My Mid 2010 17″ MacBook Pro’s DVD drive can be replaced with a second hard drive or SSD. Can I use this second internal drive as my Time Machine drive?
I find it difficult to attach my external Time Machine drive often enough to make the most use of time machine’s way back feature.
Device: Mac Running Something Older
App: Something Else
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Randall Lee Reetz
You shouldn't do that. It defeats one of the main purposes of a backup. If your MacBook Pro is stolen or lost you'd lose it and the backup together. And being stolen or lost are maybe the two top reasons you need a backup.
Can you get into the habit of connecting your Time Machine drive to the MacBook at night when you charge it?
Another technique is to get a network drive, like a NAS or just a simple drive that is connected to your Wi-Fi router, if your router has the ability to do that. Then you can backup to that drive wirelessly.
Another technique is to switch to an online backup like BackBlaze.
If you find that you can't get into a routine where you are backing up regularly, then it helps if you use iCloud Drive (or any cloud file system) to store all of your files. Then at least you have your files stored in the cloud in case of a problem. iCloud Photos for photos too.
I will also be backing up to another drive (when I remember to as I do know) for security as you correctly suggest, but what I really want is lots of automatic saves in time machine that I can use with the time machine’s back in time feature. So what I’m asking is if it is technically possible to use a second internal drive as a time machine drive?
Randall: You already have that with Time Machine Local Snapshots. No need to install a whole separate drive. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204015