Anne: I just reviewed the long thread you started back in April: http://groups.google.com/group/g3-5-list/t/c52cfe089645ced6?hl=en You made a good move downloading CCC. I like the Quick Start Guide at: http://www.bombich.com/software/docs/CCCHelp/CCCHelp.html which gives a rather elegant introduction and explanation of CCC. But this business is still a bit geeky, isn't it?
On Jun 5, 6:54 am, Anne Keller-Smith <[email protected]> wrote: > Do you think Jeff means incremental backup? Back up just what's changed? Jeff is not addressing the pros and cons of incremental (or file level) backup on the one hand and block level backup on the other hand. He is giving us his own view of what a backup is. > > I am considering buying a bootable drive to do this, but again don't > want to backup > everything continually. > > I think CCC does this. Continually, meaning daily? Yes, CCC can do this, but you can control it not to. To keep things simpler for yourself, I think you should let CCC do it. This means changing your idea of having two kinds of backup, the one being the whole system once in a great moon and the other being for your User folder every day. You just use one kind of backup for both purposes. So, what is your implementation plan? You will have one bootable drive and you already have two nonbootable drives. For safekeeping in a safe box offsite, you could clone to a nonbootable drive. That means you would have a complete copy where you could retrieve files completely or selectively to recover in case your house burns down. With your bootable drive, you could clone at the file level (incremental), use settings to "Delete files that don't exist on the source" and "Archive modified and deleted items." By setting up this way, your first clone job will copy all files (with a few geeky exceptions by default) to your external, bootable drive. Then your second clone job will, by default in CCC documentation words, "copy the selected items to your target drive, copying only the items that have changed and leaving in place any files on the target that do not exist on the source." But the "Delete" setting will override the second half of that default description, meaning that CCC will NOT leave "in place any files on the target that do not exist on the source." The "Archive" setting then takes those "deleted" files and puts them into a separate "time-stamped folder at the root level of your backup volume. Should you ever need to recover a long-ago deleted file, or simply the version of a file before last week's major revision, simply navigate to the root level of your backup volume and find the folder named with the date that the backup occurred." The last two settings merely function like Apple's Time Machine trick. So, with this setup, if you clone/backup at the end of a day's work, you have a bootable copy of your internal hard drive which you can use immediately the next day upon the internal drive's failure, suffering only the loss of the last few hours of work. And the files you delete, and previous versions, are recoverable at your option. The daily clone process does not copy the entire internal drive, not even the entire User folder, but only what has changed during the past day. However, this also means that your external drive will eventually fill up with those deleted file records. You can selectively manage that on occasion by putting the oldest ones in the trash and emptying. You might want to have a bootable drive capacity of two or three times your internal drive holdings. > > BTW, I am thinking to partition a drive doesn't make sense for two > backups of different > kinds because I like to keep two backups, one on site and one off site > in a safe box. > Partitioning is not a bad idea, if you want to clone more than one computer. Also, this can give you a separate space for any other miscellaneous storage requirement. Hope this helps, Al Poulin --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed Low End Mac's G3-5 List, a group for those using G3, G4, and G5 desktop Macs - with a particular focus on Power Macs. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-list.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/g3-5-list?hl=en Low End Mac RSS feed at feed://lowendmac.com/feed.xml -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
