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General discussion

Setting Up a new Hard Drive for backup in OS X

by russelljr3 Feb 11, 2011 2:55AM PST

I just purchased a new hard drive to use in a Mercury Elite Pro enclosure for my backups.

My question is should I format the new drive and clone it first, or should I format and then backup using Time Machine?

OS 10.5.8, G5 Dual

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Time Machine

by sturner--2008 Feb 11, 2011 5:46AM PST

If you are using Time Machine, simply format to HFS + Journaled and let Time Machine do it all. If you are making a clone that will be backed up by another software program, format and clone.

What you do depends upon what you want it to do.

I have a Time Machine external drive, and a cloned backup of my boot drive. So you can do both, just not on the same drive.

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