External Hardrive and backing up Macbook Pro & Aperture Help

yes, youre making another big mistake merely buying ONE MORE HD, and creating yet another single choke point failure.

2. time machine is a SYSTEM backup, not a data archive.

read everything you need here:

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

The Tragedy that will be, the tragedy that never should be

Always presume correctly that your data is priceless and takes a very long time to create and often is irreplaceable. Always presume accurately that hard drives are extremely cheap, and you have no excuse not to have multiple redundant copies of your data copied on hard drives and squirreled away several places, lockboxes, safes, fireboxes, offsite and otherwise.

Hard drives aren't prone to failure…hard drives are guaranteed to fail (the very same is true of SSD). Hard drives dont die when aged, hard drives die at any age, and peak in death when young and slowly increase in risk as they age.

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.

Simplex Premise of Backups vs. Archives

The B.A.R. “rule” (backup-archive-redundancy)

Backup: Active data emergency restore. Backups are moved from backups to archives; or from backups to the computer for restore or data retrieval.

Archive: Active and static data protection with the highest level of redundancy. Archives are only moved from itself to itself (archived copies). Generally a “long-term retention” nexus.

Redundancy: A fail-safe off-site or protected and “frozen” copy of your vital data and foolproof protection against magnetic degradation and HD mechanical failure. A likewise failsafe from theft, house fire, etc.

Redundancy has two points of premise:

A: redundancy (copies) of data archives.

B: redundancy of data on different platforms (optical, online, magneto-optical, HD).

Send your backups to your archives (as often as possible), and your archives to self-same redundancies.

*When referring to backups and archives here, this is in reference to your data saved/ created/ working on,... not your OS, your applications, and your system information / settings,...which is the idealized premise for use of Time Machine as a system-backup after internal data corruption or HD-failure.

Here we are referring to data backups and archives, not system-backups for restoring your OS-system.

If your data on your hard drive is the cash in your wallet, a backup is your bank account/debit card, and an archive is a locked safety deposit box.

Its easy to get your wallet emptied (corrupted) or stolen, your backup checking account is somewhat easy to get corrupted/drained or damaged, but your bunker security is in the lockbox inside the vault, where your vital data and archives reside. In the premise of preventing data loss, you want as often and as much as possible one-way transfers from your “wallet” to your safety deposit box archives; and further still a minimum of two copies of those archives.

Highest priority (archives) requires highest redundancy. In the premise of often copying data from backups to archives, backup redundancy plays a minor role.

Long-term active file backups (a book, a major time-involved video creation etc.) requires double-active redundancies, preferably a minimum of Time Machine and an autonomous external formatted HD, so there are at least three copies of this data: internal drive, Time Machine, and secondary non-TM HD backup.

Data Storage Platforms; their Drawbacks & Advantages

#1. Time Machine / Time Capsule

Drawbacks:

1. Time Machine is not bootable, if your internal drive fails, you cannot access files or boot from TM directly from the dead computer.

2. Time machine is controlled by complex software, and while you can delve into the TM backup database for specific file(s) extraction, this is not ideal or desirable.

3. Time machine can and does have the potential for many error codes in which data corruption can occur and your important backup files may not be saved correctly, at all, or even damaged. This extra link of failure in placing software between your data and its recovery is a point of risk and failure. A HD clone is not subject to these errors.

4. Time machine mirrors your internal HD, in which cases of data corruption, this corruption can immediately spread to the backup as the two are linked. TM is perpetually connected (or often) to your computer, and corruption spread to corruption, without isolation, which TM lacks (usually), migrating errors or corruption is either automatic or extremely easy to unwittingly do.

5. Time Machine does not keep endless copies of changed or deleted data, and you are often not notified when it deletes them; likewise you may accidently delete files off your computer and this accident is mirrored on TM.

6. Restoring from TM is quite time intensive.

7. TM is a backup and not a data archive, and therefore by definition a low-level security of vital/important data.

8. TM working premise is a “black box” backup of OS, APPS, settings, and vital data that nearly 100% of users never verify until an emergency hits or their computers internal SSD or HD that is corrupt or dead and this is an extremely bad working premise on vital data.

9. Given that data created and stored is growing exponentially, the fact that TM operates as a “store-it-all” backup nexus makes TM inherently incapable to easily backup massive amounts of data, nor is doing so a good idea.

10. TM working premise is a backup of a users system and active working data, and NOT massive amounts of static data, yet most users never take this into consideration, making TM a high-risk locus of data “bloat”.

11. In the case of Time Capsule, wifi data storage is a less than ideal premise given possible wireless data corruption.

12. TM like all HD-based data is subject to ferromagnetic and mechanical failure.

13. *Level-1 security of your vital data.

Advantages:

1. TM is very easy to use either in automatic mode or in 1-click backups.

2. TM is a perfect novice level simplex backup single-layer security save against internal HD failure or corruption.

3. TM can easily provide a seamless no-gap policy of active data that is often not easily capable in HD clones or HD archives (only if the user is lazy is making data saves).

#2. HD archives

Drawbacks:

1. Like all HD-based data is subject to ferromagnetic and mechanical failure.

2. Unless the user ritually copies working active data to HD external archives, then there is a time-gap of potential missing data; as such users must be proactive in archiving data that is being worked on or recently saved or created.

Advantages:

1. Fills the gap left in a week or 2-week-old HD clone, as an example.

2. Simplex no-software data storage that is isolated and autonomous from the computer (in most cases).

3. HD archives are the best idealized storage source for storing huge and multi-terabytes of data.

4. Best-idealized 1^st platform redundancy for data protection.

5. *Perfect primary tier and level-2 security of your vital data.

#3. HD clones (see below for full advantages / drawbacks)

Drawbacks:

1. HD clones can be incrementally updated to hourly or daily, however this is time consuming and HD clones are, often, a week or more old, in which case data between today and the most fresh HD clone can and would be lost (however this gap is filled by use of HD archives listed above or by a TM backup).

2. Like all HD-based data is subject to ferromagnetic and mechanical failure.

Advantages:

1. HD clones are the best, quickest way to get back to 100% full operation in mere seconds.

2. Once a HD clone is created, the creation software (Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper) is no longer needed whatsoever, and unlike TM, which requires complex software for its operational transference of data, a HD clone is its own bootable entity.

3. HD clones are unconnected and isolated from recent corruption.

4. HD clones allow a “portable copy” of your computer that you can likewise connect to another same Mac and have all your APPS and data at hand, which is extremely useful.

5. Rather than, as many users do, thinking of a HD clone as a “complimentary backup” to the use of TM, a HD clone is superior to TM both in ease of returning to 100% quickly, and its autonomous nature; while each has its place, TM can and does fill the gap in, say, a 2 week old clone. As an analogy, the HD clone itself is the brick wall of protection, whereas TM can be thought of as the mortar, which will fill any cracks in data on a week, 2-week, or 1-month old HD clone.

6. Best-idealized 2^nd platform redundancy for data protection, and 1^st level for system restore of your computers internal HD. (Time machine being 2^nd level for system restore of the computer’s internal HD).

7. *Level-2 security of your vital data.

HD cloning software options:

1. SuperDuper HD cloning software APP (free)

2. Carbon Copy Cloner APP (will copy the recovery partition as well)

3. Disk utility HD bootable clone.

#4. Online archives

Drawbacks:

1. Subject to server failure or due to non-payment of your hosting account, it can be suspended.

2. Subject, due to lack of security on your part, to being attacked and hacked/erased.

Advantages:

1. In case of house fire, etc. your data is safe.

2. In travels, and propagating files to friends and likewise, a mere link by email is all that is needed and no large media needs to be sent across the net.

3. Online archives are the perfect and best-idealized 3^rd platform redundancy for data protection.

4. Supremely useful in data isolation from backups and local archives in being online and offsite for long-distance security in isolation.

5. *Level-1.5 security of your vital data.

#5. DVD professional archival media

Drawbacks:

1. DVD single-layer disks are limited to 4.7Gigabytes of data.

2. DVD media are, given rough handling, prone to scratches and light-degradation if not stored correctly.

Advantages:

1. Archival DVD professional blank media is rated for in excess of 100+ years.

2. DVD is not subject to mechanical breakdown.

3. DVD archival media is not subject to ferromagnetic degradation.

4. DVD archival media correctly sleeved and stored is currently a supreme storage method of archiving vital data.

5. DVD media is once written and therefore free of data corruption if the write is correct.

6. DVD media is the perfect ideal for “freezing” and isolating old copies of data for reference in case newer generations of data become corrupted and an older copy is needed to revert to.

7. Best-idealized 4^th platform redundancy for data protection.

8. *Level-3 (highest) security of your vital data.

[*Level-4 data security under development as once-written metallic plates and synthetic sapphire and likewise ultra-long-term data storage]

#6. Cloud based storage

Drawbacks:

1. Cloud storage can only be quasi-possessed.

2. No genuine true security and privacy of data.

3. Should never be considered for vital data storage or especially long-term.

4. *Level-0 security of your vital data.

Advantages:

1. Quick, easy and cheap storage location for simplex files for transfer to keep on hand and yet off the computer.

2. Easy source for small-file data sharing.

#7. Network attached storage (NAS) and JBOD storage

Drawbacks:

1. Subject to RAID failure and mass data corruption.

2. Expensive to set up initially.

3. Can be slower than USB, especially over WiFi.

4. Mechanically identical to USB HD backup in failure potential, higher failure however due to RAID and proprietary NAS enclosure failure.

Advantages:

1. Multiple computer access.

2. Always on and available.

3. Often has extensive media and application server functionality.

4. Massive capacity (also its drawback) with multi-bay NAS, perfect for full system backups on a larger scale.

5. *Level-2 security of your vital data.

JBOD (just a bunch of disks / drives) storage

Identical to NAS in form factor except drives are not networked or in any RAID array, rather best thought of as a single USB feed to multiple independent drives in a single powered large enclosure. Generally meaning a non-RAID architecture.

Drawbacks:

1. Subject to HD failure but not RAID failure and mass data corruption.

Advantages:

1. Simplex multi-drive independent setup for mass data storage.

2. Very inexpensive dual purpose HD storage / access point.

3. *Level-2 security of your vital data.

I also apologize for being longwinded. This is a complex topic.

Here are my summary suggestions that should be consistent with PlotinusVeritas' advice. Of his B.A.R. rules I will address Backup and Redundancy. The options in the schemes you have mentioned go part way for good backup and redundancy practice. Here are some additional suggestions.

You mention mirroring the data on another drive. That is a good idea. The common term for this is cloning (as opposed to RAID-1 mirroring). Common utilities that clone partitions are Carbon Copy Cloner and SuperDuper!

Time Machine is a good backup program for maintaining snapshots of your system disk that go back in time in case you find a missing, corrupted, or otherwise modified file. It is not ideal for a full restore because it is complex and prone to errors. I have had Time Machine restores fail on me and having a second backup saved my bacon. Cloning, in addition to Time Machine, provides a belts-and-suspenders redundancy that is needed to really protect your data.

As you have surmised, it is a bad idea to have only one copy of data on an external disk. For backup external disks, cloning is easier more effective. Time Machine will backup external disks but it increases the complexity even more, makes full restores difficult and it can make the size needed for the Time Machine backup volume too large.

Your approach of having backups at home and at work is excellent. I do the same. This provides disaster protection against theft, fire, flood… It also provides redundancy that strengthens the data protection.

You mentioned partitioning your disks. In this case that is a useful idea. I can think of two schemes that will provide the redundancy needed and allow you to transport the data from home to work.

A five-disk approach:

- Partition two of the disks into a clone partition (the size of your internal disk) and a Time Machine partition (larger than your internal disk). Use Time Machine to backup to its partition and CCC or SD to backup to the clone partition. Run these backups at home and at work and you will have proper redundancy. It will provide multiple backups on multiple drives in multiple locations.

- Use three more disks for the external data. A cloned backup disk at each location and a third with live data that you carry back and forth.

A three disk approach:

- If the four partitions will fit on 3 TB disks:

- Place four partitions on each disk: (1) Time Machine, (2) System disk clone, (3) First data partition and (4) Second data partition.

- Keep one backup drive at work, one backup drive at home, and one with the live external files that you carry back and forth.

- Use Time Machine and cloning to keep the backups current.

A two disk approach:

- This approach does provides only one backup copy. It does not meet the belts-and-supenders redundancy criteria.

- Four partitions per 3 TB drive.

- One backup drive a home.

- One that you carry back and forth.

For simplicity, flexibility and easier backup maintenance, you might consider keeping your movies and “additional” files in one partition (reducing the number of partitions to three). That will be one less clone backup to run and allows you to better share the capacity between these two uses.