"I have nothing against bootable clones... they are fantastic at what they do... but they should not be considered backup. They do not have "usable history"... which is one of the most important aspects of a backup strategy."
For the overwhelming majority of users, your advice may be useless during a "moment of extreme need".
I don't need a "usable history" for 100% of the documents I keep backed up (such as financial information, billing info, personal records, audio projects). All I need is an "openable copy" of each respective file "as it was" when I last used it.
I sense that somewhere from 90-95% of "personal computing end users" need nothing more than that, either.
The majority of postings requesting help I see here on MacRumors are:
- Person can't get computer to boot up
- Person has had a problem with computer, tried to "restore" the system, and finds he/she can't access their Time Machine backup
In both of the above cases, if the person had available a "cloned backup" of their main (startup) volume, they would be fully up-and-running in the time it takes to do a "switch boot" via the startup manager.
Once running, they can then go to work on the internal hard drive, etc.
Even if the internal drive has become so corrupted that a re-initialization and restoration is required, it's easy to do so while booted from the cloned backup -- just boot, re-initialize, and re-clone back to the internal volume.
Yes, they will lose whatever file changes had been made since the last incremental (cloned) backup. It's a small price to pay for being up and running in a few minutes. I suppose if one is that worried about work lost since the last cloned backup they can keep a TM backup as well.
NOTHING gets you back up and running as quickly or easily as a cloned, bootable backup in a "moment of extreme need". Have been there myself.
I don't think anyone was arguing against keeping an image file for disaster recovery, but the truth remains that as they are usually managed, they are of minimal use as a backup. Even you yourself admit that most people just want to get running again, 'so they can access their Time Machine backups.' It's easy to say that you just need an 'openable copy' but when you find a file is corrupted, you'll be glad to have a proper backup that lets you roll back in time in case it had unknowingly been corrupted for months and you made a new clone last week.
Clones are great at disaster recovery, but poor for backups.