Mark Twain wrote:
I wanted to run something by you and see if
you think theres's any problem with it or if
it's OK. This is in the near future,..

Instead of removing the 8500 HD and installing
the WD to clone the new HD. I want to clone the
new HD with the 8500 O/S and then make a Mrimg
folder and create a mrimg for it after cloning.

Then when I do my monthly Mrimgs I do Mrimgs for
both the WD and for the new external back-up and
also do the 780 mrimgs with its own dedicated
external HD.

What do you think?

Robert

Normally, you're backing up data that has changed.

The backup drives should hold (mainly) backups.

Now, if your internal drive was running out of room,
and you needed to add a second hard drive inside the
machine, then you might want to include that in your
backup set to the external drive.

I can't tell from your description, whether you're
backing up a backup drive (to make a second copy) or
what you're up to. If you wanted "redundancy", you
can copy a freshly made MRIMG on one external drive,
to a second external drive, as a form of insurance.

Macrium (Copy)

Internal ------- External Drive #1 ---- External Drive #2

But generally, any "multiplication" of backups is a
mistake. I've tried this before, and it rapidly
gets out of hand. (For example, I've had backups stored
on my internal drive, which during emergency data recovery
operations, have cost me time handling them.) It's
best to make a fresh backup from whatever you consider
the "source" of the data, any time you want to store
on an external, and try to avoid if possible, making
backups of backups. Because it's harder to get
rid of those doubly-backed up things later.

From experience, I can tell you that if you aren't
careful with how you handle generations of backups,
on Tuesday you buy a 1TB drive, on Wednesday you
buy a 2TB drive, on Thursday you buy a 4TB drive,
on Friday you buy a 8TB drive. And you begin to
realize "hey, this looks like addiction" :-)
So if you notice you're constantly running
out of room, there's a good chance you've been
making backups of backups. It balloons rapidly
when you do that. It's taken me days of data
transfers, to clean those sorts of messes up.
(I stopped at 4TB.)

It's OK to, say, alternate drives from week
to week.
Macrium
Week1 -------- External Drive #1
Week2 -------- External Drive #2
Week3 -------- External Drive #1
Week4 -------- External Drive #2

What that pattern does, is if Drive #1 fails or
is flaky and you didn't notice, maybe the internal
drive fails one day, you reach for Drive #1 and it's
bad too. In such a case, Drive #2 has backups
that might be a little older or a little newer.

The only reason to rotate more drives than
that into the picture, is if you're running out
of space or something.

Now, I have two computers and twenty drives.
Is that an addiction or bad planning ? or what ? :-)
I have enough drives, I keep a folder that just has
lists of files on each hard drive. To try to manage
them.

Paul