Use a backup program that has a rescue disk/flash drive capability. Then create a backup of the entire drive to the My Cloud/NAS. From there you can use the rescue media to restore the backup if need be. This assumes the rescue media can access the local network and any NAS on it.
I’ve been using Acronis True Image for years to create backups of Windows PC’s to My Cloud/NAS devices then using the Acronis rescue media to restore that backup when the need arises. WD offers the Acronis True Image for Western Digital (free) for both Windows and Mac. Note: The WD version of Acronis True Image is the basic program and may lack certain features found in the paid version of Acronis True Image.
I used the backup feature to backup El Capitan SSD on the Kingston XS2000 to the share ELCapitan on the WDMycloud. Is a backup like a clone. Not sure what I am doing here???
Generally the term “cloning” means you want to duplicate the contents of one hard drive to another hard drive. For example if you are replacing the hard drive with a larger one, or replacing a dead drive.
Where as “backing up” a hard drive generally means you want to make a backup of the entire drive, or one or more partitions, or one or more directories or files to another location. Another explanation of the differences between cloning and backing up from Acronis:
From what you explained you likely just want to create an entire hard drive backup which the free WD Acronis True Image program will do. You can select the entire hard drive or a single partition to backup and the program will backup the selected item or drive to a single backup file. Depending on the backup program and it’s features there may be additional backup options beyond full backup; like incremental backup and differential backup. Then instruct the Acronis program where to save that backup; either on a My Cloud Share (or subfolder within a Share) or to a external hard drive or any other location the Acronis software can access. The Acronis program has the option to create recovery media to boot the Mac and restore the backup file to the Mac hard drive or location. Or to select specific files to recover.
