Backing up and cleaning up my Macbook Pro

Hi,
I've been using a Macbook Pro 2.2 GHz Intel i7 for just over a year now and my hard drive is full to the brim. I have recently noticed how much slower the whole system is and so have bought a 3TB Seagate desk top external hard drive and want to back up my whole system and clean up my Macbook Pro. This is the first time I've done this, so I would really appreciate some step by step advice.
I would like to know how best to copy all my files and documents to the drive so I can delete them in vast quantities from my Macbook, knowing that it is all safely backed up and accessible from the external drive. I've also been advised to install extra RAM, which would enhance the speed when running two programmes (Final Cut Pro and After Effects, most regularly). Basically, I would like to clean things up so my system runs as smoothly as it did when first out of the box.
Could you please offer some advice as to how I should go about doing this? Is there a process that I should be following in order to clean up my computer so everything is safely backed up? What other areas of my hard drive that I don't even know about should I be going into to free up space (caches, etc) .The Seagate is literally just out of the box.
Cheers,
Nick

I would suggest using Disk Utility to make two partitions on the Seagate, one the same size as your internal HD, the other for the remainder.
Then use Carbon Copy Cloner or similar to clone your internal disk, so that your Seagate is a bootable backup in case of problems.
Don't worry about caches, temporary files etc - let the OS take care of them.
You could then copy the contents of one of your big directories to the other partition on the Seagate, then delete from the internal disk and empty trash.
But longer term, use the Seagate as backup and internal as working, so I would suggest putting say a 1TB hard disk in place of your Superdrive and moving your bigger directories to that. Now all work is internal, with OS stuff on the original and your stuff on the not-yet-purchased disk, and when you backup (maybe every month for OS stuff, every week or even every day for work stuff) the OS stuff goes to one Seagate partition, the work stuff to the other. You have a bootable clone if your startup disk fails, and a backup of your work. For backing up to the work partition you could consider using Time Machine, so that you have several generations of security from accidental deletes, woopsies etc.

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I have a macbook pro. I need to free some space on my hard drive. As I am a keen photographer I decided it was best to have at lest to back up in the event than one fails. I keep one off site at a friends. This way if the unthinkble happens.. fire, flood theft etc I do not lose all my images. To do this I require 2 hard drives. Having purchased the second I thought it would make sense to actually do a Time Machine back up as previous back ups were only of photos.
A few seaches of different forums appeared to say that you cannot delete photos from your Mac as this will be just Mirrored on your next Timemachine back up. This makes sense as it is copying the Mac so anything not on there will not be on the Time Machine back up.
SOLUTION : On your hard drive of the time machine back up create an addition folder or folders and using finder drag and drop from your macbook. This way it will not effect your Time Machine. You can replicate with the other hard drive. Having backed up away from the Time Machine will mean the photos do not get deleted by Time Machine after you have removed them from your Mac.
I hope this makes sense! It is the first time I have posted :-)
I would like to know if others have other solutions or use this method. I should say that the hard drive I use for the Time Machine if Mac formatted. It is a 2 TB WD My Book Studio. I purchased from the Apple store. It is not an apple product but is mac of the sleek aluminum and goes well with it. Having said that I keep it at a mates house!

There are several concepts that may help you create a defense-in-depth approach to securing your valuable data.
- Your data is much more valuable than external disk drives. Do not hesitate to purchase the size and number of external drives you need for great (not just good) backup practices.
- Always maintain at least two copies of any data. This means never place live (offloaded) files on a backup volume, even in a separate partition. If the drive fails the backup and the live files will go poof together.
- Do not rely on retrieving live files from a Time Machine backup. Time Machine is for restoring files that were deleted or altered by mistake or for a full restore. It is not for offloading live files.
- Place the offloaded live files on a separate disk drive. Then you will need to backup that live volume or if that offload volume fails then poof again.
- You already some of this base covered. Maintaing two copies (one backup) is good practice. Maintaining more than two copies (two or more backups) is a better practice. Maintaining multiple copies in multiple backup formats is a great practice. Time Machine is great for restoring accidentally deleted or altered data but it is a complex system that is more prone to failure than simpler schemes such as cloning. I recommend maintaining both Time Machine and cloned backups of the internal drive and cloned backups of offload drive.
Backing up the offload disk is where partitioning the backup drive can be handy. Create one partition for your Time Machine backup and another partition for your external drive backup. Backup your internal drive with Time Machine and backup the offloaded files using cloning software such as Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper!
You could tell Time Machine to backup both your internal and external live files but then it gets tricky to do a full restore so I recommend using cloning software for backing up the external drive.
When you purchase another external drive, make it a sufficiently large one so you can divide it into multiple large partitions.
A good backup/offload map (two partitions per backup drive):
- Internal drive —> Time Machine backup partition A on the backup drives.
- External offload drive —> Clone backup partition B on the backup drives.
- Backup drives 1 and 2 (one onsite and one offsite), each with partitions A and B.
A great backup scheme includes three partitions on the large backup drives so you can backup the the internal drive with both Time Machine and CCC/SD:
- Internal drive —> Time Machine backup partition A on the backup drives.
- External offload drive —> Clone backup partition B on the backup drives.
- Internal drive —> Clone backup to partition C on the backup drives.
- Backup drives 1 and 2 (one onsite and one offsite), each with partitions A, B and C.
A great feature of having a clone of your internal drive is if the internal drive crashes you can boot off of the backup disk while you replace the internal drive. As mentioned above it also avoids Time Machine backup/restore problems. I have had Time Machine full restores fail so I do not trust them as my only backup method but I find them very handy for restoring individual files.
Create partitions sufficiently large enough for each backup source. Time Machine should be about 50% or more larger than the volume it is backing up to leave room for the older incremental backups. The cloned backup partitions need only be as large as the volumes they are backing up, or larger if you include incremental backups in your cloning scheme. This means you may need 2 or 3 TB backup drives. (4 TB drives are not yet reliable so avoid them.)
For more information on great backup schemes see:
Time Machine Basics: http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1427
Most commonly used backup methods:
https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-3045
Methodology to protect your data. Backups vs. Archives. Long-term data protection:
https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-6031
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http://support.apple.com/en-us/HT203977
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Mac: Choose iTunes > Preferences.
Windows: Choose Edit > Preferences. Learn how to turn on menus in Windows 7 and 8.
Click Devices. (The iOS device doesn't need to be connected.)
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