Can you restore a backup onto a JBOD drive?

Question

Level 1

5 points

Can you restore a backup onto a JBOD drive?

I have a Mac mini with a 2tb drive, and about 1.4tb of stuff on it. It's a 2014 and won't be supported much longer, so I need a replacement soon. However, I'm in no position to pay the extra £600 for a new Mac with a 2tb drive right now.

Practically speaking - if you have a 2018 Mac with a say, 256gb drive, and you attached an external 2TB drive, then used Disk Utility to make it all one - which is RAID 0 / JBOD, I think - can you then restore the cloud backup onto that, as if you're setting up the Mac first time?

I've only done that in the initial setup, and don't know the procedure for doing that once the Mac has been run.

I get that this adds a doubled risk of failure etc. Needs must when the devil drives and all that.

Mac mini (2018)

Posted on Oct 14, 2024 3:37 AM

Reply

Answer 1

den.thed

Level 10

81,694 points

Oct 15, 2024 1:13 PM in response to Mattinkent

You can do that with two or more external drives.

You can not do the with your Mac's internal drive and an external drive if that is what you are asking.

Even if you could, it would be a very fragile setup that would need to be backed up using a second external drive.

Option 1) is to continue to store your large Libraries on an external drive.

Move your Photos library to save space on your Mac - Apple Support

Change where your music files are stored on Mac - Apple Support

Move your iMovie for Mac library - Apple Support

Move a Final Cut Pro library - Apple Support

Option 2) is to buy a large fast external SSD, then boot and run from it.

Use an external SSD as your startup disk … - Apple Community

In all of the options, a second large external HDD or SSD is recommended to backup the first.

Reply

Answer 2

den.thed

Level 10

81,694 points

Oct 15, 2024 2:42 PM in response to Mattinkent

Yes the 2018 can boot from an external same as the 2019 iMac's, plus it can run the latest macOS 15 Sequoia.

Just keep in mind, that it will be slower than running from the 2018 Mac mini's internal drive.

Reply

Answer 3

MartinR

Level 7

21,448 points

Oct 15, 2024 8:50 AM in response to Mattinkent

When you create a RAID set using Disk Utility, the disks that are being joined are all reformatted and therefore erased. You cannot just "join" two existing disks into a RAID set expecting that the data on one or both will be preserved.

Also, RAID and JBOD are completely different. RAID involves combining 2 or more drives with each other. JBOD is "Just a Bunch of Disks" meaning that each disk is independent of all others.

Reply

Answer 4

Mattinkent Author

Level 1

5 points

Oct 15, 2024 9:12 AM in response to MartinR

Ah, thank you for the clarification on nomenclature. A lot of the stuff I read used those interchangeably.

Weird that it does that, when if it was creating a mirror drive, it wouldn't.

So there's no way for the Mac to treat the real estate on the two drives as one canvas? That would seem a very useful thing. I'm sure there's an Intel app for servers that can...

Reply