Our Mac backs up to a firewire-attached WD Mybook (it uses Mac’s TimeMachine). Separately, there is a Linux-based NAS that houses all of our work files (I’m mostly on a PC). When we travel, we take several steps to ensure we can access/recover our data. This question is about the last link in that chain, the “holy shit, everything has gone wrong and we’re down to* this*?!” plan.
Here’s what I’d like to do. The night before we travel, copy a TimeMachine image from the WD to an external drive. I’d then like to copy the entire NAS device to the same external drive. Then, unplug and pack the external drive, attach a shipping label, and hand it to someone locally with the instructions on how to FedEx it to wherever we are.
Again, there are many steps to go through before it comes to this, but in Worst Case Scenarios I’d like to be within one day of receiving an easy solution.
Because I am largely unfamiliar with Macs and Timemachine, I thought it best to ask here if this is possible, and more importantly, easy.
Can I take a large enough external drive and easily copy a TM backup to it, without messing up other settings (i.e. I’d still want the Mac to backup to it’s own drive ordinarily). Can I put that backup on the same partition that I’d move the NAS files to? I’m not planning on compressing them or anything, just copy/paste from Windows Explorer. I also have a set of Acronis files on the NAS that I’d want to move there as well. Or do I have to add multiple partitions? Any pitfalls or things I’m overlooking?