New to Mac Backup Drive Questions

[tbgb50]

I'm 3 weeks into transitioning from Windows - I have an M2 mini and got a Mac Air yesterday. I'm trying to avoid multiple drives and cables so:

I use iDrive for online backup and have a dedicated drive on the Mini to run Time Machine. I plan to add the MB Air to iDrive, but can you do this on a Macs:

Get a large HDD, and partition it? My thought 4 partitions - 2 data partitions for the two computers and 2 time machine partitions.

Can you do this? Is there a better way?

Thanks for any help you can provide.

 

[JamesMay82]

I'm 3 weeks into transitioning from Windows - I have an M2 mini and got a Mac Air yesterday. I'm trying to avoid multiple drives and cables so:

I use iDrive for online backup and have a dedicated drive on the Mini to run Time Machine. I plan to add the MB Air to iDrive, but can you do this on a Macs:

Get a large HDD, and partition it? My thought 4 partitions - 2 data partitions for the two computers and 2 time machine partitions.

Can you do this? Is there a better way?

Thanks for any help you can provide.

I drive or iCloud isn't a back up its just a syncing service.

I have a setup like yours.

my mini keeps all files downloaded from the cloud and also all my photos locally and I then use time machine to back up these files to the external drive. the problem with files in the cloud is, if you don't have enough storage then it won't be downloaded locally and then you won't be able to back it up with time machine.

my laptop doesn't have enough storage so I just set it up for optimised media so it doesn't download all my iCloud files and photos.

 

[tbgb50]

I drive or iCloud isn't a back up its just a syncing service.

I have a setup like yours.

my mini keeps all files downloaded from the cloud and also all my photos locally and I then use time machine to back up these files to the external drive. the problem with files in the cloud is, if you don't have enough storage then it won't be downloaded locally and then you won't be able to back it up with time machine.

my laptop doesn't have enough storage so I just set it up for optimised media so it doesn't download all my iCloud files and photos.

Thanks for the reply.

iDrive (not Onedrive) does have sync capability if I recall correctly, but I don't use it. I pay $80/yr for 5 TB and can backup as many devices as I like - I think I have 5 now. Everything is separate by device and if I delete a file on a device, it stays on iDrive until I run a cleanup to re-sync everything. Saved me a couple of times.

 

[picpicmac]

Get a large HDD, and partition it? My thought 4 partitions - 2 data partitions for the two computers and 2 time machine partitions.

Not a recommended backup strategy.

A back-up (in this case Time Machine) should be a different physical device than the data that is being backed up.

 

[tbgb50]

Not a recommended backup strategy.

A back-up (in this case Time Machine) should be a different physical device than the data that is being backed up.

Good point I did not consider.

iDrive let's you backup external drives - so I could backup the partition with the time machine files. I run cloud backups every night on all my devices. Does this sound like a low risk option?

 

[Fishrrman]

You could partition an external drive and use it for two separate backups.

I would not put any other partitions onto this drive (i.e, "for data").
Keep it "backup only".

How I would do it:
a. connect the drive that's going to become the backup
b. open disk utility
c. go to the "view" menu and choose "show all devices"
d. erase the ENTIRE drive to "Mac OS extended, journaling enabled, GUID partition format" (this is temporary)
e. select the "partition" pane
f. click the "+" sign to add a new partition (disk utility may "split" the drive into two equally-sized pieces, might be good enough)
g give the new partition a meaningful name (such as "Mini Backup"). It should be "Mac OS extended", also (for now).
h. when done, you should have two drive icons on the desktop. You could rename the other partition, say, "MacBook Backup".

We're not done yet.
1. still in disk utility, select the first partition
2. go to the "edit" menu and choose "Convert to APFS"
3. when this is done, select the second partition
4. again, go to the "edit" menu and choose "Convert to APFS".

Quit disk utility and the drive is ready to use.

Others will say "all this wasn't necessary", but (speaking for myself) I WANT two "hard" partitions, and NOT "APFS containers"...

 

[tbgb50]

You could partition an external drive and use it for two separate backups.

I would not put any other partitions onto this drive (i.e, "for data").
Keep it "backup only".

How I would do it:
a. connect the drive that's going to become the backup
b. open disk utility
c. go to the "view" menu and choose "show all devices"
d. erase the ENTIRE drive to "Mac OS extended, journaling enabled, GUID partition format" (this is temporary)
e. select the "partition" pane
f. click the "+" sign to add a new partition (disk utility may "split" the drive into two equally-sized pieces, might be good enough)
g give the new partition a meaningful name (such as "Mini Backup"). It should be "Mac OS extended", also (for now).
h. when done, you should have two drive icons on the desktop. You could rename the other partition, say, "MacBook Backup".

We're not done yet.
1. still in disk utility, select the first partition
2. go to the "edit" menu and choose "Convert to APFS"
3. when this is done, select the second partition
4. again, go to the "edit" menu and choose "Convert to APFS".

Quit disk utility and the drive is ready to use.

Others will say "all this wasn't necessary", but (speaking for myself) I WANT two "hard" partitions, and NOT "APFS containers"...

Fishrrman,

Thanks very much. I really appreciate the time you took to provide such detailed steps - even a Mac newbie like me can follow them. This solves my question.

 

[jlc1978]

I'm not sure you need 2 Time Machine partitions, IIRC TM creates separate folders for each Mac.
For online backup, I use ARQ to encrypt and OneDrive to store the backups. For my Documents, I use Carbon Copy Cloner to save to an attached SSD.