On Aug 19, 2021, at 1:42 PM, Al Poulin <alfred.pou...@gmail.com<mailto:alfred.pou...@gmail.com>> wrote:
I would like to reformat an external hard drive at the media level, hopefully to salvage it for another few years. It contains three CCC volumes that I want to safeguard. A fourth volume has corrupted files. What is the best procedure? All volumes are formatted Journaled HFS Plus, NOT APFS. As I understand it, Disk Utility First Aid I use Carbon Copy Cloner to backup four computers to the external drive as bootable clones. Each CCC volume resides in its own partition. The volume for my main computer has corrupted files which have not been resolved by reformatting that volume singly with Disk Utility Erase and then cloning anew. I want the clones to remain bootable. Having all the volumes on one physical disk is a ‘all your eggs in one basket’ and that basket is starting to fall apart...file corruption that is NOT fixed by fixed by reformatting and restoring a volume on a partition is very often indicative of hardware failure impending. (unless the corrupted files are ALSO corrupted on your main computer, in which case your backup is faithfully doing it’s thing.) What is cheaper to replace: a hard drive? or your data? That’s always the most relevant question to ask in these cases. Can I simply drag each volume to another media, to either my iMac’s internal drive or another external drive? I would use CCC to copy each volume from the multi-partition drive to a new HDD for each one. Ideally more than one copy, and then stored in separate physical locations. If they’re small volumes, you can use SSD’s..ssd’s are quite reliable now and if you’re backing up small volumes little ones are pretty inexpensive. 120 gb ones can be had for around $20) Heck depending on the size, you might get away with USB sticks… For archival purposes SSDs are pretty good. Would I need to create separate partitions for each volume? Otherwise, should the volumes be set into disk images? Bombich (CCC vendor) recommends using disk images “sparingly.” Then, would I update each disk image in subsequent clones, or would I “Restore” each volume to permit updating the clones? I would not use disk images. -- Bruce Johnson University of Arizona College of Pharmacy Information Technology Group Institutions do not have opinions, merely customs -- You received this message because you are a member of the iMac Group, a group for those using Apple iMacs and eMacs. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/imac/list.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to imaclist@googlegroups.com To leave this group, send email to imaclist+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/imaclist --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "iMac Group" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to imaclist+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/imaclist/3515384B-E77C-449A-95C7-4EB4F6FC39FC%40pharmacy.arizona.edu.
