Syncing data between 2 Hard disks or a hard disk and a folder, can I?

By Ramy, 21 April, 2021

Forum
macOS and Mac Apps

Hello all:
i have a backup from all my data on an external Hard drive, but now each time i need to update this backup version, i copy all my data again, which is really hard, so is there an app that can sync my old and new data and add what i created after this backup? also, will it work only between 2 hard desks? or it can work between a hard desk and a folder?
Thanks in advance.

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Comments

By Paul on Wednesday, May 5, 2021 - 10:30

There are probably apps for this, but macOS already has this functionality built in: Time Machine. It can be configured to backup an external HDD along with the Mac’s internal storage. I have my Mac Mini connected to an external HDD, which is backed up along with the internal storage to a NAS device. You can learn more by searching for “time machine” in the macOS help system.

By Ramy on Wednesday, May 5, 2021 - 10:30

The data that i need to backup is not in my mac os SYstem drive, and my time machine is working on backing up my system to another external hard drive, so is it possible to backup another drive to another HD? and can i specify just a small space of this HD for this task?

By Squirrel on Wednesday, May 5, 2021 - 10:30

Applications such as Carbon Copy Cloner and Chronosync will allow you to selectively backup and synchronise files and folders, but may be overkill for what you need. They are also both paid applications ($30 to $50 I believe).

Each is accessible with VoiceOver, but have interfaces and a level of complexity that come with a learning curve.

There may be simpler and cheaper solutions, but I wasn't able to find any in the past which worked well enough with VoiceOver to be confident that they were doing exactly what I wanted and thought they were doing (which is essential for this type of tool imo).

If your other drive, generally speaking, is always attached to your Mac, you can use Time Machine to back it up. However, I don’t think you can make Time Machine backup each drive to separate drives.

Another option would be to explore the builtin Automator app, which may have everything you need to automate a simple copy operation. I haven’t tried it myself yet, but it might be worth looking at for your apparently simple use case.