Carbin Copy Cloner versus Time Machine NEW QUESTION ADDED

ding76uk

ding76uk

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Carl
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I have recently been told about Carbon Copy Cloner for making backups.

for my IMac I currently have:

1 ext drive drive for photos

2nd ext drive which I am using for time machine and backing up Aperture Vault too.

3rd Drive that I need to get some old pics into Aperture and will then use as a 2nd Backup.

Now Would there be any advantage in changing what I currently have to the following.

Turning off Time Machine and Aperture Vaults.

Setting a Complete backup of my operating system drive on a monthly basis (very rare I make changes to much on this drive) to both external backup drives.

Set up a copy of my aperture library every week I put pics in it to drive.

Is this a more sensible option or is Time Machine and Vaults just as reliable/ better

Sorry, bit of a ramble but hopefully someone can make sense and give me some pointers of the best way t keep stuff backed up.
 
I'm not aware of Aperture vaults, but IMHO any human interaction needed in a back up process is a weak point.

Having said that, I would probably still keep a bootable copy of your hard drive somewhere anyway.
 
Don't turn off Time Machine! It can be a life saver in so many situations!!
CarbonCopyCloner and SuperDuper are great for cloning drives, but you actually have to sit down and carry out the operation. Also, you only get a snapshot of the drive at the time you make the copy, which is then overwritten the next time you clone the drive, so there's no history. TM runs all the time, and you don't have to think about it. It also keeps as many of the changes you make to your files as it can keep on the disk, so you can step through the changes chronologically.

As for the rest of it...
I'm assuming the 3 external drives mentioned above are in addition to the internal system drive?

If so, as long as you've got TM configured to backup your internal drive and the 1st external drive (Photos) I think you're pretty much covered.
Once the 3rd drive is freed up, I'd copy* the contents of your time machine drive to that on a regular basis and store it off site (different building to all your other kit, in case of fire or theft ofthe kit in your house)

I use Vaults as failsafe on top of TM as I'm struggling to find a definite answer on how TM backs up Aperture libraries and whether it's reliable enough to restore from in the event of a loss.
I know there were problems when Leopard was first released but I think the issues only arose when TM tried to do a backup while Aperture was open.

Vaults work very well :thumbs:

* To copy a TM drive, you need to use Apples DiskTool. CCC and SuperDuper don't work due to some funkiness with the way TM stores it's files :(
 
I have 2 external hard drives.

Every week I do a time machine back to one, the other one I do a CCC too.

CCC is fully bootable on that drive.
 
I use 2 systems, I use time machine as my main back-up for my Imac, plus I do a regular clone as well to play extra safe. However for all my images & master programmes I use Intego Software. It does various types of back up & I just let it carry on in the scripts I have written (dead easy BTW) and then check the log files to ensure it has done what I wanted unattended.

PS forgot to say these photos are on external drives not the IMac. I also keep a back up of my LR Catalogue on another external drive for safety.
 
ding76uk said:
Following on then, Time machine works until drive is full it says, is there a way to stop this, or should I partition the drive? Is this even possible with stuff on it?
Click to expand...

Are you using the disk for stuff other than TM? If so, you may want to create a separate partition for the other stuff.

TM will automatically delete the oldest backups when the disk fills up, so it rolls along cleaning away the old stuff as necessary.
 
JasonRS said:
Are you using the disk for stuff other than TM? If so, you may want to create a separate partition for the other stuff.

TM will automatically delete the oldest backups when the disk fills up, so it rolls along cleaning away the old stuff as necessary.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I am also using it for aperture vaults as well. It's a 1TB drive and the disk on that is on the Imac is only 250 GB.

Think the best way from here then is to clean up 3rd ext (which is only 500gb) then from there partition that for use as a time machine, making the 1TB purely a photo backup disc.
 
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