shronecooke wrote:
The iMac told me that the backup had failed, no reason given of course, and when I went into Time Machine to look for any clues the system froze
Now imagine that important data on that ONE ext. HD, what a tragedy.
You always always want to be in the position of a professional, ...in which, if their external hard drive fails (and they always can and will), they say "so what, let me grab my 2nd (or more) external redundant HD archive"
Really youre complicating things more than need be.
HD are cheap as dirt for one.
Heres an ideal perfect situation 3 HD, 2 used with your Mac(s) since there is NO such thing as data protection without at least 2 copies OFF-computer, period.
both formatted for Mac OSX extended journaled,
the first HD would be a time machine, or even a HD clone thats updated.
The second being a data archive stored in a firebox, vault, etc. constantly updated.
3rd HD is one formatted in EXFAT for data transfers between PC and Mac.
The Titanic error and nasty fault people make is thinking their data is safe on ONE external HD, and thats just a disaster waiting to happen, period, no ifs ands or buts.
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.
Many countless people think they're safe and doing well having a single external backup of their vital data they worked months, years, and sometimes decades on. Nothing could be further from the truth. Never let yourself be in situation of having a single external copy of your precious data.
Archive vs. Backup Philosophy
Few people make any distinction between a backup and an archive, but this lack of differentiation has led many countless 1000s of people down a road that led to a cliff of losing vital data that they have spent months and sometimes years working on. Far more consideration should be entertained regarding your data preservation than you ever gave to the computer you purchased, however almost nobody does this.
We give general connotation to all copied data, important or not as a “backup”, or as often heard “always backup (singular) your data” and most of us think no further: “is this right? Why is it important to know such a vitally important distinction exists?”.
We backup our data which is like our bank accounts, a coming and going influx and ever-changing, subject to possible theft, or otherwise. But what about your valuables that must be ‘secured at all costs’, in a safe deposit box where it cannot be accessed by anyone but you, doesn't change, and is for all intents and purposes safe and permanent.
Likewise if Time Machine is a backup, which it is, where then does the common practice of archiving your vital data onto Time Machine come into play? It is the position of the professional, and should also be of the common user who also has much time and effort into his data creation, that it is imperative to separate out first in ones mind, and lastly separate out in hardware, your system backup (OS) and your data hub archive.
The confusion partly comes from the fact that both backups (system hub) and archives (data hub) are “on storage media”, but it ends there when people conclude this therefore means its ‘ok to store system backups and data in the same place’, or in the worst case, only in one place.
It is correct to create and say “I have a backup of my system (OS and APPS)”… but it is incorrect for the purpose of your data’s protection to both create and say, “I have my files (valuable data hub) copied on my backup” (therefore its safe)!
This, superficially seeming nuance, is like a giant Redwood tree seen from afar as a mere speck, but closely seen and examined, as the professional has, is a giant monolithic entity of great importance not to be lightly considered much less ignored.
The single worst mistake is thinking any backup (or archive for that matter) counts as “a second copy since the first is on the computer SSD/HD itself”. That position should never be taken. Any data on any computer never counts in the 2-copy scheme of preservation and archiving.
One should on a daily (or hourly) basis “backup their system (OS and settings) with Time Machine”, and separately in a timely manner as needed “make an archive of their (vital files, pics, documents, etc.) data” on separate storage devices or drives. But regardless of how you say it, all that is important is that the distinction is made in where data is directed to and distinguished.
In the case of a Macbook Air or Macbook Pro Retina with ‘limited’ storage on the SSD, this distinction becomes more important in that in an ever rapidly increasing file-size world, you keep vital large media files, pics, video, PDF collections, music off your SSD and archived on external storage, for sake of the necessary room for your system to have free space to operate, store future applications and general workspace. You should never be put in the position of considering “deleting things” on your macbook SSD in order to ‘make space’.
Professionals who create and import very large amounts of data have almost no change in the available space on their computers internal HD because they are constantly archiving data to arrays of external or networked HD.
Or in the case of the consumer this means you keep folders for large imported or created data and you ritually offload and archive this data for safekeeping, not only to safeguard the data in case your macbook has a HD crash, or gets stolen, but importantly in keeping the ‘breathing room’ open for your computer to operate, expand, create files, add applications, for your APPS to create temp files, and for general operation.
The first realization is that your data on your computer is highly vulnerable
The second realization is that you need a HD backup of your OS and data
The third realization is that you need at the very least a secondary HD backup
The fourth and final realization is understanding the fragility of any and all HD & ferromagnetic storage, and that vital data needs to be “frozen” on unassailable redundancies across multiple storage platforms including multiple HD, online backup, archival DVD burns comprising at the very minimum triple platform redundancy of data you have been working on for years or decades that cannot be replaced.
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 redundancy begins at...
1. All data on the computer is just that, your data.
2. All data on the first external HD is your backup.
3. Only the second external HD is your first safe data redundancy.
Protected data redundancy begins at the second external copy due to:
1. It not being connected. Any drive connected, backup or otherwise, is not to be considered a safe data redundancy.
2. Being the backup failsafe to the first external HD, not to the data on the computer which never should be counted in terms of data protection as "a copy".
3. External drives will invariably fail, and since most people falsely believe their external HD is their "safety", this error of perspective must be countered by yet another external copy of ones data.
Ones vital data must always be considered wholly independent and irrelevant of any data on the computer itself. Failure to look at one data in this matter is a failure which often can and does culminate in data loss.
