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Level 4

1,066 points

backing up a laptop and a iMac

I have a laptop Mac Pro 13" , mid 2009 and iMac 20", mid 2007 . the iMac is running 10.10.3. the laptop is running 10.7.5 and is almost full for its 250 GB. The iMac only has used about 70GB out of 250 GB. I have two WD 2 TB external hard rive. I was thinking of partitioning both drive into two partitions. I was going to used one drive for the iMac putting a bootable back on one partition and use time machine on the other partition. I'm not sure what do with the laptop since it's almost full. My wife said she will remove some items, but honestly I think it will still be near full. Does anyone have any suggestions and the method I'm describing for the iMac ok?

iMac, OS X Yosemite (10.10.3), Processor Speed:2.0 GHZ intel Core

Posted on May 30, 2015 2:38 PM

18 replies

rkaufmann87

Level 10

140,790 points

Jun 2, 2015 3:35 PM in response to has55

has55 wrote:

ok I will set up the iMac with the two drive-TM and bootable on the other drive with super duper.? When everyone say you sure make multiple back up , are you really saying buy several external drives to make the same bootable backups , plus one drive for time machine?

What I am saying is have 2 external HD's for each computer. Disk #1 should be used for Time Machine backups. Disk #2 should be used for creating bootable clones using either SuperDuper or Carbon Copy Cloner. You only need 1EHD for each backup plan.

Time Machine does incremental backups hourly, incremental meaning it only backs up new or changed files, apps or folders.

With both CCC and SuperDuper each has tools that allow users to schedule backups, in that schedule you can customize the backup to occur at a scheduled time and either backup the complete internal HD or you can backup just what changed that day. For example I use SuperDuper on all my Macs (iMac, Mac Mini & MacBook Air), at 2:30 AM every day the backup begins and only backs up new or changed data from the previous backup.

Once you get each EHD, format them to Mac OS Extended (Journaled) GUID partition and then Time Machine should ask if you want to use it as a backup HD. If you already have TM backing up then select no and then launch your clone app (SuperDuper or CCC) and set the parameters you want.

has55 Author

Level 4

1,066 points

Jun 2, 2015 8:59 PM in response to rkaufmann87

ok, got it. thanks.

has55 Author

Level 4

1,066 points

Jun 2, 2015 9:00 PM in response to has55

any suggestion with the laptop?

backing up a laptop and a iMac