Backup alternatives

[ghulst]

Hey guys, I am a happy user of Time Machine for ages, but lately I am starting to get a bit annoyed. It seems as if my Mac is filling up TM disks faster than I can get them. I don't use a time capsule or similar, just a USB disk connected straight to the Mac. So before I run out tomorrow and get another disk, I was wondering whether I could pick your collective brains on alternatives.

- I have a Macbook Pro running Yosemite
- 1Tb of internal storage
- 700Gb used
- 400 Gb in interesting files on TM backup disks
- 270 Gb worth of iPhoto library
- 30Gb worth of email library and then it goes down to smaller numbers

Is there a good (and fast) alternative that is more easily scalable to backup my stuff? I would prefer a local solution. And perhaps something that will allow me to work with stuff easily, wherever I am, without too much hassle? Trouble with the images is that I wouldn't want to be left without them and I should always be able to pull up a pic in full quality or store some.

Any suggestions would be very, very welcome. Thanks!

 

[Apple_Robert]

I suggest you look into Carbon Copy Cloner. It will create a bootable clone of your Mac a lot faster than TimeMachine will, while giving you control over what to backup and when, amongst other features. I have found the tech support to be fast as well. In fact, I encountered a bug recently with El Capitan with CCC. I contacted CCC via email, and in less than a hour, Mike Bombich personally replied to my email with a 'right then and there updated CCC for me, to address the El Capitan problem ( which the OS wasn't correctly creating a Recovery HD Clone).

I use TimeMachine and CCC as my main backup plan. I also supplement some of the backup with OneDrive, since I already have a Office 365 subscription.

 

[ghulst]

I am considering doing a backup to a network drive based on files, not on the full disk. I can then complement with a single TimeMachine drive for that continuous backup and for quick restoring when the macbook disk would fail. (Have had that onece, and TM worked a great.)

I currently have two old TM drives. I would like to recover all the files that TM has backed up and that are no longer on my drive. Is that possible?

 

[Fishrrman]

CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper.

 

[Dark Void]

CCC is a good alternative as others have suggested, other than that I would focus on manual backups. In other words, click and drag or copy/pasting files on to HDDs or flash drives.