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Is Time Machine still the best Mac backup software?
- Thread starter mossme89
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I guess it depends on what you want, are you just wanting to regularly back up important files. Or are you wanting a complete clone copy of your entire system that you can boot from.
My Catalina Time Machine is doing my 1st backup with a 3Gb/hour speed.
My disk is 360Gb so a full back up will take 5 days if things go smoothly.
The terminal command is not helping.
Is there anything that can speed it up?
My disk is 360Gb so a full back up will take 5 days if things go smoothly.
The terminal command is not helping.
Is there anything that can speed it up?
My Catalina Time Machine is doing my 1st backup with a 3Gb/hour speed.
My disk is 360Gb so a full back up will take 5 days if things go smoothly.
The terminal command is not helping.
Is there anything that can speed it up?
Sounds too slow for me. My TM usually can backup / restore at about 1TB per day. But that's with the ethernet cable.
I just bought a SanDidk SSD and now the speed is normal.
It was a newly bought WD Mypassport HHD that was working slow. I don't know why it was so low though. Copying files on that disk was FAST but the Time Machine was way slower than the advertised speeds. Oh well.
TM backup contain a bunch of very small files. If your HDD has low 4K random speed (or low IOPS), then it may work much slower than what you expect.
Thank you.
This guy is talking about DIY Thunderbolt 3 SSDs. What do you think about it?
I personally won't use SSD for TM backup. It's not cost effective.
What backup is, in ideal case, write once, never read.
And my Mac Pro 5,1 is a desktop anyway. I don't really care how fast the TM backup process is. As long as it can finish its job properly.
My last TM recovery was done about 8 years ago. Within this 8 years, only backup, never restore. And I am now using NAS as the TM backup destination.
IMO, capacity is more important than speed for TM backup.
But if you really need that to finish quick, and the backup need to be portable. Then I agree that DIY TB SSD is actually a good solution (apart from relatively expensive).
If you want a more balance between cost and capacity, you may use 2TB 2.5" SSHD as the target drive. In this case, you can have 2TB capacity with relatively low cost, and roughly the same TM speed in most of the time.
Current SSD's also have a shorter projected lifespan than most hard disks. The extra cost of an SSD may be worth it in uncontrolled environments (vibration, dust, etc.)
See
Storage SSD or Mechanical
Hey Guys! Might be a stupid question but can I use a SSD drive as my main external for storing and editing on? I heard they aren't as reliable in the longterm versus a tradinaly mechanical drive? I will keep be keeping my 200 gig music library, 1.5TB home movies and 300 Gig Lightroom library...
forums.macrumors.com
a hard disk can be rated up to 8 times greater lifetime capacity than an SSD.
I have a couple of (cheap) Samsung 860 SSD's and after 7 months they are at <80% of their projected life.
In contrast the higher quality SSD in my iMac is at 99% of lifespan at just under the 2 year mark.
1) I have no reason to suspect it won't work when I need it. If in doubt, I can always enter TM in just a few seconds. It's that hard to verify.
2) This is just one of my backup. I also have a CCC bootable clone of my OS drive. And one more back up for the most important files in another hard drive.
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Current SSD's also have a shorter projected lifespan than most hard disks. The extra cost of an SSD may be worth it in uncontrolled environments (vibration, dust, etc.)
See
Storage SSD or Mechanical
Hey Guys! Might be a stupid question but can I use a SSD drive as my main external for storing and editing on? I heard they aren't as reliable in the longterm versus a tradinaly mechanical drive? I will keep be keeping my 200 gig music library, 1.5TB home movies and 300 Gig Lightroom library...
a hard disk can be rated up to 8 times greater lifetime capacity than an SSD.
I have a couple of (cheap) Samsung 860 SSD's and after 7 months they are at <80% of their projected life.
In contrast the higher quality SSD in my iMac is at 99% of lifespan at just under the 2 year mark.
Do you enable TRIM? drop 20% for 7 months seems too much.
My 840Evo has 93.2TB TBW, but still has >90% life span. I use this drive since 2013.
The SSD's are used as read/write cache, so TRIM (as far as I can tell) is not available. They were over-provisioned as recommended by the vendors utilities, however, with I think 30% free space. Can't confirm as the unit was just sent in for service.
The 860 EVO 500 Gb has a 300 TBW rating. The initial populating of the device transferred ~20 TB, almost 6% of the TBW. As this is used as a media server there are a lot of large transfers. The Harry Potter 4K series , for example, is over 1/2 terabyte. So I'm wondering if this initial populating plus additional large transfers is the cause.
Sorry if not clear. The SSD's are used as a read/write cache for the 56 TB of storage. All reads/writes are passed through them. When the device was populated with its first 20 TB all of that data wend through the SSDs (cache) before being written to disk.
I see, so the SSD is not installed on the Mac. Without TRIM, the Write Amplification will be much much bugger than having TRIM. I can see why your SSD wear out so fast now.
If TRIM can't be activated on that system. Simply keep the SSD to have 30% free space will NOT help.
To make that 30% free space work like TRIM. You have to really put that 30% free space as over provision. I never do this on a Samsung SSD, not sure if Magician can do that or not.
But even if there is no such function to change the size of over provision. We can still completely erase the SSD, then make a partition with 30% empty space, and do NOT format this partition. Just leave it unformatted, not belongs to any file system, the SSD controller will also able to use this 30% "free cells" to make GC more effective.
My understanding, what TRIM does is pretty much "turn all empty space (in a file system) into over provision". The more empty space, the better it can work. If your system can't turn TRIM on for that SSD, manually create a large unformatted partition can also help to lower write amplification.
So I have been using a new SSD with a Time Machine for a week and love the speed - it has already helped me when I had to reinstall the system after messing up with wrong software development updates. The Time Machine is plugged through a CalDigit hub and I unplug my computer ~ 4 times a day.
However, my Time Machine disc cought an error and even Disk Utility could not fix the error. I had to reformat the partition. Do you guys think that it's better to return the SSD or errors like this are common?
Thanks!
However, my Time Machine disc cought an error and even Disk Utility could not fix the error. I had to reformat the partition. Do you guys think that it's better to return the SSD or errors like this are common?
Thanks!
