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Is time machine a must?

W

wirtandi

macrumors regular
Original poster
Feb 3, 2021
179
179
I am a new apple user coming from windows. For backup, I am already very used to manually copy pasting the files and folders into my external drive, simple as that.

I know the settings of my macbook will not be copied since i dont use time machine, but what are some of the other disadvantages?

Is there anyone here who does not use time machine?
 
Manually copying also means rewriting a lot of files every time. Plus you'll miss stuff like bookmarks and e-mail stored on the computer. Not so much an issue if you keep that stuff cloud synced.

My preference is Freefilesync. Takes a while to setup. But you can copy all the files and directories you want. You can also setup exclusion lists. The great thing is that it'll only copy new and updated files. Plus may be set to ignore errors. It's more efficient than manually copying and less prone to error.
 
I have to turn this question around and ask why don’t you use Time Machine?
I use a variety of tools for various purposes, including CCC (to make the occasional clone) and Freefilesync (to sync sensitive files, not in the cloud, between my two Macs) as mentioned above, however as far as I am concerned nothing beats TM for the purpose of keeping a constantly updated historical backup that happens without intervention.
I am not saying don’t use other tools as well, but if you ignore TM it is solely your own loss.
 
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What @Wando64 said.

I too have various processes for backup, but nice to have TM around to get back to how a file looked a month ago or you accidentally deleted it earlier in the day.
 
There are zero disadvantages in using Time Machine, I've been using it for 10 years now. It has saved me from my own stupid mistakes a few times. My wife's MacBook drive also crashed. I opened the computer up, installed a new drive, plugged in the TM backup drive, booted from the TM drive, copied absolutely everything over and she picked up exactly where she left off, nothing lost, at all.

The biggest draw back with manually copying files is the time, and space that it can take, depending on just how much data you have. Between my wife and I, we have a total of 2.4TB of music, movies and photos. Now suppose we add just a few MB's of new stuff to our libraries, which we do on a daily basis, how do we back that up, instead of the entire 2.4TB of existing stuff every time? Time Machine makes automatic incremental backups, meaning it only copies to your backup drive the changes made since your last backup. What TM also allows you to do is easily backup to more than one drive. We have 2, one of which I keep at my in-laws house. Keeping all your backups in the same place as your computer is risky. Natural disasters happen, unfortunately. When we go there for Sunday lunch I take the one drive with me and swap them in order to keep them both up to date. 2x 5TB Seagate portables that cost a paltry €110 each on Amazon, a very small price compared to the value of our data, especially the family and travel photos from the last 60 odd years.

TM setup is very intuitive and once that's done, it's practically plug and play. You can also back up other external drives to TM.
 
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Time Machine makes the challenge of staying backed up simple for ordinary users. I don't see why you wouldn't use it
 
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Time machine is a free, easy and macbook-imac saver when things go wrong.
And one can use the same drive on multi macs and osxs
And a great way to retrieve old files, even email photos of humans and cats ya thought were gone forever!
 
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Well, Time Machine is even simpler, because you don't have to do anything except set it and forget it. Been using it since it was introduced with ZERO issues and it has saved me MANY times (e.g. when I accidentally save a file after having messed something up in it). Also, your method doesn't preserve versions of the file like Time Machine does. Read this article if you haven't already:

Back up your Mac with Time Machine - Apple Support

If you have a USB drive or other external storage device, you can use Time Machine to automatically back up your files, including apps, music, photos, email, and documents.
support.apple.com support.apple.com

P.S. With Time Machine, you can also exclude specific folders and files from being backed up if you wish.
 
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"Is time machine a must?"

No.
I've never used it, and never will.

I prefer "cloned" backups created with CarbonCopyCloner (or SuperDuper).

I've read numerous reports here on macrumors from folks who trusted tm, and then, in "a moment of extreme need" had their tm backups fail on them...
 
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Fishrrman said:
"Is time machine a must?"

No.
I've never used it, and never will.

I prefer "cloned" backups created with CarbonCopyCloner (or SuperDuper).

I've read numerous reports here on macrumors from folks who trusted tm, and then, in "a moment of extreme need" had their tm backups fail on them...
Click to expand...

I'm one of those people. It sucked.
 
One backup is simply not enough.
Time machine does incremental backups allowing easy retrieval of deleted or damaged files and is designed to work with the Restore partition for a full System Restore especially now with macOS Big Sur.

Carbon Copy Cloner provided the additional benefit of being bootable (And still does for earlier macOS) but that is not currently possible with M1 Macs due to the design of the System Files but, it provides an identical file structure as a data only backup.

Unlike TM you can open your CCC backup and it looks exactly like the Finder on the Mac. I recently did a "clean" instal of macOS Big Sur and used drag and drop from my CCC backup to a clean instal of macOS 11.3.1

Lastly a bootable USB macOS Installer made with Install Disk Creator or similar app is a really handy tool for erasing, reformatting and reinstalling your current macOS without having to resort to an Internet Restore process.
 
Rodan wrote:
"Carbon Copy Cloner provided the additional benefit of being bootable (And still does for earlier macOS) but that is not currently possible with M1 Macs due to the design of the System Files but, it provides an identical file structure as a data only backup."

INCORRECT.
CarbonCopyCloner6 (just released) now CAN create bootable backups of m1 series Macs...
(SuperDuper can, as well)
 
Rodan52 said:
One backup is simply not enough.
Time machine does incremental backups allowing easy retrieval of deleted or damaged files and is designed to work with the Restore partition for a full System Restore especially now with macOS Big Sur.

Carbon Copy Cloner provided the additional benefit of being bootable (And still does for earlier macOS) but that is not currently possible with M1 Macs due to the design of the System Files but, it provides an identical file structure as a data only backup.

Unlike TM you can open your CCC backup and it looks exactly like the Finder on the Mac. I recently did a "clean" instal of macOS Big Sur and used drag and drop from my CCC backup to a clean instal of macOS 11.3.1

Lastly a bootable USB macOS Installer made with Install Disk Creator or similar app is a really handy tool for erasing, reformatting and reinstalling your current macOS without having to resort to an Internet Restore process.
Click to expand...
CCC also does incremental backups.
 
Fishrrman said:
Rodan wrote:
"Carbon Copy Cloner provided the additional benefit of being bootable (And still does for earlier macOS) but that is not currently possible with M1 Macs due to the design of the System Files but, it provides an identical file structure as a data only backup."

INCORRECT.
CarbonCopyCloner6 (just released) now CAN create bootable backups of m1 series Macs...
(SuperDuper can, as well)
Click to expand...
To make bootable backups on an M1 series Mac with CCC or SuperDuper, you will need to have Big Sur 11.4. This is a limitation of Apple’s utility ASR, which now is the only tool to actually do the backups.

Edit: On an Intel Mac, 11.3.1 will do for ASR to work.
 
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The although your corrections are correct apple_robert, the same caveats apply as before. You cannot boot an non functional M1 HD with a bootable clone and you cannot update the clone's macOS unless it is done independently from the clone.

The whole system of Restore has been altered to prefer macOS restore from Internet Recovery and data from Time Machine or other.

We can no longer run our computer from an external drive while waiting for a new SSD to arrive.

The whole concept and value of a bootable external drive is essentially lost with Apple's new integrated M1 chip.

So why bother cloning anything other than the Macintosh HD_Data volume and yes, CCC'S Safety Net does provide versioned backups but not as easy to access and restore as TM.

What CCC provides is an excellent resource for selectively restoring data after a clean install of macOS, simply drag and drop.
 
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IMO manually copying files as your only backup method is a terrible idea. There's going to be the chance that you could have a catastrophic event when you haven't remembered to copy your latest files. Anything you care about should have multiple backups, including offsite backup. I use Time Machine and when the Apple Store had to wipe my Mac after an upgrade bricked it I got everything back using TM. I also have an automated online backup using BackBlaze.

www.backblaze.com

Backup Strategies: Why the 3-2-1 Backup Strategy is the Best

A Backblaze survey revealed 54% of people said they know someone or have themselves recently lost data. Find out what you can do to prevent data loss.
www.backblaze.com www.backblaze.com
 
Entirely depends on what you store on your internal drive. Ask yourself - would you be sad in the slightest if you lost all your data right this second? If the answer is yes, then backup.

Personally I only backup around every two weeks / when I remember to do so / before any OS update
 
wirtandi said:
I am a new apple user coming from windows. For backup, I am already very used to manually copy pasting the files and folders into my external drive, simple as that.

I know the settings of my macbook will not be copied since i dont use time machine, but what are some of the other disadvantages?

Is there anyone here who does not use time machine?
Click to expand...
I do Time Machine and Carbon Copy Cloner both.
 
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