Best home backup strategy

[conamor]

Hi!

I was wondering if anyone of you had an easy and solid way of doing backups at home?
My machines: iMac with 1TB and a MBP with 256GB.
My total data is around 2.5TB.
My external storage: 3TB LaCie USB drive, 5TB Seagate USB drive, 2x 1TB USB drive and a Time Capsule 3TB.

I would love to have this 2.5TB available everywhere (iMac/MBP) but it's not very possible. I am not a cloud user, well, only for the photos taken with the iOS.

Time Machine vs CCC or manual backups(Copy / paste)?

Anyway, I'm seeking advices.
Thanks for the comments!

 

[dwig]

...

Time Machine vs CCC or manual backups(Copy / paste)?
...

No, no, no. It's not "vs" but "and".

Use separate Time Machine backups for each machine with no intention of sharing this between machines.
and
Use either CCC, SuperDuper, or manual copying to backup the data on your external drives to another "archive" drive or set of drives. This "archive" drive or set should then be kept disconnected and safely stored when not being used for backups. Safe storage would be a fireproof filing cabinet or safe, or some off-site location (e.g. bank safe deposit box, so other family member's house, ...).

Backups should be separate from any home "cloud" storage that is used for making the data accessible across multiple machines.

 

[conamor]

No, no, no. It's not "vs" but "and".

Use separate Time Machine backups for each machine with no intention of sharing this between machines.
and
Use either CCC, SuperDuper, or manual copying to backup the data on your external drives to another "archive" drive or set of drives. This "archive" drive or set should then be kept disconnected and safely stored when not being used for backups. Safe storage would be a fireproof filing cabinet or safe, or some off-site location (e.g. bank safe deposit box, so other family member's house, ...).

Backups should be separate from any home "cloud" storage that is used for making the data accessible across multiple machines.

Thanks! I like that!

Quick question if you know the answer;
I had an issue with my TC 3TB when my iMac (3TB HDD, at the time before it failed and I replaced it with a 1TB SSD) the Time Capsule was getting full with the backups but was not cleaning the older versions, is it because a 3TB TC isn't enough for a 3TB HDD? Even if this one is filled at 2TB?

 

[ApfelKuchen]

I think you're talking about two things.

One, a way of making that 2.5 TB of data available "everywhere." The conventional answers are either a) share those resources across your network (System Preferences > Sharing on the machine that hosts the data), or b) move the shared resources to a NAS (external storage device accessible over the network).

The Time Capsule can be used a NAS, and you can connect another external drive to the Time Capsule in order to add to the NAS's capacity. (A Time Machine/Time Capsule backup always requires more storage than the total of what you have on your Macs, because it keeps a record of changes to your files over time - that's what Time Machine refers to.)

Two, you're asking our opinion on which backup method you should to use. Your data, no matter how/where it's stored, needs to be backed up. You already have that 3TB Time Capsule, which means you're already using Time Machine. The Time Capsule is capable of backing up every Mac on your network, plus every external drive physically connected to those Macs.

Naturally, you will find people who recommend Time Machine, and others who recommend CCC. Each method has its strengths and weaknesses. I don't think you'll find many, if any, who would consider "manual backups (Copy / paste)" to be a "backup" method - it is far too haphazard to be a true backup. Backups are best when they are automatic and comprehensive. Copy/paste is neither.

So, you have a total of 10 TB of external storage, and 1.256 TB of internal storage on those Macs, plus a 3 TB Time Capsule to back them up and/or provide storage that can be accessed by any computer on your network. Yet you have just 2.5 TB of data altogether.

Why do you have all those drives and drive capacity, when either the 3 TB La Cie or 5 TB Seagate alone would be enough to hold everything?

 

[conamor]

hehe! I had a plan to backup to TC, then to a locally attached HDD and a copy of that HDD in another location. So that would have been a total of 3 backups(1 time machine and 2 regular folder structure backup) + the main machine.

Also, I had to buy another drive when that 3TB that was inside the iMac failed. I had to copy that drive (which was around 2TB) to another external drive without breaking my other backups. Good think I did because the copy failed on around 200 files which were located on bad sectors.

Now I'm trying to take all those 200 files(because I took the location and filename down) from another backup and put them onto a master backup then delete old backups...

I think Time capsule is great when you want to recover from scratch and include all your data but when it's time to search for a file you have to open the time capsule browser, if I am not wrong.

 

[Fishrrman]

For external drives, use a cloning utility, NOT Time Machine.

I recommend CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper for the internal drive, as well.

You wrote:
"Also, I had to buy another drive when that 3TB that was inside the iMac failed. I had to copy that drive (which was around 2TB) to another external drive without breaking my other backups. Good think I did because the copy failed on around 200 files which were located on bad sectors."

IF you had been using CCC for this task, it would have made it easier. When CCC encounters a "bad file" that won't copy, it makes a note of it in its log, skips the file, and goes on about its business. At the end, it presents you with a list of the problem files, but... everything else (the good files) will get copied over.

 

[Boyd01]

I have a 512gb MacBook Air for most of my computing and a 2TB time capsule that is constantly backing it up. In addition to that, I do periodic time machine backups to a 1TB drive that I keep offsite. I have another external drive that I use with CCC for a bootable clone. I like having a clone, because you can get back up and running immediately in an emergency, without "restoring" anything. Now I also have several other external drives with CCC clones from times when I have updated the operating system or purchased a new computer. So these are available for legacy data if I ever need it. Disk drives are cheap and you can't have too many.

I also have another Mac that's a dedicated media server which automatically backs up nightly with CCC. The primary drive failed after about 3 years and I was back up and running in just a few minutes using the clone. I also have a second backup drive for that machine and periodically rotate them.

Then I have a third machine dedicated to video editing. That's a more complicated setup I won't get into. But I use CCC to manually back up its 1TB SSD and two 5TB drives.

I have no need to share all my files between these machines, but I could if I wanted to. There's plenty of room on the 4tb media server disk and I have file sharing enabled which gives me about 100MB/sec on gigabit ethernet.

I like the time capsule for constant backups but I would only restore from it as a last resort because it's s-l-o-w. You can use it like a NAS, and I tried but really disliked it. About 50MB/sec on gigabit ethernet. And that is the internal time capsule drive. The external drive is USB 2.0 but doesn't even acheive that speed. You will only get about 20MB/sec that way. Even worse, the disk spins down instantly after a file operation. That means a long delay whenever you try to access anything on the Time Capsule.