How to I go about backing up my macbook on my External Hard Drive?

Question

Level 1

0 points

How to I go about backing up my macbook on my External Hard Drive?

Hi, I'm really not computer savvy and i was hoping i could ask you for the best way to backup my air using my 1TB external hard drive?

I wanted to have space for time machine backups as well as space so i could manually backup (archive) certain documents, videos etc.

While I was reading, I understood that to have time machine backups, as well as manually archive data, I need to partition my hard drive. I was hoping i could partition one half to work on pc computers (and my mac) and the other to work on my mac for TM backups.

My question about partitioning is:

1) If I split my HD into 2 (one for TM and one for manual backups that work on a PC) can I still access my archive section on a mac or will it be unreadable to a mac computer, and only readable to a pc? -- what I mean is, if I partition one half to work on a pc, can I still use to in the case of a HD failure on my MacBook air; to have my important files restored? Can I still access the files i put in the pc useable archive section on my, or another, mac or is it now only readable on a pc?

2) Or will I need to partition my hard drive into 3 segments. 1) For TM, 2) for data to be accessible on a PC, and 3) one for archived data to be readable on macs. So essentially I’ll have duplicate files on both the pc and mac archived segments. Is this necessary? Or is there a better way?

I wanted to have time machine backups and a manual archive section on my external; although, i also wanted to be able to access files on my archive section at school for presentation and the like...be it a mac or a pc. I wanted to be able to access those files on either my or another mac and for school on a pc.

Any help would be greatly appreciated...I apologize if you couldn't understand my intentions; I’m not good with all this techy stuff so please bare with me!

Thanks! 🙂

MacBook Air, iOS 6

Posted on Jan 13, 2014 12:30 PM

Reply

Answer 1

Jan 13, 2014 12:48 PM in response to Olapola007

#1 is a very bad idea because it creates a bad choke point for serious data loss on ONE external hard drive.

Hard drives aren't prone to failure…hard drives are guaranteed to fail

Never practice at any time for any reason the false premise and unreal sense of security in thinking your data is safe on any single external hard drive. This is never the case and has proven to be the single most common horrible tragedy of data loss that exists.

Many 100s of millions of hours of lost work and data are lost each year due to this single common false security. This is an unnatural disaster that can avoid by making all data redundant and then redundant again. If you let a $60 additional redundant hard drive and 3 hours of copying stand between you and years of work, then you've made a fundamental mistake countless 1000s of people each year have come to regret.

#2. Same reason.

2 hard drives MINIMUM, one for TM backups, and a second for data redundancy/ archives. (preferable a 3rd HD clone as well).

Hard drives are cheaper than dirt, you must have one external, and if you cherish you data you NEED a minimum of two

You can have your archiving HD partitioned in Exfat for file transfers between Mac and PC

For data access on your PC, have a HD formatted for ExFat for file transfers between Mac and PC, however such a format will not work with time machine which needs to be in Mac OSX extended journaled.

see here

Methodology to protect your data. Backups vs. Archives. Long-term data protection

Reply

Answer 2

hands4

Level 4

2,246 points

Jan 14, 2014 3:08 PM in response to Olapola007

I agree with PV that one should never put live data on a backup drive. If the drive fails you will lose the backup and the live data. Losing a backup is no big deal. You just recreate it. Losing live data backed up on another drive is also OK. You just restore it. However if the live data is backed up onto the same drive then poof, all the live data is gone if and when that drive fails.

However you can store multiple kinds of backup data in multiple formats on one partitioned drive.

So yes, if you want to place manual backups (redundant copies of the data still on your internal or other hard drives) then that will work. You can partition the hard drive for one Time Machine backup partition, formatted MacOS Extended (journaled) and one manual backup partition formatted exFAT (FAT64). For emphasis: You need to make darn sure the PC backup drive has only backup copies on it of live files that either reside on the Mac or the PC.

Why exFAT?

- OS X can read and write exFAT files and they can be large files.

- FAT32 and FAT16 filesystems do not support large files.

- NTFS is readable by OS X but not writeable.

Create the two partitions on the Mac. Format the exFAT partition on the PC. (Disk Utility may have bugs in it formatting exFAT partitions.)

This would also work with three partitions: Time Machine, Mac OS manual archival, and exFAT interchange. However it is probably not a good idea to carry the around the backup disk. So I would purchase a second external disk (~$80) to haul with you.

A better idea? Carry a 64 GB exFAT formatted thumb drive with you for the Mac/PC interchange and to be ready to plug into any other Mac/PC for presentations. That is much more convenient than hauling around a disk drive and the thumb drives costs less than a second disk (~$40 vs. ~$80). Thumb drives can take a lick’n and keep on tick’n. Not so for disks. You can then partition the one external drive into a Time Machine backup partition and a Mac OS manual backup partition, both formatted Mac OS Extended (journaled). Again, the exFAT drive should have only copies of data from the PC and Mac; no live data.

Reply