Hard drives died. Where to go from here with storage?

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Dropbox SmartSync / Project Inifite is much more capable in that regard

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Thanks @ChrisUpchurch for the clearest explanation of ā€œOptimize Mac Storageā€ that Iā€™ve seen. Just to add a couple of details:

Specifically, iCloud is not a backup.

I think Apple has it just the way they intend, and I donā€™t expect it to change.

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Yep lots of great stuff here. Hereā€™s how Iā€™m doing it:

  1. MBP (500 GB internal SSD) - documents and some photos fit here
    a. 500 GB Samsung T5 External SSD - SuperDuper creates a bootable clone of the internal SSD
    b. 1 TB Samsung T5 External SSD - fast enough to almost be an internal drive for any data that doesnā€™t fit on MBP. Ideally, this and the internal SSD would have a local copy of all important documents and photos.
    c. Seagate External HDD
    1. time machine
    2. arq backup
  2. Local Network
    a. Synology NAS - for all files
    1. time machine - has hiccups every now and then. Iā€™m thinking that Iā€™ll stop using it on the synology
    2. arq backup
  3. Cloud
    a. Backblaze
    b. arq backup to google drive

I use ChronoSync to sync other data with other drives.

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Ordinarily I would ding you for putting two separate backups on one device, but youā€™ve got enough backups I think Iā€™ll give you a pass on this one. :wink:

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Lol, I thought about it. For now Iā€™m using different partitions on the same hard drive. Iā€™ve been thinking about buying one or two hard drives a year that would be used to build out those use cases and also for hard drive deaths. External hard drives have lasted 4 to 8 years for me.

I label hard drives and partitions so that I know what they are being used for:

  • HD01-TM (plays better with its own partition)
  • HD01-Archive (arq, chronosync, imazing)
  • HD02-MBP-Clone
  • HD03-Data
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Was all over this until you said the Time Machine backup doesnā€™t play nice on the Synology. Thatā€™s what I was hoping to do, and now you got me thinkingā€¦ sigh.

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My experience is that I had to restart time machine backups on the Synology once over the 3 years that Iā€™ve been running that setup. It was annoying but has been running fine the last year. I think it may have been after an OS update.

Edit: I believe some of it was because of wifi. You may consider connecting over ethernet.

Hereā€™s an article about it.

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Thatā€™s an acceptable margin of error for me. And my whole house is wired in save for the iPhones and iPads. Perhaps it wouldnā€™t be an issue for me.

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If you want a network-based Time Machine solution, I think there are only two reliable candidates: Time Capsule, which I donā€™t recommend because of its age (although Iā€™m using one myself), and Time Machine Server hosted on a always-on Mac with a wired Ethernet connection.

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Appreciate the advice. Iā€™m going to try the Synology first, only because I donā€™t want to buy another Mac just yet. Maybe when they release the M1 iMacs, Iā€™ll repurpose this one (assuming I can find a space to put the silly thingā€“teehee).

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@machei I think what I did was connect by ethernet for the initial time machine backup and then itā€™s been wireless ever since

@jec0047 what are your thoughts on time machine by connecting to another machineā€™s external HDD? Iā€™ve been doing that for about 6 months and havenā€™t run into any issues yet. I donā€™t have a Time Machine server and the 2nd machine is not always-on.

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Youā€™re essentially using the other machine as a file server, which I think is fine, with the usual security-related caveats.

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I have been doing exactly that for a couple of years now using a 2011 MacMini. Itā€™s been abolutely solid. No issues at all.

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Well my take on it is obviously anti cloud. :slightly_smiling_face:

iCloud is NOT a backup! Itā€™s an additional sync location.

So what Iā€™d do is buy several more spinning hard drives and a couple of external SSD drives. Iā€™d set up the NAS to be a full backup of your entire set of things both internal and external drives.

Iā€™d use the additional external SSD drives to be the storage for local copies of large datasets that donā€™t fit on your existing system but keep them attached to your mac.

Iā€™d use the spinning hard drives as backups for the SSDs plus internal drive. Iā€™d have at least 3 sets of full backups, one attached locally using CCC to make copies of everything regularly (I personally do it nightly)and then a pair of backups that you swap in and out on some regular schedule and store one offsite somewhere.

Disk drives are cheap, at least compared to the cost of the loss of data.

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@WayneG

By way of follow up, I picked up a 2TB T5 Samsung SSD today. Itā€™s as you both statedā€“no issues at all. I just used Disk Utility to reformat it to Journaled and thereā€™s zero issues. I assume all the folks with the issues simply didnā€™t know how to properly go about it.

Also, Iā€™ll just leave this here in case anyone encounters this thread in the future. I did a little research just to be sure, and this guy gives a very decent overview of how to format your drives which I found useful:

Thanks, all. Now the sorting beginsā€¦

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I never leave them as NTFS or whatever format they come in, so automatically reformat then with Disk Utility. Not interested in Samsung utility that comes on the SSDs

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Thatā€™s how I approached it. I took the drive out of the box, connected it, and went straight to Disk Utility and formatted the thing. Worked just fine, although I had to be mindful of choosing the drive, and not the partition. Happily moving the critical files now. First up was my 330GB iPhoto library.

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BTW, I format as APFS on SSDs and Mac OS Extended on HDDs. Iā€™m following Bombichā€™s advice

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Yes, I was going to do that, too. But then in the video the guy explained that itā€™s slower. It seemed like there wasnā€™t much to lose in formatting as I have forever. shrug

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APFS should be faster on SSDā€™s, slower on HDDā€™s.

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