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What's the correct way to store old files?

Started by popcorn, February 12, 2019, 07:50:54 AM

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popcorn

I'm thinking of replacing my MacBook battery, which means making a backup of my MacBook in advance, in case there are complications during surgery. But I can't back it up to my external HD as it still has a load of old shit on it I want to keep, and Time Machine demands a whole HD to itself.

What to do? Move the old shit into Dropbox and de-sync from my hard drive? Not sure how to do that but it's possible, right? Or perhaps just buy another external HD?

Right now I have files all over the place. I have a load of shit in Dropbox, plus an external HD full of ancient files and documents (mainly miscellaneous music recordings made with my bands over the years). I also pay for some sort of super-cheap iCloud subscription (about 60p a month) that someone talked me into for storing photos, or something, but I can't remember how that works or what it's doing, or even if I'm using it.

I feel it's time to sort all this crap out. What is the actual cool, clever, correct way to:

1) back stuff up I use on a day to day basis (ie Ableton files) that I don't want to lose if I drop my MacBook down a well?

2) offload stuff I don't need on my MacBook right now, but might one day want to find again?

touchingcloth

I have all of my larger files stored on external hard drives, and I'll copy them over in bulk if I need them (taking films on holiday, editing a load of photos), and all of my important files are saved in iCloud and/or GDrive. Restoring my laptop now is pretty much just a job of reinstalling software. I have the more important (well, largest really) installers on an external drive, and I'm happy enough knowing that the internets are fast enough to install anything else when I realise I have a need for it.

Time Machine is more of a faff than it's worth, so unless you have a ton of settings that would be a ball ache to redo manually then I'd just pull off (phoar) the most important files and cross your fingers that you don't fuck up a simple job like a battery replacement.

Sebastian Cobb

If you don't have a spare drive use a backup service.

studpuppet

Quote from: popcorn on February 12, 2019, 07:50:54 AM
But I can't back it up to my external HD as it still has a load of old shit on it I want to keep, and Time Machine demands a whole HD to itself.

From memory, I think you can designate an external HD as a Time Machine disk if it has other stuff saved on it already. Unless you mean that there isn't enough space left on it to do the backup?

Twed

Quote from: Sebastian Cobb on February 12, 2019, 12:40:28 PM
If you don't have a spare drive use a backup service.
And if you store your files on a spare drive and you care about them, do not let that be your only copy.

St_Eddie

What's the correct way to store old files?  In the fridge.

touchingcloth

Quote from: studpuppet on February 12, 2019, 01:56:53 PM
From memory, I think you can designate an external HD as a Time Machine disk if it has other stuff saved on it already. Unless you mean that there isn't enough space left on it to do the backup?

The disk needs to be formatted as HFS to be used with Time Machine, which is fine if it already is but requires a reformat otherwise. I'm not sure if HFS plays nice with being in a separate partition and needs the whole disk to itself.

NoSleep

Quote from: popcorn on February 12, 2019, 07:50:54 AM
I'm thinking of replacing my MacBook battery, which means making a backup of my MacBook in advance, in case there are complications during surgery. But I can't back it up to my external HD as it still has a load of old shit on it I want to keep, and Time Machine demands a whole HD to itself.

Try out Carbon Copy Cloner. I've always used that for backing stuff up as it allows incremental backups of anything from folders to entire discs. And I prefer it over Time Machine for system drives as the copy it makes is bootable in an emergency. In fact I never use Time Machine.

popcorn

Just wanted to say thanks to all the people who posted advice here. It is appreciated.

It's become a more involved process than I expected, as I've ended up doing a massive audit of all my old files, converting loads of huge wavs to mp3, moving shit around, deleting crap, massive spring clean. After that I should have much less to back up... at which point I think I'll switch to one of the online storage things.

St_Eddie

Quote from: popcorn on February 23, 2019, 01:53:37 AM
Just wanted to say thanks to all the people who posted advice here. It is appreciated.

You're welcome.  Just be sure to store your files above raw meats, or they may become corrupted.

Sebastian Cobb

Quote from: popcorn on February 23, 2019, 01:53:37 AM
Just wanted to say thanks to all the people who posted advice here. It is appreciated.

It's become a more involved process than I expected, as I've ended up doing a massive audit of all my old files, converting loads of huge wavs to mp3, moving shit around, deleting crap, massive spring clean. After that I should have much less to back up... at which point I think I'll switch to one of the online storage things.

May I recommend converting wav's to Flac instead? Yes they're much bigger, but storage isn't that expensive that you should go around throwing away things you can't get back, which is what converting to mp3 is.

popcorn

Too late, they're all mp3 now! It's fine, they're all things like recordings of band rehearsals, not something I'm going to want to put in a song or something.

Dex Sawash


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