SD & TM with multiple drives

[badhat]

I’m hoping you can provide some solid advice on my backup configuration, and how it should be set up.

I have a Mac Mini (running 10.10.2) with TWO internal drives: a 60GB SSD (“Boot”) where I maintain the OS and applications, and a 500GB HDD (“Data”) containing my user files. I also have access to a shared 3TB network drive ("ND") and a dedicated (directly connected) 500GB HDD (“Backup”).

I’d like to arrange my backup strategy to utilize both SuperDuper and Time Machine, such that I’d always have a clone to boot from if necessary, and a TM backup to enable access to different versions of individual files.

How would you suggest I set this up, given the drives available? Will SD backup BOTH “Boot” and “Data” in one operation, or must they be separate? (Total storage on both of those drives <400GB.) How should SD be configured? What about Time Machine?

Thanks!

[dnanian]

Well, given you have a 500GB Data drive, and 60GB boot drive, you really need a 600GB backup drive, minimum, to properly back this up. Your Data will grow. It always does. And I don't know where you're planning on storing TM, since it needs about 2x the size as a minimum...

But, anyway, for SD, you'd partition the backup drive into two volumes, one 60GB and one the remaining space and schedule two "Backup - all files" with "Smart Update", from a source to its corresponding destination. You can set those for the same time if you'd like.

For Time Machine, well... I don't know. If the network volume supports TM, use that.

[badhat]

Thanks, Dave. Appreciate your constant support of SD, as always.

[badhat]

I've set up the partitions as you suggested, and ran each backup separately. In the middle of the Data backup (by far the larger of the two), my desktop items disappeared, and when the bu completed I'd lost permissions to my Home folder, as well as a few others.

After a pleasant afternoon resolving this issue, I'd now like to perform the backups again to make sure I'm up to date.

My question is: at one time SD would find unmounted disks that had been set up in scheduled copies. Then, this ceased working for a release or two of the OS. Will it again function now in Yosemite with latest SD?

Thanks again!

[dnanian]

Your "desktop items disappeared"? That couldn't possibly have anything to do with SuperDuper: we don't (and can't) change the source. What the heck was going on?

Yes, we fixed the problem Apple introduced in 10.8 (I think it was in 10.8), and auto mount works again.

[badhat]

It turns out that permissions to access Documents, Mail, Desktop and a few other folders were somehow "turned off". When I rebooted after the backup was complete, my desktop items were gone, as that folder in my home directory couldn't be accessed. My custom desktop picture was replaced by El Capitan. When I looked at the folder in the Finder, it had the small red icon on it, and I couldn't open it.

I finally accessed my home directory, and proceeded to "Apply to enclosed items" -- upon rebooting again, all was OK (although my desktop items were not in original locations).

I know that SD didn't cause this, but curious how it all occurred. I plan to run another backup overnight and check the results. Thanks!

[dnanian]

Sounds like you had turned ownership off for the drive (a big mistake) and never set the permissions properly. When SD! copied the drive, we enabled ownership (the only way to properly copy the files, and the way things should be left), which showed the error in your original setup.