
not require me to reformat the drive - oh wait it says it's FAT32, I thought it came
Journaled; WD Anywhere Backup did Not ask me to format it differently. ???) and use the
500 for large files
a3.) some other combination of the three

I've seen that some Mac users use Anywhere Backup and like it. It is somewhat more flexible than TM in that it, for instance, offers multiple backups to different destinations of the same material. See [here|http://www.memeo.com/wd/multiple_computers/en-US.htm] for more info.

However, unless you need the specific functionality that that piece of software offers, I would stick to TM and other, simpler, applications, like [SuperDuper|http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/SuperDuperDescription.html] or [CCC|http://www.bombich.com/software/index.html]. To me, simplicity and security are the paramount considerationsn when selecting a backup solution.

You say you will backup large files. Note that certain types of large files don't play well with TM, such as files created by virtualisation software like Parallels or [Entourage's database|http://support.microsoft.com/kb/946961] (however Aperture now works with TM, though see the warning [here|http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1878]).

If by "big files/directories" you mean the iTunes library, then I would advise you to consider to which extent you need to back this up. If you have the material in the library on original music CDs or DVDs, then it would seem unnecessary to save this on your hard drives. Note in this connection that iTunes offers a very useful backup process which lets you save the whole library to DVDs and then only backup what has been added since the last backup. To use this function, go to File-Library-Back up to disc. Note also that there is an option only to backup your iTunes purchases. Of course, keeping your iTunes library on discs (either the original CDs or backup discs created with iTunes) obviously also enables offsite backup storage.

b.) Use one or the other backup method exclusively?
b1.) Which solution and on which drive?
b2.) Should large files/directories be on separate drive or same and added to backup?

Unless there are other big files/directories to be backed up, I would do the following:

Put your iTunes library on the 500GB drive and back it up using the iTunes backup function. Then partition the 1GB drive into two partitions: one for a bootable system clone using SuperDuper (the paid-for version of which has a Smart Update function which enables very fast updates of the clone) and one for TM. You can then choose - either you include the iTunes library in the TM backups (in my opinion unnecessarily) or you exclude it (in Sys Prefs-TM-Options).

Good luck!
/p

Yes, it needs to have the GUID partition map for an Intel Mac, Apple Partition Map for a PPC Mac, and partitions should be Mac OS Extended (journaled) unless there's a very good reason for something else.

A clone should be the same size as your boot volume, or a minimum of the same size of the data on it plus 15%. Your TM volume should normally be 2-3 times the size of what it's backing-up, but varies greatly depending on how you use your Mac. If you frequently update lots of large files, even 3 times may not be enough; if you're a light user, you might get by with less than double for a while. It's basically a trade-off between space and how long TM can keep copies of previous versions of things that have been changed or deleted from your internal HD. So more is better!

And if you plan to put anything else on that drive, make another partition for it. TM works best with it's own, exclusive partition. As somebody posted here the other day, it's a little like the Borg -- it will assimilate all the space it can!