Hi. I am thinking of buying this for three Macbooks in our house but I have what may be a really stupid question.
How do I back up on this? I know that it has a pre-made folder for TM backups which is well and good but I have two issues with this.
Firstly, it is a mistake to do TM backup on the same HD that your documents are on for obvious reasons.
Secondly, and maybe I am missing something here, what is the point of the TM backup, because you are never going to back up from any of your Macs if all the docs, pics, etc are on the WD drive in the first place! I need to know how I would do a TM Backup from all the material on the WD drive to a TM partition or external drive plugged into the USB.
I know WD have an option for creating safe points, but I really want to simply do a Time Machine backup of the material that is on the My Cloud drive to ANOTHER drive, plugged into the USB.
It seems such an obviously simple thing but I can’t work out if it could be done.
So now I’m thinking if it’s possible to make the d device connected to the usb the target for a TM backup. And then on the laptop you include the WD drive as one source you want backed up. Would that work? It doesn’t make sense otherwise.
babbling wrote:
So now I’m thinking if it’s possible to make the d device connected to the usb the target for a TM backup. And then on the laptop you include the WD drive as one source you want backed up. Would that work? It doesn’t make sense otherwise.
This really sounds like a question for Apple. Can TM do separate backups from multiple computers to the same drive. If so, then yeah, you could set up the My Cloud for TM backups. However, you bring up something that you need to be careful of. If you are using the the My Cloud to “host” your documents and files from all three computers, there might be issues with that. Plus, how are you going to back it all up? You will still need to back up your data.
From what I have read on your own forum, it looks like I can plug in an external drive to the My Cloud having ensured My Cloud is formatted for Mac, remove My Cloud from the exclusions and then include the My Cloud as part of the back up process.
From what I have read on your own forum, it looks like I can plug in an external drive to the My Cloud having ensured My Cloud is formatted for Mac, remove My Cloud from the exclusions and then include the My Cloud as part of the back up process.
You can’t remove the My Cloud from any exclusion list. That’s only for direct attached drives, like usb, firewire, etc. You can setup the My Cloud on your network, and then set up TM backups directly to the My Cloud drive.
However, if you are really just wanting to backup to a usb drive attached to the back of the My Cloud, then you will need to go into the UI and change the TM settings to point to that usb drive. Either way, you don’t need to make any exclusions and you will still need to set up the My Cloud on your network.
It’s not just a case of backing up to a drive plugged into the back of the My Cloud. It’s a case of what I want to back up, and what I will obviously want to back up is what is on the My Cloud.
Simply put: Can I get TM to back up what is on the My Cloud to an external drive?
I cannot for the life of me understand why anyone would want to backup ONTO the My Cloud if they are also using My Cloud for storiang all their files. All the eggs in one basket??
I must be missing a piece of information here. My Cloud is a network attached storage drive that is for backing up your computers’ files to. If you have data on the drive that is not on your computers, i.e. movies, photos, music, then yeah, you need to back that data up to another drive.
Now, if you are also backing up your computers through time machine to that drive, along with all the extra media files (as an example), then all you need to do is a safepoint backup of the entire My Cloud to the external usb drive connected to the back of the My Cloud. That would back up everything again.
Now, if I’ve not completely misunderstood what you have been asking, and again this might be an Apple question about Time Machine and how it works; if TM can see the My Cloud as a source drive, and the external drive connected to the back of the My Cloud, as a destination drive, then I guess it may be possible to do a TM backup of the My Cloud.
However, I doubt you can run multiple TM backups concurrently on the same computer.
I have never gone down the route of a NAS drive before. What I want to do is have all the data that was on the ‘family’ computer (now dead) accessible on the My Cloud. I don’t want to replace the family computer seeing as we all have a laptop anyway. So, I want to therefore have as little as possible on the three laptops that we all use so we use My Cloud as a true network, in the house and outside of it. So far that seems to be exactly what it is designed to be used for.
My issue is that I would never want to back up the data that is on My Cloud back onto another part of the My Cloud drive. Nobody would ever back up their data onto another part of the same drive as it defeats the purpose if that drive fails.
In the past, the family computer held most of the files and that was backed up to an external drive with TM. So if I take the My Cloud and treat that as if it is the old family computer, I want to back that up somewhere else.
I have never gone down the route of a NAS drive before. What I want to do is have all the data that was on the ‘family’ computer (now dead) accessible on the My Cloud. I don’t want to replace the family computer seeing as we all have a laptop anyway. So, I want to therefore have as little as possible on the three laptops that we all use so we use My Cloud as a true network, in the house and outside of it. So far that seems to be exactly what it is designed to be used for.
My issue is that I would never want to back up the data that is on My Cloud back onto another part of the My Cloud drive. Nobody would ever back up their data onto another part of the same drive as it defeats the purpose if that drive fails.
In the past, the family computer held most of the files and that was backed up to an external drive with TM. So if I take the My Cloud and treat that as if it is the old family computer, I want to back that up somewhere else.
You have just about got it! IMO you need to add an external drive (USB) to the MC at least the size of it. I have a 4 TB My Book Studio always attached to a 3 TB MC. I have my computers target the USB attached drive since I don’t see the necessity of backing up my backups.I think you should be able to target the USB drive from Time Machine for each of your MACs. I schedule safepoint creation for 3am so as not to conflict wwith other accesses. My wife’s Mac Book Pro is backed up using Time Machine daily.
PJ, That’s not what I want to do. I don’t want to back up the Macs to the external drive (alright , I will) What I want to do is backup the My Cloud to the external drive, using time machine.
Simply put, I assume I will see My Cloud and the attached external drive as drives on my Mac. I want to be able to go into Time Machine, remove My Cloud from Exclusions, then BACK UP THE MY CLOUD DRIVE to the external drive using time machine.
Forget my own Mac, that’s not the issue. It is getting what is on the MyCloud to the attached external drive using TM, operated from the Mac.
If TM can see the My Cloud as a source drive and the external drive as a destination drive, then I don’t see why not. Just make sure, like resteves said, to get an external drive that’s at least the same size as the My Cloud.
I just tried selecting my Cloud drive as the source and it is “unselectable” for backup.
Rather than a complete backup of my Cloud to the attched USB “My Book” drive, I use a program called “Beyond Compare” which compares the contents of the two mapped devices and only manually copy files that have been changed.
I’m sure there are other backup programs that can give you that multiple “TimeMachine” backup versions that you might be looking for.
