glennhaste

Q: How can I find the relevant community?

   I have been using Time Machine with an external disc for quite a while.  Recently I decided to also use an internal disc so I'd have two locations for backups.  At first, the backups showed up on both discs, but then the internal disc started getting more backups than did the external.  That doesn't seem right to me - any comments?

   A second question:  I notice tat the backups don't, in general, include backups for the OS.  Is there a way to 'force' a backup that includes the OS?

Mac Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.8), Early '06, Also use OS 10.5 & 10.7

Posted on Sep 8, 2016 9:49 AM

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Q: How can I find the relevant community?

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  • by LaPastenague,

    LaPastenague LaPastenague Sep 8, 2016 2:13 PM in response to glennhaste
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    Sep 8, 2016 2:13 PM in response to glennhaste

    For your first question TM should backup in straight round robin to each disk. If that is not working then perhaps the external drive needs testing. Or is actually not available. When a disk is unavailable TM will continue using the internal disk.

     

    If the internal disk is one and the same as your OS disk then you have no backup. A disk failure will cause loss of everything.

     

       A second question:  I notice tat the backups don't, in general, include backups for the OS.  Is there a way to 'force' a backup that includes the OS?

    No, it is not possible nor required. Time Machine makes one backup of the whole disk. It then makes a complex incremental backup which is shown at the start of the backup.

    Please read the basic info from Pondini on how TM works.

     

    http://pondini.org/TM/Home.html

     

    The first two articles. How TM works and how it is different to a clone.

     

    My recommendation is you buy a backup software .. eg Carbon Copy Cloner and make a bootable clone on external drive. That can then give you an extremely simple method to test the quality of a backup.. hold option key during the computer boot and select the clone as the boot drive. This will give you a 100% test of the quality of backup in a few minutes.