cloud or back up drive for storage

Question

Level 1

13 points

cloud or back up drive for storage

Unfortunately this morning my dear cat knocked my Seagate expansion external drive onto the floor and damaged it. Although the blue light is flashing on it I cannot find it on time machine preferences in order to select it.(I had deleted it first as it wasn't responding) Now i am wondering whether to replace it with another or use a cloud such as pCloud. I understand iCloud is more about synching with other devices than a fully fledged encrypted storage area but I dont know enough about them in terms of security, cost, reliability etc so I was wondering if someone could advise

iMac 21.5″, macOS 10.15

Posted on Oct 20, 2020 5:39 AM

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Answer 1

rkaufmann87

Level 10

143,706 points

Oct 20, 2020 11:23 AM in response to angloargie

As you have been advised, you need to replace the EHD. The OWC (www.macsales.com) solution is also an excellent recommendation.

Also, while iCloud is very useful iCloud IS NOT a backup service!!! When you delete a file from iCloud it's gone forever across all devices, this is not backup plan in any way, shape or form!!

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Answer 2

den.thed

Level 10

82,168 points

Oct 20, 2020 12:02 PM in response to angloargie

angloargie wrote:

I think I will take that option as I am not sure I can trust a Cloud

You're welcome. And FWIW, I don't trust or use the cloud either. Instead I use CarbonCopyCloner on a second external drive to be safe.

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Answer 3

Oct 21, 2020 5:07 AM in response to angloargie

FWIW, I use two backup methods (as cheap as mass storage is these days

there is no reason not to). I have Time Machine running on one drive

for "incremental" recovery and I do system clones with Carbon Copy Cloner

for complete system recovery. While you can recover your system using

Time Machine, it can be excruciatingly long to do depending on how much

you have on your drive. System recovery from a clone is simply how fast

data can be transferred. The other advantage of the clone, is being able to

immediately reboot and continue work and not wait hours and hours

for Time Machine to restore your system. Time Machine is great as I said

for incremental recovery, a bad app update, a bad system update, or

user error ("I didn't really want to delete that folder of photos!").

As far as any cloud service, "The cloud is wonderful. The cloud is good.

Until it is not there!"

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Answer 4

den.thed

Level 10

82,168 points

Oct 20, 2020 11:14 AM in response to angloargie

You need to replace the external Time Machine backup drive, because it is easier, faster and more reliable to do a full Restore from than any cloud based backup.

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