Can I add a second usb drive to my Mac mini that will function as a backup to the primary usb? Add it as a second storage path in the library database?
I'm using an M1 Mac Mini with an external drive for recordings too. You can easily add a second drive, and it can be used by Channels DVR to store more recordings, and more imports, but it’s not a “backup” of the first drive. It's just an additional drive. If by “backup” you mean you want it to be a clone of the first drive, in the event the first drive dies, then you’d need to set up software to make that backup. Previously when I had a few mismatched drives plugged in I used software called Carbon Copy Cloner to make automated copies nightly.
More recently instead, I bought two identical external USB drives and used the macOS Disk Utility to bind them as one Mirrored (RAID 1) set:
Then I copied over my the contents from my previous hard drive, and set that one RAID volume to be the location of my Channels DVR library. Now the storage has some level of local redundancy. If one drive dies I can replace it and the other will keep on humming in the meantime.
Note that the process of setting up such a RAID volume will erase the drives and any content on them will be lost.
Thanks for the information on Carbon Copy Cloner. That app will do exactly what I need.
Great, happy to help. Others in this community forum have taught me so much and shared great tips, tricks and code, so paying it forward by helping others feels like the least I can do!
FWIW another similar copying utility for Mac, that’s a little less expensive, is called SuperDuper.
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