> My current MacMini cannot be updated beyond Snow Leopard and the hard drive is too full to back up my iPad2 and iPhone 5S. Since backing up to the Mac isn't possible, I've turned on iCloud to back them up. So far I've stayed away from updating to iOS 8x since I'm not sure just how deep the iCloud backup goes. I've got quite a bit of data in Apps like Notability, Evernote, etc. and several hundred photos.
>
> Would I be safe in upgrading with only iCloud as a backup?
>
> Also, I'd like to upgrade to an iPad Air 2, but am not sure how much of my current iPad has actually been backed up. Has anyone used an iCloud backup to transfer data from an old iPad/iPhone to a new one? Did it work? Are there serious pitfalls to this approach?
>
> Eventually we are thinking about going with the new 27" iMac as a replacement for the old MacMini. But I'd prefer to hold off on that until the problems with Yosemite have shaken out. It would be a shame if I had to wait for iOS 8 until I can do a hard drive backup of my iPhone and iPad.
>
> Cathy
How big is the drive in the Mini, and how full is it?
I would guess it's drive doesn't have more than 500 GB.
Do you do anything at present to back *it* up?
You can get a 2 TB 7200 RPM drive in a USB-3/Firewire-800 external case from OWC for $175:
(<http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/1394/USB/EliteAL/eSATA_FW800_FW400_USB>)
There are, of course, other sources; I happen to like OWC products and service.
You could clone your Mini's drive to this, boot from the external, iTunes-sync your devices to this drive, and when you get the iMac, copy the contents from this drive to the iMac's internal drive, and use this as a backup drive.
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Jim Saklad mailto:jimdoc@icloud.com
Posted by: Jim Saklad <jimdoc@icloud.com>
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