I use TimeMachine for my Macs and an rsync script for my Unix/Linux systems, all backed up to a 5TB RAID drive (connected to a Mac using their RAID connection software, which allows for hotswapping of drives in case of a failure). In order to keep large amounts of traffic off the net during the middle of the day, I also use "TimeMachineEditor" which allows you to schedule your TimeMachine backups to start whenever you want!
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How to Back Up Your Mac Using Time Machine
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Setting up a Mac Mini with OS X Server to run Time Machine backups with the best decision I made. Whole family backs up to it, which is nice, I can stack a ton of storage behind it to capture everything, and the best part is not needing to eject the drive when closing a laptop to carry it away.
I do something similar with a Synology NAS at work, but just for myself. Used to have a direct attach drive and got tired of having to remember to eject it before unplugging.
Haven't tried Time Capsule...
I do something similar with a Synology NAS at work, but just for myself. Used to have a direct attach drive and got tired of having to remember to eject it before unplugging.
Haven't tried Time Capsule...
Can someone explain to me how best to use the Time Machine approach to back up 2 NAS drives? I have the drives mounted; but, have yet to understand why/how to get them to backup. I also have a USB Mac formated external drive set aside to be used for the backup. Tks,
Time Machine is a feature I thought was lame when Leopard was released. "Backups!? Wow. That's... lame." However, not only was it nice for me but it's great since moving most of my family to Macs and it's saved my bacon on more than one occasion.
These days I use a combination. I use Time Machine daily, make bootable snapshots using SuperDuper as needed, and use CrashPlan in case of some disaster that destroys my house. I have my whole family set up on CrashPlan too.
Backup early. Backup often. If you need a backup and don't have it... it's a mistake you'll probably only make once and regret forever.
These days I use a combination. I use Time Machine daily, make bootable snapshots using SuperDuper as needed, and use CrashPlan in case of some disaster that destroys my house. I have my whole family set up on CrashPlan too.
Backup early. Backup often. If you need a backup and don't have it... it's a mistake you'll probably only make once and regret forever.
I do keep 3 copies.
#1 is the original, on my computer.
#2 is Dropbox, which updates itself whenever I have an Internet connection.
#3 is a keydrive on my keychain. I copy over my important files every few months.
But yes, accidental deletions or corruption in a section of my hard drive is something that I figure backing up files to another spot on the same hard drive could protect against.
I suppose git kind of mitigates the issue, but that only applies to my programming projects where I feel they're important enough to warrant git (in those cases, they're often also copied to BitBucket or GitHub... sometimes also to a deployment service like Parse.com, if I'm using one.)
Even better is using both
I've got Carbon Copy Cloner cloning my stuff to the same volume as my Time Machine backups. That one volume is both bootable and providing Time Machine. Ideally, I'd also want all of THAT cloned over the network to somewhere off-site.
You've made some great points that most home users don't understand and I would have hoped the article covered instead of the final "alternatives" section. Although for a home user TimeMachine to a TimeCapsule or attached external is an exceptional first step, it's only a start. Any casual computer user that has ever lost an entire hard drive of data, or any professional that's ever dealt with business continuity and disaster planning, will also remind everyone that there is more to backups than having a single real-time, local backup like TimeMachine. In my opinion, a well planned home backup strategy for a Mac MUST include the following:
1) TimeMachine backup to a TC, external, or NAS
2) Cloud backup service like CrashPlan or Backblaze (for off-site backups)
3) SuperDuper! or CCC (bootable) clone of all drives and partitions to an external drive(s) at least prior to every major OS update. I find a SATA drive dock to be very flexible and use for this considering that you can now purchase up to 6 TB raw SATA drives for a very reasonable price.
I understand that this is a simplified scheme for some advanced users that have a NAS in the house but it will certainly protect the typical home user completely for a very reasonable cost. Unfortunately, many home users fail to recognize (or ignore) their risk until it's too late. They seen to think that they will get some kind of warning before their only internal HDD dies suddenly or there is a fire or lightning strike that claims their computer and nearby backup drive. In these days where is common for home users to store all of their family photos/videos, etc. on their computer it' unfortunately sometimes takes at least a minor HDD tragedy before they will understand the actual value of a well thought out backup strategy.
Trust, but verify. If you're lucky enough to have a "low-data" backup need, then online may be of use in addition to TM. If you have several TB of data, you're SOL unless you have Google Fiber and a big online backup budget. Photographer? Musician? Besides TM and a 3rd party app or service, look into MDisc BluRay.
I've talked to so many people who've lost everything from a laptop hard drive failing, or even worse, a flash drive. The thought of carrying everything on one disk that's moving around is so scary. I've had to fall back to backups many times in the past; I'd have lost everything several times otherwise. I guess that's what people do, lose their stuff then cry.
I'd even call my own setup pretty bad since nothing is off-site, but the Internet connection here is such garbage that there isn't much I can do about it. Maybe I should swap out and bury an HDD. But eh, it's not like I have anything super important that isn't on GitHub.
I've got two partitions on my SuperDuper external drive. SD alternates between which partition it backs up to so I've always got the last two days backed up and bootable.
I was a PC user for 30+ years and all I have to say is Time Machine is way way easier to use than MicroSilly's backup. 
The article almost downplays USB connectivity.
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It'd be nice too if you back up multiple drives, to be able to restore just one of the drives.
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There are some critical bugs that ruin it, too. I backup to 2 separate drives but occasionally it will "merge" both drives and show the incorrect information for one of them. This renders the backup useless and it needs to be wiped and start again. I didn't realise it was doing this until it came to restore a backup and it couldn't, saying the backup was corrupted!
It'd be nice too if you back up multiple drives, to be able to restore just one of the drives.
as SUDO1996 already pointed out,
CarbonCopyCloner is also a remarkable tool. Not only, that you can do perfectly Cloning , the CC-backups are also IMMEDIATLY bootable!
Regarding this maximum of Usability and its rapidity - and its cheap price (it is free, but the developer really deserves the nice price) - it is worth thinking (and trying, finally using it at least as a second tool) it!
CarbonCopyCloner is also a remarkable tool. Not only, that you can do perfectly Cloning , the CC-backups are also IMMEDIATLY bootable!
Regarding this maximum of Usability and its rapidity - and its cheap price (it is free, but the developer really deserves the nice price) - it is worth thinking (and trying, finally using it at least as a second tool) it!
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Another slow news day at MR. First, how to reset your Thunderbolt display (which amounts to resetting PRAM and SMC, I kid you not), then let's explore an even older feature.
I suggest the next article should be about magic of the power button and function keys.
I suggest the next article should be about magic of the power button and function keys.
Great article. Hopefully someone who is not using it will come to the understanding of how important it is to backup your system. I do not know how many times I have seen, "My HDD failed or I erased a file by accident and do not have a backup."
Time Machine makes it really simple, although I prefer Carbon Copy Cloner. I use TM, but prefer the cloned drive, just in case of total HDD failure. Then I simply use one of my external drives that I have cloned without missing a beat.
Time Machine makes it really simple, although I prefer Carbon Copy Cloner. I use TM, but prefer the cloned drive, just in case of total HDD failure. Then I simply use one of my external drives that I have cloned without missing a beat.
well - Jony Ive is ongoing with his "puristic-style-design", already the 2016 MBP will be delivered without ON/OFF button…
the 2017 one will even be without any storage then… (no Screen nor connectivity at all either….)
well - Jony Ive is ongoing with his "puristic-style-design", already the 2016 MBP will be delivered without ON/OFF button…
the 2017 one will even be without any storage then… (no Screen nor connectivity at all either….)
Someone please tell him that mother Nature had "invented" pebbles since forever.
Also, pebbles are prettier than anything Jony can design.
While the article is nice I would like some corrections:
1. Relying on only Time Machine is bad idea, at the moment it isn't reliable enough.
2. Restoring from Time Machine is both slow and not certain to work if the drive contains backups from newer OS X version.
It's a bad idea to use same drive for both backups:
1. If it has hardware failure you lose all backups.
2. It creates more complex scenario for restoring files or whole system.
3. If the volume becomes corrupt good luck trying to get your data out of it...
Its much safer to have several drives for backups, if one dies no harm done.
1. Relying on only Time Machine is bad idea, at the moment it isn't reliable enough.
2. Restoring from Time Machine is both slow and not certain to work if the drive contains backups from newer OS X version.
Even better is using both
I've got Carbon Copy Cloner cloning my stuff to the same volume as my Time Machine backups. That one volume is both bootable and providing Time Machine. Ideally, I'd also want all of THAT cloned over the network to somewhere off-site.
It's a bad idea to use same drive for both backups:
1. If it has hardware failure you lose all backups.
2. It creates more complex scenario for restoring files or whole system.
3. If the volume becomes corrupt good luck trying to get your data out of it...
Its much safer to have several drives for backups, if one dies no harm done.
The article doesn't mention what items you might want to exclude from your backups. For me, it's temporary files that don't need to be backed up, files that are in a folder only temporarily (soon to be moved elsewhere), and large files that I know are already stored elsewhere.
I exclude the following from Time Machine backups:
- /.Trashes
- /Library/Caches
- ~/.Trash
- ~/Library/Caches
- ~/Downloads
- ~/Not backed up
I'm tidy about my Downloads folder, so I don't let the contents build up over time, but I know people who have hundreds of files, many of them important, living in their Downloads folder because they never "filed them" elsewhere. If you can download them again, they might not need to be backed up, but if you edit files there or can't get them back if needed then you should not include ~/Downloads in your Time Machine exclusion list.
Just to add my voice here. I use Time Machine on all my Macs as the first line of defense. I also use super duper quite often for doing things like replacing a hard drive. I also a combination of Copy, Drop Box and One Drive to sync my important files across multiple machine as well as keeping a copy of those files in the cloud.
If any one machine went down, I know that the most important files are safe on my other machines and in the cloud. If I need an older version of any file, I can go to time machine to get it. If I need to put in a faster SSD, I duplicate it with Super Duper and pop it in.
I will say that Time Machine has been wonderful when I accidentally borked a machine and hadn't created a super duper copy before. It takes time to reinstall the system and then restore from the Time Machine, but it is an essential part of any Mac set-up as far as I'm concerned.
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I also add my desktop. I know that people use their desktop differently, but I often use it as a space for working with something temporarily and then delete it when I'm done. But sometimes I forget and can leave a huge file there for a day, or the back-up starts before I was finished and now it's on TM, so I just exclude it. My Not Backed Up folder is called Time Machine Sandbox which is exactly for what yours is for.
If any one machine went down, I know that the most important files are safe on my other machines and in the cloud. If I need an older version of any file, I can go to time machine to get it. If I need to put in a faster SSD, I duplicate it with Super Duper and pop it in.
I will say that Time Machine has been wonderful when I accidentally borked a machine and hadn't created a super duper copy before. It takes time to reinstall the system and then restore from the Time Machine, but it is an essential part of any Mac set-up as far as I'm concerned.
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I also add my desktop. I know that people use their desktop differently, but I often use it as a space for working with something temporarily and then delete it when I'm done. But sometimes I forget and can leave a huge file there for a day, or the back-up starts before I was finished and now it's on TM, so I just exclude it. My Not Backed Up folder is called Time Machine Sandbox which is exactly for what yours is for.
I backed up over a TB of my media files (music, movies, and books) to CrashPlan over my Cox cable connection. Had to throttle it to keep from using too much data so it took about 4 months. Very little volatility in those files so keeping it updated doesn't take much bandwidth.
I have a CrashPlan family plan that gives me unlimited backup space on 10 computers. Cost was about $400 for 4 years of backup coverage.
Everybody should avoid Time Machine like the plague. It depends on the creation of a sparsebundle, and sparsebundles are inherently evil. Sooner or later they go bad and you lose all your data. When they do, there seems no earthly way to repair them. If you want archived backups, it's much much safer to set up a dedicated external drive and use a backup program such as ChronoSync.
Time Machine only uses a sparse bundle if you are doing a networked backup, like to a Time Capsule or NAS device. I don't think there is anything inherently wrong with sparse bundles, but I have read quite a few reports form users having trouble with networked Time Machine backups on third parry (non-Apple) NAS devices. I've used Time Machine with an Apple Time Capsule for years and never had any troubles with it.
I suspect the problem with third party devices is their implementation of AFP (Apple Filing Protocol) that is required for Time Machine over the network.
I've used Time Machine with Time Capsules for years without any backup/restore problems. It's helped me recover files and to migrate to new Macs a number of times. The only problem I've had is with Time Capsules that die from power supply problems. I feel safer keeping my backup system in the Apple ecosystem (hardware and software), but I don't know if that's wise or foolish. I like having the backup device on the network, not physically connected.
I've used Carbon Copy Cloner and other backup software too, and they worked well and were a lot faster than that painful initial Time Machine backup always seems to be. But the automated nature of Time Machine and its integration with the filesystem are what I like best.
I've used Carbon Copy Cloner and other backup software too, and they worked well and were a lot faster than that painful initial Time Machine backup always seems to be. But the automated nature of Time Machine and its integration with the filesystem are what I like best.