[Flyin'Dutch']

Folks

Some of you will have read that I managed to knacker my laptop. I had a brief heart stoppage as I realised that I had not made any backups at all since procuring the thing - something I meticulously have done before with previous Macs.

Most of my stuff is stored in the cloud but nevertheless not very tidy.

Have switched on TimeMachine and the ever helpful @Stevelup also suggest to get CCC going - downloaded, installed and initiated that too.

Which brought me on the subject of getting a new external HD.

Would now be a good time to buy an external HD and then maybe preferably a wireless one so it all happens automatically without having to plug in the laptop at all?

Experiences, and or recommendations gratefully received.

[Colonel Panic]

I am not aware of "wireless" HDDs, but do have a little bit of experience with NAS devices - not always hugely favourable. I have a Synology DS218+ NAS c/w 2 x 2TB HDDs which I use for Time Machine and several other tasks; whilst it works fine, the user interface is not all that intuitive (to a Dummy like me anyway).

[Flyin'Dutch']

They do exist:

https://www.techradar.com/news/best-wireless-drives

[townleyc]

Quite a few broadband routers have a USB socket that you can connect an external HD/SSD to. For it to be much use it needs to USB3 at least.

KE

[avtur3]

Under normal circumstances I am much more likely to ask a question like this than to offer a knowledgeable reply.

However, on this occasion I'm going offer a reply based on my experience, this could result in one of two outcomes. First, that i understand the problem and have some how managed to come up with an adequate solution. Second, that my solution is completely wide of the mark and I am severely at risk if systems fail.

As a long term subscriber to "MS Office ... 365... or what ever they call it these days " I have access to 1TB of storage for each of the 5 accounts that go with my subscription.

For several years I did not engage with the cloud offering, but chose to subscribe to an alternative cloud provider. That provider decided that their offering was unsustainable when compared with the likes of 'Office 365' so they gracefully bowed out and recommended that alternative providers should be used.

I've been using 'One Drive' across several machine for a couple of years now and it appears to work quite well.

Having a local physical back up sounds like the ultimate best option to backing up one's data. But in reality there are so many hurdles to operating such a system that a 'live' back up to a system like 'One Drive' seems to be the more obvious option.

I run my business (and the rest of my life) from anyone of three computers (2 PC and one MAC) and one one I'phone. The entire folder system of my data is replicated on each device courtesy of One Drive.

This has me thinking that I've got my options covered, so my question is ... have I?

If I have then then I am correct in thinking that there is no need for a local 'physical' hard drive option. If I'm wrong then I am sure I will be advised by the collective here as to my wrongly placed faith in 'One Drive' ...

[VRB_20kt]

One Drive is pretty robust but it’s not a complete backup.

Questions worth asking include:

Can I recover from a ransomware attack?
Do I need a rollback capability/version control?
How are my databases managed?
What will I do if my network fails?

Having mentioned that little lot, cloud systems are far more reliable than tape and disc ever were.

[Flyin'Dutch']

Quite a few broadband routers have a USB socket that you can connect an external HD/SSD to. For it to be much use it needs to USB3 at least.

KE

OK so just hang the HDD on the router then choose that for the back up?

[riverrock]

Pretty much.
However an always on backup hard disk has pretty much the same disadvantages as cloud storage.

I keep everything in cloud storage, then take an offline backup occasionally.

[stevelup]

As others have said, you don't want a wireless HDD, you just want a NAS plugged into your router - that will then be seen by all devices on your network.

This device can be the target for your time machine backups and you can also send your CCC backups there (but that will be incredibly slow compared to a directly connected drive).

The whole point of CCC is to make bootable backups - they won't be bootable if they're on a NAS.

So really, you just need to stick with Time Machine to the NAS, keep your docs synced using some kind of cloud service (which you already are), and buy two dirt cheap external drives to do occasional CCC backups (weekly or even monthly).

[Flyin'Dutch']

Cheers Steve.

With soon having 2 computers I would like them to be both steer RocRail - I tried to move the program from Applications to the Cloud, but when I move the Icon from applications to Icloud or Dropbox it was only the Icon that moved. When clicking on the icon it launches the program but that will only continue to work of course if both machines are on at all times.

Why does the program not move over?

[stevelup]

It's not the application you want to move, it's simply the location of the XML file.

You need the application installed, on both machines, in the /Applications folder

Then, make sure your XML file is located somewhere it can be reached by both machines - so either in a folder mirrored by Dropbox or whatever you use, or you could eventually just host that file on the NAS.

[Flyin'Dutch']

Cheers!