I need to get an external hard drive to back up the home iMac (2011 model, running OSX10.7.5). I know very little about Macs (wife’s choice) but will probably use time machine to do it.

We also have a fairly extensive lightroom catalogue that I have been manually backing up but it is getting tedious.

Hopefully in the near future we will upgrade to Sierra OS so would like to use the back up to move all files over, including the lightroom files and catalogue.

Is it as simple as getting time machine up and running, buy an external hardrive, and off we go? I’ve no idea really of how back ups work so don’t know how big the drive needs to be compared to the files being backed up on a weekly basis.

So…… assuming that all the above is easy to achieve, can anybody recommend a decent external hard drive of sufficient capacity to deal with backups of ~700Gb? It doesn’t need to be portable, pretty or quiet as it really is just a backup.

Much obliged,

S

well… the good news is that this is ridiculously easy on a imac 🙂

What we did for my inlaws was buy a portable Western Digital of the appropriate volume, and velcro it to the back of the iMac. Completely invisible, not power plug required, it just sits there doing it’s thing.

Timemachine is equally as user friendly – it’s on all the time, running in the background. It makes hourly incremental backups, so it’s good if you accidentally delete something (the recovery interface is also idiot-proof).

When you plug your new hard-drive in, I think it’ll even ask you if you want to use it for time machine. Seriously – it couldn’t be easier.

As for volume, 700gb is not very big these days. TM needs a bit of space to work, so I think I would probably get a 1.5 or 2tb version.

When you upgrade to sierra…..you won’t (shouldn’t?) lose any data as a matter of course. Obvioulsy make sure you have a backup done just-in-case, but you won’t need to do anything yourself other that pressing “go” on the updgrade.

That’s a lot of porno.

Easiest way to do it is get an old drive and, and buy a USB enclosure, put drive in, do back up.

https://m.cclonline.com/product/227503/MR35TU3/External-HDD-Enclosure/CiT-USB-3-0-SATA-Hard-Drive-Enclosure-for-3-5-inch-Drives/HDD2869/

As others have said. Worth considering though if the mac was to be nicked a drive attached to it would go with it. Likewise if it were to go up in smoke. You can set up a wireless time machine either using Apple’s own product -Airport (incredibly easily), or with some 3rd party products like the misnamed “MyCloud” (just follow the instructions), or probably with some cheap NAS drive and tutorial from the web.

I have a MyCloud at home that lives in a different room and out of sight which whilst it probably won’t stop the most determined and informed thief, or a huge fire would make a big difference. We use Airport in the office for several machines all at once, and then have it set up to also be backed up each night to an offsite server (not as trivial as the basics but google found a tutorial easily enough).

Storage is so cheap it’s worth buying a few and rotating them.

One of my back up drives is always at work, so if the house goes up in smoke or it’s cleaned out, I haven’t lost everything. It’s probably rotated every week or two (when I remember) so not totally up to date but close enough not to care…

Time Machine copes with multiple drives as easily as you’d expect it to.

When i upgrade a drive, I buy a cheap external “caddy” for the old one and use that. Though I don’t use them very often since I got a bluray burner for backing up work.

700Gb is a lot of Blu-Rays.

Your mac probably has a Thunderbolt port?

I have a thunderbolt disk caddy (I think it’s a seagate but not 100% sure) that I swap over drives with – I was keeping one in a fireproof box, but actually keeping one at work makes a lot more sense.

Thunderbolt is a LOT faster than the USB on your machine but might be a bit more spendy…

We have a synology NAS, other halfs mac uses time machine with that over the wifi.

I run a custom rsync task, since Im more interested in backing up data files.

Much obliged all, very helpful as ever.

Cheers,

S

700Gb is a lot of Blu-Rays.

7 if you’re feeling flush

700Gb is a lot of Blu-Rays.
7 if you’re feeling flush

Very flush – op is on a mac so would need a blue ray drive and software also.

£50-ish for 1TB external USB. I have a Samsung one. Connect it iMac and set it up as Time Machine. If you get a larger drive you can keep more “granular” backups but for most if us a decent up to date copy is whatbwe are looking for in case the main machine dies. It is worty adding a usb drive won’t help you in the event of a fire for example. Worth either taking drive elsewhere and/or using some cloud storage for the most important files, family photos etc

Also upgading the OS does not need a backup, its good to have one in case the os upgrade goes pear shaped. I would suggest you upgrade the os to the latest possible. On a mac its easy and generally works faultlessly.

I got an Airport Express, but I would not recommend it at all.