Screwing up in reverse - an external hard drive saga

[bob5820]

I recently decided that it would be a good idea to start backing up my MacPro. Phase one of my strategy goes like this;
1. Get 500GB drive and mount it internally in the MacPro, move /home to this drive. Doing so will keep my OS/Apps on one drive, and my data on another. Data will be backed up daily; the OS/Apps will be backed up weekly. Ordered 500 GB Segate from Newegg.
2. Get external Firewire drive for back up. I decided on the OWC Mercury Elite Pro-AL single bay. Originally I decided I’d go with a 750 GB, but after looking at the price difference decided I’d go with the 500GB for now. As my 500GB data drive fills up I’ll probably get a second enclosure, and another drive. I then decided to order the bare enclosure from OWC and another 500GB Segate drive from Newegg as Newegg was selling the drives for $80.00 off.

Now here is where it gets interesting. Got all three boxes yesterday, and opened up the box with the OWC enclosure. I opened the enclosure and right off the bat something didn’t look right. All I see is an IDE connector and power connection. That’s not going to work well with the SATA drives I just ordered. A call to OWC reveals that the only external housing that works with SATA drives is the new eSATA / FW / USB housing. So I get an RMA number so I can do the exchange. I didn’t get to the PostNet in time to ship it out, so the enclosure came back home with me. I figured I might as well install the 500GB internal drive in the MacPro. Guess what, it was IDE not SATA. I didn’t even think the newer drives came in IDE, I just assumed that everything was SATA nowadays. OK so this works out for the external drive but not so well for the MacPro. I decide to check the 2nd drive I ordered from NewEgg (The one that had been intended for use as an external drive), and guess what its SATA. So despite the fact I screwed up by not checking interfaces when I ordered it all worked itself out in the end. I really lucked out on this one.

 

[roland.g]

You could have gotten both 500GB Seagates from Newegg in SATA and put them both in the Mac Pro. Why does your backup need to be in an external case.

BTW. I too ordered the Seagate 7200.10 500GB from Newegg for $80 off, $149 great deal. I had to get the IDE because I have a Mac Mini and v2 miniStack, the miniStack takes an IDE drive. I didn't feel like springing for an external case that holds a SATA drive with eSATA and FW800 connections. They run about $90-150.

 

[jeremy.king]

Why does your backup need to be in an external case.

I can think of a few thousand scenarios. A true backup "purist" keeps an offsite backup in case of catastrophe. Many people do this by simply storing their externals at work or somewhere other than where the computer is located.

 

[bob5820]

Actually I thought I had ordered 2 SATA drives. I inadvertently ordered one SATA and one IDE (they were separate orders). As the enclosure takes an IDE drive rather then a SATA drive as I had thought it all worked out.

There are a number of reasons for keeping the back up drive external. As kingjr3 pointed out keeping a backup off site is the most secure solution, though this means you really need two backup drives that get rotated for this to be at all convenient. Another reason is that is possibly gives you an extra layer of security should something happen to your PC. Just recently the video card went bad in my MacPro. This didn’t affect the hard drive, but it did make it difficult to access that data. If I had the data backed up on an external drive I could simply have moved the external drive to my MacBook to access it.

 

[THX1139]

Why be so obsessive about backing up OS and Apps weekly? It's not like they change that much, plus you have the installer disks if you have an extreme emergency. Me, I backup my OS and Apps to disk image maybe once every 6 months or so, when I think about it. Or I just reinstall a fresh copy of everything when I do major software updates. Probably do that when I move to Leopard next year.

Some people are so obsessive about their backups, I wonder how they have time left over to get any actual work done.

 

[tilman]

Some people are so obsessive about their backups, I wonder how they have time left over to get any actual work done.

It all depends on how you use your computer. If the fruits of your actual work are stored on your computer, then backups become very important. Besides, once you have your backup strategy figured out and automated, it takes very little time and effort to do regular backups.

 

[THX1139]

It all depends on how you use your computer. If the fruits of your actual work are stored on your computer, then backups become very important. Besides, once you have your backup strategy figured out and automated, it takes very little time and effort to do regular backups.

Well, yeah..duh , but what I was talking about was people who do obsessive backups of backups of replaceable data, not regular routine backups. Aside from the waste of time, there is also the issue of storage space and managing all the unnecessary copies of copies. Especially when it's data that is easy to replace. Oh, well... whatever floats your boat. For me, if the data is that important, I burn it to DVD/CD and make an additional copy that I keep off-site. Non essential stuff, one copy is all that's needed and I don't worry about replacing every week.

 

[bob5820]

Your right, backing up the OS on a weekly basis is a bit extream. What I really wanted to say was that I'd back up data daily and the the OS/Apps on a less frquent basis. I think that backing up the OS probably should be done before making any big changes ti the system. Shure most of the OS/App stuff is recoverable through the installation CD's or by down loading, however restoring from a single location like a hard drive is simply more convenient. HD's are pretty cheap so I'm not all that worried about storage issues, though I could see this as a problem if your backing up to CD/DVD.