Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Do you backup your MBPro with Time Machine?
- Thread starter Howard2k
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Which cloud service provider? Do you make full backup there? Have you needed to restore your full system from there yet? How fast is it to restore? I would love to backup the system to the cloud but I yet find a provider which is fast enough and provide a full system restore reliably.
I have a Samsung 1TB SSD connected via thunderbolt 3 to my iMac and I use it to backup both my Macs.
I do use TM because of its automatic hourly backups. I actually use TM to backup wirelessly to two different network drives. It has saved me on occasion when my spastic fingers hit the wrong keys deleting some file I was working on at the time. TM is most convenient for restoring such deleted files. But I have also experienced, two or three times over the years, a TM sparse bundle becoming unreadable by TM, so I don't rely on TM for critical work that I can't afford to lose.
I also use Carbon Copy Cloner to make a clone of the startup volume that I can boot from just in case the startup volume becomes unbootable.
My main method for backing up my daily work, however, is git and subversion with local repositories. Git uses a distributed repository system while subversion does not; both have advantages and disadvantages. Occasionally I use the rsync utility for backing up a directory tree to another USB or network drive (rsync, by the way, is the technology used by Carbon Copy Cloner). There are several nice advantages of these last methods, besides the fact that they also work under Linux. First of all, they perform checksums to verify the backups, secondly, they only back up the differences between the original directory tree and the backup tree, and lastly, for git and subversion the repositories include all revisions to program codes and TeX writing since the beginning of time and include metadata as to time, authorship, and comments on each revision.
Lastly, I've never felt comfortable trusting cloud backup schemes for various reasons, especially security concerns. So I don't use cloud backup services. I do, however, routinely store a physical copy of my git and subversion repositories off-site just in case of a catastrophe. And a couple collaborators routinely use git to keep an up-to-date copy of my repositories, also in another state and country.
I also use Carbon Copy Cloner to make a clone of the startup volume that I can boot from just in case the startup volume becomes unbootable.
My main method for backing up my daily work, however, is git and subversion with local repositories. Git uses a distributed repository system while subversion does not; both have advantages and disadvantages. Occasionally I use the rsync utility for backing up a directory tree to another USB or network drive (rsync, by the way, is the technology used by Carbon Copy Cloner). There are several nice advantages of these last methods, besides the fact that they also work under Linux. First of all, they perform checksums to verify the backups, secondly, they only back up the differences between the original directory tree and the backup tree, and lastly, for git and subversion the repositories include all revisions to program codes and TeX writing since the beginning of time and include metadata as to time, authorship, and comments on each revision.
Lastly, I've never felt comfortable trusting cloud backup schemes for various reasons, especially security concerns. So I don't use cloud backup services. I do, however, routinely store a physical copy of my git and subversion repositories off-site just in case of a catastrophe. And a couple collaborators routinely use git to keep an up-to-date copy of my repositories, also in another state and country.
Apple's iCloud. We have family sharing. I think it's 2Tb and $9.99 a month. But we store all of our photos, email, documents and everything else there. Well worth it to me if only for instant access to everything from any device at any time.
With the MB I just stored certain specific folders on iCloud. In the event of a catastrophic failure I could just reload MacOS and enter my iCloud account information and pull all that down again. With Time Machine essentially I have a redundant backup mechanism.
I'm not too concerned about security in the cloud. Apple is a pretty large tech-savvy company and I somewhat trust them with my data. Then again, the information I'm storing in the cloud isn't FBI top secret documents. More like pictures of our cat. I'm more concerned with somebody breaking into our house and stealing paper documents than compromising my iCloud account. Might be short-sighted but I'm not an overly-cautious person and realize that my information just isn't that valuable. My work laptop is highly secure and backed up by my company nightly and has about 10 mechanisms to log into so that data is protected securely. My cat pictures - not so much!
Time Machine does much more than store your documents. It stores the OS configuration and apps configuration too, including devices you might have connected to your Mac, like printers, scanners, etc. If you just restore your files by using a Cloud storage provider (like iCloud), then you would still need to reconfigure the OS as it was before the new installation. The main benefit of having Time Machine is that you have a protection for your files and the OS. I restored my MacBook Pro's backup to my new iMac in minutes and then I chose to not restore the network settings. My new iMac was up and running in minutes, fully configured as my MacBook Pro. This kind of flexibility alone is worth it for me. Time Machine is a great feature and I would like to see it expand to the cloud at some point too.Apple's iCloud. We have family sharing. I think it's 2Tb and $9.99 a month. But we store all of our photos, email, documents and everything else there. Well worth it to me if only for instant access to everything from any device at any time.
With the MB I just stored certain specific folders on iCloud. In the event of a catastrophic failure I could just reload MacOS and enter my iCloud account information and pull all that down again. With Time Machine essentially I have a redundant backup mechanism.
I'm not too concerned about security in the cloud. Apple is a pretty large tech-savvy company and I somewhat trust them with my data. Then again, the information I'm storing in the cloud isn't FBI top secret documents. More like pictures of our cat. I'm more concerned with somebody breaking into our house and stealing paper documents than compromising my iCloud account. Might be short-sighted but I'm not an overly-cautious person and realize that my information just isn't that valuable. My work laptop is highly secure and backed up by my company nightly and has about 10 mechanisms to log into so that data is protected securely. My cat pictures - not so much!
I previously used Time Machine + Carbon Copy Cloner.
More recently, I retired Time Machine, and now use Arq (to B2) + Carbon Copy Cloner. I'm much happier with this solution. No more wasted space from TM snapshots; no more corrupted TM archives. It's nice having cloud based B2 backups, and no security concerns due to them being encrypted with me holding the key.
More recently, I retired Time Machine, and now use Arq (to B2) + Carbon Copy Cloner. I'm much happier with this solution. No more wasted space from TM snapshots; no more corrupted TM archives. It's nice having cloud based B2 backups, and no security concerns due to them being encrypted with me holding the key.
Time machine is great. Yes, there are some stability issues, which are easily mitigated by having redundant backups. It’s fast, cheap, works over WiFi and as such, the most convenient backup solution I’ve ever worked with. For me, TM is one of the major reasons why I prefer a Mac.
Time Machine
Carbon Copy Cloner with a daily, weekly and monthly clone
Arq to Dropbox
Never had an issue with any of them
Carbon Copy Cloner with a daily, weekly and monthly clone
Arq to Dropbox
Never had an issue with any of them
Apple's iCloud. We have family sharing. I think it's 2Tb and $9.99 a month. But we store all of our photos, email, documents and everything else there. Well worth it to me if only for instant access to everything from any device at any time.
With the MB I just stored certain specific folders on iCloud. In the event of a catastrophic failure I could just reload MacOS and enter my iCloud account information and pull all that down again. With Time Machine essentially I have a redundant backup mechanism.
I'm not too concerned about security in the cloud. Apple is a pretty large tech-savvy company and I somewhat trust them with my data. Then again, the information I'm storing in the cloud isn't FBI top secret documents. More like pictures of our cat. I'm more concerned with somebody breaking into our house and stealing paper documents than compromising my iCloud account. Might be short-sighted but I'm not an overly-cautious person and realize that my information just isn't that valuable. My work laptop is highly secure and backed up by my company nightly and has about 10 mechanisms to log into so that data is protected securely. My cat pictures - not so much!
Right, I'm sad that it's not possible to backup the full OS there and restore it would have been a great cloud backup solution but right now any backup provider can backup your photos and specific files/folders so its not a full solution sadly