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alternatives to Time Machine?

J

jasonfodor

macrumors member
Original poster
Oct 8, 2012
53
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Reading that time machine isn't good.... of course Apple can't recommend anything else.

Looking to backup everything, not just files but things like firefox bookmarks, notes in the notes app, etc.

I'm looking for exact copy of my macbook, kind of like an iphone backup incase my laptop crashes or get stolen; I don't need multiple time machine backups. Only 128gb hard drive so I don't have much room on it. I'll periodically clean my macbook...basically decide if I want to delete a file forever or save to my external and if I delete a file off my macbook, that means I don't want it anymore, i don't want a time machine backup of it etc.

by "save to my external" I mean two externals since have one isn't really considered a backup.

Any good non paying programs?
Or should I just buy a cheap 250gb external and keep it for only time machine backups so once it gets out of room it'll just delete the old.
 
jasonfodor said:
Any good non paying programs?
Click to expand...
'rsync' is the only free alternative I know of. However, IMHO for most people (even command-line type people) there's too high a chance that they will make a mistake with all the various flags, and later find out (when they need to do a full restore) that it wasn't an exact clone that was made. For example, using the -a (or --archive) flag seems like it will turn on all the options you need, but it doesn't preserve ACLs or extended attributes! If one doesn't know what ACLs are or where they're used, well, they'd better stick to a program like CCC or Super Duper to do system backups, IMHO.

(BTW, I believe CCC uses rsync "under the covers," but puts a nice (and powerful) user interface on it and helps prevent you from making common errors in your backup plan.) I think CCC (or SD) are well worth their asking price. CCC at least is just a one-time cost (i.e., not subscription plan) and has been well maintained and supported. (I'm a happy customer.)
 
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I've used SuperDuper happily for years. I've never bothered with Time Machine.
 
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jasonfodor said:
Reading that time machine isn't good.... of course Apple can't recommend anything else.

Looking to backup everything, not just files but things like firefox bookmarks, notes in the notes app, etc.

I'm looking for exact copy of my macbook,

Any good non paying programs?
Or should I just buy a cheap 250gb external and keep it for only time machine backups so once it gets out of room it'll just delete the old.
Click to expand...

Good and free: Time Machine. You don't need to delete anything when your external drive is full - Time Machine manages that automatically. I've never had a problem with Time Machine personally.

Good and free, but far less convenient: Boot into recovery and use Disk Utility to clone your Mac. You'll have to remember to do this regularly. I wouldn't bother.

Good, not free: choose from Carbon Copy Cloner, SuperDuper, Chronosync.

Look, use Time Machine if you want a backup.
If your data is valuable to you, get 2 external drives - use one for Time Machine, and one for CCC/SD/CS.
 
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TBH if your data is valuable at least one backup copy (not an iCloud synced copy) should be offsite.

For the vast majority of people anything that isn’t automatic isn’t reliable enough for a backup - it’ll get forgotten or put off.
 
The key to a good backup strategy is understanding what (and how) you want to be able to restore. To protect against file deletion etc Time Machine is a good 'free' tool. Once set up properly it just works, but remember that the granularity is only to the last backup. If you want to protect against drive failure, then CCC is a great tool, especially to a external drive (or pair there of). If you want to ensure that everything is continuously backed up and off site then a cloud backup provider that offers Continuous Data Protection (CDP) is a must. Personally, and because I have worked in the industry for more years than I care to remember, and seen companies/peoples attempts to restore fail spectacularly I am over cautious. So Time Machine to a NAS server, CCC to an bootable external USB drive and iDrive for a cloud based backup with CDP works for me. There is no such thing as free, as even with TM you need to pay for and provide the backup target.

Oh and never assume that it works, always test on a regular basis. (so periodically I test restore a randomly selected file from both TM and iDrive, and also boot from the USB periodically to ensure it all works).
 
Tell me where you can find a cheap 250 GB external drive. I can't find anything less than 1 TB. (As long as you understand that an SSD drive doesn't give you any advantage here).

Time Machine just works. You turn it on, and your stuff gets backed up. Continuously. You can recover things you deleted. If you delete a file by mistake and notice a week later, or a year later, it's there. It backs up everything. If your Mac breaks, you plug your Time Machine drive into the new Mac and restore everything.

If you read complaints, remember that the 99.9% who are happy with it are not posting here.
 
I use Time Machine and rsync.

Often overlooked, is Time Machine's hourly incremental backups. With Time Machine active, it keeps hourly copies of files throughout the day. Say if you delete a file by accident, or make changes to the file that are wrong, you can easily look back at history.

Quoting the the Time Machine preference panel:

- Local snapshots as space permits (that is if the TM drive not connected, it may still do hourly incremental backups of files)

- Hourly backups for the past 24 hours

- Daily backups for the past month

- Weekly backups for all previous months

I bought a bunch of 4 TB hard drives from Best Buy all for around $100 to use as dedicated TM backup drives.

In addition to all that, I use rsync on a separate HD. Also use rsync for my Documents directory only to a 256GB SD card.

For simplicity, reliability and bootable backups, I recommend Carbon Copy instead of rsync. I think Carbon Copy could have bootable issues with APFS formatted drives, but they may have worked that out by now.




jasonfodor said:
Reading that time machine isn't good.... of course Apple can't recommend anything else.

Looking to backup everything, not just files but things like firefox bookmarks, notes in the notes app, etc.

I'm looking for exact copy of my macbook, kind of like an iphone backup incase my laptop crashes or get stolen; I don't need multiple time machine backups. Only 128gb hard drive so I don't have much room on it. I'll periodically clean my macbook...basically decide if I want to delete a file forever or save to my external and if I delete a file off my macbook, that means I don't want it anymore, i don't want a time machine backup of it etc.

by "save to my external" I mean two externals since have one isn't really considered a backup.

Any good non paying programs?
Or should I just buy a cheap 250gb external and keep it for only time machine backups so once it gets out of room it'll just delete the old.
Click to expand...
 
gnasher729 said:
Tell me where you can find a cheap 250 GB external drive. I can't find anything less than 1 TB. (As long as you understand that an SSD drive doesn't give you any advantage here).
Click to expand...

Why don't you want a larger drive? That way you have backups for a year or even longer ....

gnasher729 said:
If you read complaints, remember that the 99.9% who are happy with it are not posting here.
Click to expand...

Not sure about the 99.9% number, but having had innumerable, almost regular, TM failures on multiple drives do you want to chance losing your data if you are in the .1%?
 
FOR YOUR REFERENCE

  1. Acronis True Image 2020
  2. Get Backup Pro (v3)
  3. ChronoSync
  4. Backblaze
  5. IDrive
  6. Carbon Copy Cloner 5
  7. Carbonite Safe
  8. SuperDuper!
 
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