Practices Make Perfect (Backups)
If you need to store more than one backup on a physical device:
- If you’re on 10.12 or earlier, partition the drive into the number of volumes you need to back up. So, three source volumes to back up? Three partitions on the backup drive.
- If you’re running 10.13 or later, format the backup drive as APFS, and use APFS’s very flexible “volumes” as your backup destinations, one per source volume.
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Having an archive volume is fine. Keep it separate from your backup volume. And back it up.
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I truly believe you should never, ever use a network drive as your only backup. It’s fine to have a network backup as a secondary backup. But by its very nature, it’s going to be the least reliable one.
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Remember, you should never rely on a single backup device, or a single backup program. No matter what you’re using for your backups…use something else too.
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My daily backup is left unmounted but connected.
And speaking of “don’t cheap out, get a backup drive”, these Seagate USB3 drives are on sale. 3TB for $76, 4TB for $100, 8TB for $150.