Ok, my apologies for not making it clear then. A pity we can’t use diagrams on this forum. I use a Time Capsule for wireless backup for all 5 MBP’s in my house.
For my MBP 13” retina, I use a portable external drive (attached to the MBP) to hold the iTunes and Photos libraries as the 250GB on board MBP hard drive is too small. When I set up Time Machine to do my backups of the MBP hard drive (inc attached portable external drive), I selected ‘Options’ and then added the external drive (the one attached to my MBP) to be included in the backup to the Time Capsule. So the Sparesebundle backup file on the Time Capsule therefore holds a copy of the data on the external drive attached to the MBP. So notwithstanding a triplicate backup strategy being the right thing to do to provide robust data security, ideally I use the Time Machine backup as the first port of call in the event of needing to recover a specific file (or the entire portable external drive content if it were to fail or get stolen). I hope that makes my configuration clear and therefore the original question now understandable. Regards Pete. > On 1 Jun 2015, at 4:52 pm, Ronda Brown <[email protected]> wrote: > > Hi Peter, > >>> I dont actually have a problem currently but if my external drive were to >>> fail or get lost or stolen, how would I reinstate the contents within the >>> backup file of the external drive to a NEW external drive and restore the >>> status quo? > > I'm not sure if I'm understanding you exactly. > If any of the above issues happen - The 'External Drive fails, or gets lost, > or stolen'... You would not be able to Restore anything from the Time Machine > backup as there is no Time Machine Backup - The External Drive is no longer > accessible! > > This is why we must have a good three parts backup strategy (similar to my > backup strategy I've posted numerous times on WAMUG) to help cover drive > failures, stolen, or lost computers or backup drives. > > Also it's best to have iTunes & Photos quit when Time Machine is backing up. > > Cheers, > Ronni > > Sent from Ronni's iPad4 > > > On 30 May 2015, at 6:48 am, [email protected] > <mailto:[email protected]> wrote: > >> Good morning, I use an external drive to hold my iTunes and Photos library. >> I have explicitly selected in 'Options' to include the external drive in the >> hourly backup process with Time Machine so the backup file first time around >> was quite large (~650GB) and took a long while. >> >> I dont actually have a problem currently but if my external drive were to >> fail or get lost or stolen, how would I reinstate the contents within the >> backup file of the external drive to a NEW external drive and restore the >> status quo? >> >> I've never once restored a file from TM (though I am well practiced at >> deleting the Sparsebundle backup file!!) so not familiar with the process >> anyway but I am keen to understand how I would restore the external drive >> associated files (either singly (say my Photos library file) or the drive in >> total). >> >> Regards >> >> Pete. > -- The WA Macintosh User Group Mailing List -- > Archives - <http://www.wamug.org.au/mailinglist/archives.shtml> > Guidelines - <http://www.wamug.org.au/mailinglist/guidelines.shtml> > Settings & Unsubscribe - > <http://lists.wamug.org.au/listinfo/wamug.org.au-wamug> Pete
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