You look through different checkpoints to see when this file was there. It would be nice to have the ability to see all version of a single file but I don't think that TM has this functionality at the moment.
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Best way to back up your mac?
- Thread starter boateng
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You look through different checkpoints to see when this file was there. It would be nice to have the ability to see all version of a single file but I don't think that TM has this functionality at the moment.
There is some kind of schedule that TM uses, but I'm not sure what it is, you can easily Google it. Since my MBP moves all over the house, I manually plug in my external drive on a periodic basis, and as soon as I plug it in, TM starts it's backup.
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The best way?
CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper, either of which will create (and then incrementally maintain) a cloned BOOTABLE backup.
There is NOTHING that will serve you better in a "moment of extreme need".
You'll have to develop the self-discipline to connect and backup at regular intervals, however.
But again -- if you ever get into an "I can't boot!" situation -- it's just a matter of plugging in the cloned backup and booting that way, that should have you back up and running in a couple of minutes in most situations.
CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper, either of which will create (and then incrementally maintain) a cloned BOOTABLE backup.
There is NOTHING that will serve you better in a "moment of extreme need".
You'll have to develop the self-discipline to connect and backup at regular intervals, however.
But again -- if you ever get into an "I can't boot!" situation -- it's just a matter of plugging in the cloned backup and booting that way, that should have you back up and running in a couple of minutes in most situations.
reliability wise, hard to beat cloud backup + regular external hard drive backup
some software like super duper or carbon copy cloner might have feature to remind you for scheduled backup.
NAS and Time Machine fail more often than above two method, unless you manually backup the NAS or your time machine. . .
some software like super duper or carbon copy cloner might have feature to remind you for scheduled backup.
NAS and Time Machine fail more often than above two method, unless you manually backup the NAS or your time machine. . .
I use CrashPlan without issues. You can backup to cloud for a fee or backup to another friend's computer for free.
I don't think bootable is so much important now.
all Mac has built-in netboot feature, so you can boot from another Mac via ethernet, or you can just restore the whole system via net restore...
really, when you have a computer failure, you CAN boot from your external drive, but you WILL reinstall your system anyway, you can't boot from external forever right?
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most NAS now have RAID, so it's pretty solid again drive failures, as for NAS failure, you just need another similar NAS and put the drives back in... I'd say NAS is pretty safe (except again fire/flood/earthquake...)
of course the best way is back up to a NAS, and back up NAS to cloud. couple advantages:
1. your internal network is usually faster than your internet speed (unless you have symmetric gigabit fiber, like me, ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ....) so if you back up from your computer directly to cloud, it could take days, weeks to finish, and during this time, you are NOT protected, and you will NOT get incremental backups for this period of time. plus you need to keep your computer running. but if you back up to your NAS, it could just take couple hours, and after that, you are still backing up to your NAS incrementally, you loose nothing. and NAS will be uploading those backups to the cloud in the background. it doesnt matter how long it takes because NAS are designed to run 24/7, and it won't be any longer than how long it would took if you were uploading from computer.
2. many good cloud backup services charge on a per-computer basis. which means if you back up from your computers directly, and you have two computer in your house, you need to pay extra for the second computer. but if you back up everything from all your computers to your NAS, and backup from your NAS to cloud, you will always be paying for only one computer.
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gary wrote:
"I don't think bootable is so much important now.
all Mac has built-in netboot feature, so you can boot from another Mac via ethernet, or you can just restore the whole system via net restore..."
Being able to boot to the recovery partition is no match for being able to boot to an exact clone of "where you were" and be up-and-running again in the matter of a couple of minutes.
When one boots from a clone, you boot "to the finder". That means you can run any app, open any file, access 3rd party repair utilities, etc.
Boot from the recovery partition, and all you can do is run Disk Utility, Terminal, or do a software restore which can take some time, IF you don't run into problems.
With a clone, you can just "re-clone" the entire backup back to the internal drive, or a part of it, or whatever you need.
"I don't think bootable is so much important now.
all Mac has built-in netboot feature, so you can boot from another Mac via ethernet, or you can just restore the whole system via net restore..."
Being able to boot to the recovery partition is no match for being able to boot to an exact clone of "where you were" and be up-and-running again in the matter of a couple of minutes.
When one boots from a clone, you boot "to the finder". That means you can run any app, open any file, access 3rd party repair utilities, etc.
Boot from the recovery partition, and all you can do is run Disk Utility, Terminal, or do a software restore which can take some time, IF you don't run into problems.
With a clone, you can just "re-clone" the entire backup back to the internal drive, or a part of it, or whatever you need.
NAS to cloud backup in background , ah good idea never thought of this before, if internet connection is quite good speed this is doable.
also savings on multiple device Cloud backup is definitely key point here.
one reason why external hard drive backup is more reliable from NAS is it's offline and have less electrical failure chance compared to 24/7 operation.
for people with one laptop and one phone to maintain, however :
setting up NAS and maintaining needs extra time, for people who have daily need network storage NAS is nice. RAID-ing the NAS works yes but electrical failure still can occur, and add that extra HDD for the RAID things get really questionably complicated and expensive. (dual fail safe PSU, hot swap HDD, dual redundant motherboard, offline UPS . . .this never ends).
I understand people have different preferences, thank you ! for laying out all the option very enlightening insight, would be worth it for small office / family with many devices !
well, first NAS backing up in the background is more effective when internet connection is.. not so good. meaning if you only use your computer, a backup may never even finish, but a NAS can.
as for electrical failure, I don't think it's the key. it's may fail, yes, but it doesn't matter, just buy a new box and put the old drives back in, then you loose nothing (except some money of course). and modern NAS/electrics are quite reliable, especially you only use them lightly.. they can last 5+ years without any problem.
as for external hard drive, especially those without RAID, they are quite dangerous actually. the HDD inside will fail, it's not whether it will fail, it's when it will fail. once it fails, you loose EVERYTHING if you don't have RAID. if you accumulated 10-years of your precious photos, the video of your kid's first walk, I guess those files are invaluable. plus there still are some electronics in external HDDs, they can fail too.
another advantage of NAS over external HDD that people often ignore is, that NAS is always online. if you are using a laptop and moving all the time, you most likely will forget to plug in your backup drive after a week or so. unless you are using an iMac with that HDD plugged in all the time, there will be 'down time'. but NAS don't have any problems like that, whenever you are back home, your computer connects to wifi, it starts to backup. so NAS backup will do more versioning allow you to go back in time on the files you modified.
but of course, if someone just wants most basic back up, yes external HDD is the easiest way (least effective way at the same time)
yea hdd only backup still can fail,
my first post mentioned cloud + external hdd backup , so the HDD is only for quick regular backup, while the cloud backup serve as extra measure and convenience.
actually for family photos usually I burn them to DVD.
my first post mentioned cloud + external hdd backup , so the HDD is only for quick regular backup, while the cloud backup serve as extra measure and convenience.
actually for family photos usually I burn them to DVD.
I use Time Machine for hourly backups plus Carbon Copy Cloner for weekly backup in case something goes wrong with Time Machine and also CCC allows bare metal recovery.
Both backup to my primary Synology NAS. Once a week the Synology backs up to a secondary Synology NAS box.
Both backup to my primary Synology NAS. Once a week the Synology backs up to a secondary Synology NAS box.
If you only backup to cloud, I personally advise BackBlaze because it is very much a native macOS app and lives in system preferences. I've used it a while and it's great.
Nowadays I have a small windows PC running 24/7, with CrashPlan. It backs up my Linux server, my MacBook, my girlfriend her laptop etc. It's really nice in that regard.
Yeah, it's cross platform which means it's likely using Java. I never really launch it though; it just works.
I have an Airport Time Capsule, but I'm pretty sure it would work with any external HD. What I do is hook up to my cable provider's gateway (Wow! in this case) and have all my apple computers back via Time Capsule. It's seamless and I don't have to worry about my father who is 89 doing something stupid. My dad for is age is great with computers, but we all be old someday.
I know Time Capsule has saved my bacon a couple times when I have done an update on a software application and had to retrieve some data because the stupid update has failed miserably or decided to delete an important file of mine.
As a side note for people with an Airport Time Capsule, the technicians from Wow! who hooked up my cable suggested since I use Apple's wi-fi instead of Wow!'s wi-fi. I took their suggestion and my wi-fi is more robust than when I had a different cable provider. Normally I wouldn't take a technician's advice, but these guys were fast (they even had to redo the cabling) and smart for there were no hiccups with the installation.
I know Time Capsule has saved my bacon a couple times when I have done an update on a software application and had to retrieve some data because the stupid update has failed miserably or decided to delete an important file of mine. As a side note for people with an Airport Time Capsule, the technicians from Wow! who hooked up my cable suggested since I use Apple's wi-fi instead of Wow!'s wi-fi. I took their suggestion and my wi-fi is more robust than when I had a different cable provider. Normally I wouldn't take a technician's advice, but these guys were fast (they even had to redo the cabling) and smart for there were no hiccups with the installation.
The big advantage CrashPlan holds over BackBlaze is that it does indefinite versioning. So if you need to find a really old version of some document, it will be there. BackBlaze purges after a few months.
Ugh yeah, they do the same with external drives. I forgot about this so it's good you mention it.
If BackBlaze has backed up an external device like a USB stick, and it hasn't seen it being connected for a month then the backup will be deleted. I once went on both a holiday and a business trip quickly afterwards, and had this happen to me.
I do 2 Time Machine backups - 1 to NAS and 1 to a USB drive.
Unfortunately, I sometimes get messages that my NAS backup is not usable and it has to start from scratch.
Does anyone know why this is the case?
Might be overkill, but I do this:
1 Backup to a Time Capsule
1 Backup goes to a Synology NAS. The latter gets a nightly back up to another Synology.
Once in a while I pull an entire image of the internal drive to an external one via Carbon Copy Cloner. That external drive then goes in the bank safe. I alternate these once in a while.
1 Backup to a Time Capsule
1 Backup goes to a Synology NAS. The latter gets a nightly back up to another Synology.
Once in a while I pull an entire image of the internal drive to an external one via Carbon Copy Cloner. That external drive then goes in the bank safe. I alternate these once in a while.
I have my stuff all over the place.. I have a time capsule that backs up my macs regularly. Also external hard drive that I backup to as well with also an external hard drive plugged into my time capsule that archives my time capsule backups. And then I have iCloud storage that backs up my photos as well as documents etc. Apple Music keeps hold to music.. so everything is kinda everywhere. Redundant.
I would not depend on Time Machine as my primary backup source. I feel that the Time Machine product has never demonstrated the reliability that would allow me to sleep at night. After years of trying to backup to USB attached drive on my Airport Extreme 6th gen. I would encounter random errors about corrupted data.
I am very happy with Carbon Copy Cloner. I copy my hard drive once a day, and once a month I take a copy off-site for disaster recovery. With a bootable backup I can be up and running in minutes>
Never understood why Apple never took the time and effort to elevate the Time Machine product to a professional level of support.
I am very happy with Carbon Copy Cloner. I copy my hard drive once a day, and once a month I take a copy off-site for disaster recovery. With a bootable backup I can be up and running in minutes>
Never understood why Apple never took the time and effort to elevate the Time Machine product to a professional level of support.
Costly? That depends how we each value things?
The price ($40, 38€) does not seem unreasonable to me for the peace of mind and seemingly reliable protection CCC offers.
