Best solution for backup?

I use a combination of Time Machine and Carbon Copy Cloner (bootable) on separate drives
Works well for me, although most of my stuff is also synced with Dropbox or Sugar Sync

ribbon said:

Until now, my backup plan consists basically on plugging an external HDD (1TB) and copying everything to it. I am looking for something more... Comfortable, and one of the apps I've heard about is Arq. Do any of you guys use it? I would set it up to sync with my Dropbox (1TB) and have everthing backed up there.

Are there any other better solutions?

Thank you.

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What is the "best solution" depends on your needs; impossible to say in the abstract.

I use Carbon Copy Cloner, Time Machine and Google Drive for all my backup needs. I like CCC as it can be used as an actual drive should my internal drive ever fail. I keep two external drives that are cloned by CCC. One of which, I store in a fireproof safe. I have another drive for Time Machine. I then use Google Drive for my Cloud backup needs.

So far I have never had to use any of my backups, but am confident that I have nothing to worry about should something catastrophic happen. I have tested the clones I keep and they have always worked as a bootable drive.

I use SuperDuper, but I would expect CCC is pretty much similar. I think the important thing is to have multiple backups. I'm not a fan of online backup. I keep multiple SuperDuper backups on separate HDDs and keep one in a fireproof box. Important thing is to have more than one backup that you can boot from

old-wiz said:

I use SuperDuper, but I would expect CCC is pretty much similar. I think the important thing is to have multiple backups. I'm not a fan of online backup. I keep multiple SuperDuper backups on separate HDDs and keep one in a fireproof box. Important thing is to have more than one backup that you can boot from

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Hi guys,

does anybody buckups drives to network storage ?
I am using CCC but it does not allow it

William Auld said:

Hi guys,

does anybody buckups drives to network storage ?
I am using CCC but it does not allow it

Click to expand...

I use CCC to perform daily backups to a Western Digital MyBook Live Duo via WiFi, and it works very well.

Arq works tremendously well, very efficient and I would certainly recommend it. I have a one-time discount code (10% I think) if the OP wanted to use it.

To me the key benefit of Arq was the encryption before leaving my machine. I just use it with AWS Glacier as a fallback in case my primary data storage and local backups are lost.

I use CrashPlan.

Completely unlimited
Hugely customisable
Versioning
Runs in the background
There's an app for iOS and android
Free 30 day trial
As little as $4 per month

I've got backups going back five years on there (over 1tb). Needless to say I do local backups as well, but if your data is important to you, it's reassuring to have something backed up off-site.

https://www.code42.com/store/

Depends on your needs. I used to use Time Machine, but got sick of it. Now I use Carbon Copy Cloner and just "clone" the important files {Documents, Music, Pictures, Movies}. For me, I do not need it to be bootable as I can easily reinstall OS X and just copy my documents back.

For free: Time Machine works very well.
For paid: Carbon Copy Cloner is my pref.

William Auld said:

Hi guys,

does anybody buckups drives to network storage ?
I am using CCC but it does not allow it

Click to expand...

It sure allows it. I backup to a network drive but use the sparsebundle format. This is not a bootable backup but nevertheless it is a complete backup of the drive I'm backing.

1. Main data on system SSD and external HDD
2. Time machine backup up both (Local)
3. Crash Plan backup of both (Off-site)

This system works very well for me. As a rule of thumb, people usually suggest restoring a file or two periodically from your back sources to ensure your backups are actually working and/or effective.

I use Time Machine to a DAS which is then backed up onto an external drive via Carbon Copy Cloner.
I also use CCC to backup my system to another external drive that is taken offsite.

I'll echo comments about determining your needs. There are different backup needs and they have different solutions.

I'd categorize backup needs into three major categories:
1) Loss or damage of a file (e.g. inadvertent deletion)
2) Loss or damage of a computer (e.g. hardware failure)
3) Loss or damage of a building (e.g. fire)

An always connected Time Machine drive is good for 1 or 2 but is likely to be lost along with the computer being backed up in the event of 3. Offsite backups are good for 3 but can be time consuming to restore (need to go retrieve it from the offsite facility (my work desk)).

What I do is a combination of Time Machine and Retrospect (a server backup solution that also backs up my wife's PC). Time Machine, of course, backs up hourly. I have Retrospect set to backup user files daily and system weekly. User backups are copied to rotating offsite media weekly; system backups are copied to offsite media monthly.

War story: Until recently, my wife used an old 2007 MBP. I attempted to upgrade it to Yosemite which errored during the upgrade leaving it in an unrecoverable state. Restored from Time Machine but it was unbootable. Eventually found (after booting into a very old SuperDuper clone - Note to self: always make a SuperDuper or CCC clone before starting a major upgrade) that a long-standing TM bug had caused certain key system files to have not been backed up (fixed now and finally backed up by deleting TM prefs). Off to the Retrospect backup. Restored the few days old system, then the latest user backup (all fairly easy and quick to do in Firewire target disk mode). Back in business.