M1 mini Time Machine vs CCC backups and does drive type matter if damaged internal means no ext boot?

[thestudentisrea]

Seems like two separate questions, but they are related.

1) I've been using CCC for years to do nightly backups on my old macpro (from one internal drive to another). I've never used Time Machine. I liked that the drive was bootable, so if drive died, it was easy to just boot off the clone.

I just found out, though, that not only is M1 picky about what type of drives it can boot from, but that it can't boot at all from ANY drive if the internal can't be read.

So... does this change the calculation? Is there no longer a benefit to having the backup be bootable? Are there reasons I should consider using Time Machine instead?



2) I was hoping to use 8tb sata pulled out of my old macpro for backups (1 partition to backup 1tb mini internal drive, and another to backup 4tb external nvme). I just found out new mac won't read the drive. I'm guessing this is due to old usb drivers in the enclosure which folks seem to say the m1 is picky about. New enclosure on the way, but if that DOESN'T fix it and I am forced to get a new drive...

is there any reason I would need anything other than the cheapest reliable spinning platter for backups? After all, if I can't boot from a damaged internal anyway, then does it make any difference if the drive, connector type, or whatever is not considered bootable?


3) Bonus question! Is my old routine of nightly backups still a good plan, or is there something I've missed in recent hardware or software developments that might indicate a better routine?

 

[Krevnik]

I’ll be up front that my response might be somewhat skewed because I don’t use bootable backups, even with Intel systems.

That said, I don’t think it changes the calculation that much. So you may as well do what you like. Having the backups is the important bit. And ideally some off-site copies in case of damage to the place where your system + offline backups reside. So I’d probably not worry too much about making big changes unless you want a big change.

I mostly use a NAS as my on-site backup, and then Backblaze as my off-site backup. I don’t have to think much on the backup itself because it’s automatic, and the NAS is also backed up off-site using B2 (although things like my Plex library is left out of the backup for obvious reasons). It works, is low maintenance, and gives me off-site backups of everything important.

 

[Mike Boreham]

CCC default mode is now NOT to make bootable backups, parttly for the damaged internal reason. Bootable backup can still be made by the legacy bootable backup option.

Mike Bombich discusses at length here:

https://bombich.com/kb/ccc6/cloning-macos-system-volumes-apple-software-restore

Peronally I don't need to be up a running in a few minutes, and when I have tested bootable clones it has taken very much longer to sort out all the re-logging in and syncing issues. I have preferred to use the clone as the source for an erase/install/migrate which is now the CCC default.

 

[Gnattu]

does drive type matter if damaged internal means no ext boot?​

A friendly note: the internal SSD will store not only the OS but also part of the firmware on Apple Silicon Macs, so damaged internal SSD means not boot at all no matter what, it would be the same situation as having a damaged BIOS chip on a PC.

 

[thestudentisrea]

Got it. So...

Here's what I have:
M1 mac mini w/ 1Tb internal
4Tb external TB3 nvme
8Tb 3.5 SATA (assuming enclosure arriving tomorrow works, plan was to backup the other 2 to individual partitions on this one automated at 4am and just have it sleep the rest of the day)

I do A/V work, and try as much as possible to avoid background processes. My main concern has always been that I have hundreds of plugins from dozens of developers, countless libraries, and a clean install takes me well over a week to rebuild the system from scratch, so looking to minimize recovery time in case of disaster while ensuring all authorizations (of many varieties) are restored. Over the years, I've run into just about every possible authorization issue when replacing drives.

Given those particulars, should I stick with CCC (albeit in erase/install/migrate paradigm), or is there some particular reason why TM is better suited to my setup?) For instance, is one or the other less likely to cause conflicts or background processing issues on m1 / Monterey since I'm assuming both need to launch at startup or similar if backups are timed?

 

[Mike Boreham]

Got it. So...

Here's what I have:
M1 mac mini w/ 1Tb internal
4Tb external TB3 nvme
8Tb 3.5 SATA (assuming enclosure arriving tomorrow works, plan was to backup the other 2 to individual partitions on this one automated at 4am and just have it sleep the rest of the day)

I do A/V work, and try as much as possible to avoid background processes. My main concern has always been that I have hundreds of plugins from dozens of developers, countless libraries, and a clean install takes me well over a week to rebuild the system from scratch, so looking to minimize recovery time in case of disaster while ensuring all authorizations (of many varieties) are restored. Over the years, I've run into just about every possible authorization issue when replacing drives.

Given those particulars, should I stick with CCC (albeit in erase/install/migrate paradigm), or is there some particular reason why TM is better suited to my setup?) For instance, is one or the other less likely to cause conflicts or background processing issues on m1 / Monterey since I'm assuming both need to launch at startup or similar if backups are timed?

Absolutely everything that you add to your machine goes on the -Data volume, nothing is put on the sealed unwritable System volume.

Both Time Machine and CCC back up the -Data volume and can be used as the source for migration after erase and install. Either will get you up and running, with all your apps, settings, plugins and libraries within an hour or two, depending on the quantity of data and speed of backup drive. (I use SSDs for CCC and TM backup drives for this reason.)

For many years I found migration from a CCC backup more reliable than Time Machine, but TM has greatly improved since it went all APFS and nowadays I trust it as much as CCC. Recently I have done a few restores from TM (most tests, but one forced) without problem. Actually I keep both CCC and TM backups, but go to TM first. Time Machine has the advantage that you can go back to earlier points in time more easily.

Alternative to the either of the above, you can rollback to a previous known state using the local snapshots on your boot drive, put there by both TM and CCC. IME this is faster even than booting from a clone but obviously not applicable to all situations, and in particular you can't roll back the installed OS version this way.

 

[thestudentisrea]

Out of curiosity: My main nightmare has always been system drive failure (since that's where all the authorizations are). Since that's changed now with sealed system volume, etc... what exactly is the use case these days for a full -Data restore? Malware? Permissions or something else that can't be fixed?

I undersatand the need to be able to roll-back any particular item, but if the primary disk itself is not damaged, then in what circumstance would you be rewriting the entire -data drive via backup?

Also, I've never really used "rollback" type features. Is there something about TM that might make it easier if I screwed something up and just wanted to go back to way system was yesterday (before last backup)?

 

[Gnattu]

I undersatand the need to be able to roll-back any particular item, but if the primary disk itself is not damaged, then in what circumstance would you be rewriting the entire -data drive via backup?

In some situation you need to wipe your data partition like performing DFU restore, and after that you will want your data back.

 

[Gnattu]

Also, I've never really used "rollback" type features. Is there something about TM that might make it easier if I screwed something up and just wanted to go back to way system was yesterday (before last backup)?

This feature is per file on TM, so it is basically select a file and roll back to a particular version in the past. TM holds hourly backups for 24hrs, so you can roll back to last hour as soon as you find that you made a mistake.

 

[thestudentisrea]

This feature is per file on TM, so it is basically select a file and roll back to a particular version in the past. TM holds hourly backups for 24hrs, so you can roll back to last hour as soon as you find that you made a mistake.

OK. I've always just instinctively avoided allowing anything to kick in as a background process when doing heavy A/V juggling that's already taxing the system. This doesn't ever create conflicts/crashes to have it do a restore mid-session?

 

[Mike Boreham]

This feature is per file on TM, so it is basically select a file and roll back to a particular version in the past. TM holds hourly backups for 24hrs, so you can roll back to last hour as soon as you find that you made a mistake.

You can roll back the whole machine to a previous state using the local TM snapshots. This is quite separate and different from recovering individual files from the TM backup drive.

 

[Gnattu]

OK. I've always just instinctively avoided allowing anything to kick in as a background process when doing heavy A/V juggling that's already taxing the system. This doesn't ever create conflicts/crashes to have it do a restore mid-session?

On Apple Silicon Macs not so much because Time Machine can only run on the Efficiency cores.

 

[Gnattu]

You can roll back the whole machine to a previous state using the local TM snapshots. This is quite separate and different from recovering individual files from the TM backup drive.

But the per file recovery can be done using the local snapshots as well. I've done this before restoring a file when I am not connecting to any TM drives.

 

[Mike Boreham]

Out of curiosity: My main nightmare has always been system drive failure (since that's where all the authorizations are). Since that's changed now with sealed system volume, etc... what exactly is the use case these days for a full -Data restore? Malware? Permissions or something else that can't be fixed?

I undersatand the need to be able to roll-back any particular item, but if the primary disk itself is not damaged, then in what circumstance would you be rewriting the entire -data drive via backup?

Also, I've never really used "rollback" type features. Is there something about TM that might make it easier if I screwed something up and just wanted to go back to way system was yesterday (before last backup)?

Personally I have never (22 years of macs) had a boot drive failure. I have done erase/restore/migrate when (in the olden days ) upgrading the boot drive, and at other times when I installed (usually beta) software which has messed things up enough to make it preferable to revert to an earlier good state than try and repair the damage. Also migrated the data when testing booting from externals.

About your last sentence ...easier than what? If you are asking easier than CCC, then yes I think TM is easier than CCC to roll back to a previous state. TM offers all the dates it has TM backups for. CCC you need to have managed your backups so that you have options other than just the lastest.

If you screw something up and want to rollback to yesterday, then rolling back to a local snapshot is as quick as a rebooting, no erase/install/migrate involved. TM only keeps snapshots for 24 hours but CCC can keep them longer if you specify.

 

[Mike Boreham]

But the per file recovery can be done using the local snapshots as well. I've done this before restoring a file when I am not connecting to any TM drives.

Yes it can. The thread is more about recovering the whole machine than individual files, which is why I was emphasising the whole machine restore from local snapshots, which I feel is not all that well known and used.

 

[Weaselboy]

Yes it can. The thread is more about recovering the whole machine than individual files, which is why I was emphasising the whole machine restore from local snapshots, which I feel is not all that well known and used.

You cannot do that any longer since they started with this whole sealed OS volume business. TM now just backs up the data volume. So for example, if one had a drive failure, you would need to install the new drive then install the OS from recovery, then lastly import/migrate from your TM drive.

You can see here on my TM disk it only has the Data volume.

 

[thestudentisrea]

Personally I have never (22 years of macs) had a boot drive failure.

Lucky. I've had 3 (got my 1st mac in the 80's, but failures all on Macpros in last 15 years). In one case, I lost the boot drive AND it's backup at the same time. Still not sure why. I had power issues in that house and cheap primative ups. That was a fun MONTH.

I think I vaguely remember something about CCC claiming it's backups are lighter due to the way it stores only changes from previous snapshot. If you're doing TM backups hourly, is that taking up significant space, or is it comparable to CCC's backups which never took up enough space for me to pay much attention?

 

[Mike Boreham]

You cannot do that any longer since they started with this whole sealed OS volume business. TM now just backs up the data volume. So for example, if one had a drive failure, you would need to install the new drive then install the OS from recovery, then lastly import/migrate from your TM drive.

You can see here on my TM disk it only has the Data volume.

View attachment 2020919

That is not true. If you boot to Recovery and chose "Restore from TM" you are offered a choice of restoring from a TM backup (which are on your external TM backup drive as your screenshot) or restoring from Snapshots which are on your internal boot drive. Choosing Restore from Snapshot rolls back the machine to the selected snapshot. You are correct that TM only backs up the Data volume to the external TM backup drive. The local snapshots are also only of the Data volume.

What changed with the "whole sealed volume thing" is that you can only roll back the Data volume. So, as I said earlier, you cannot use local snapshots to roll back the OS version, which used to be possible.

 

[Mike Boreham]

I think I vaguely remember something about CCC claiming it's backups are lighter due to the way it stores only changes from previous snapshot. If you're doing TM backups hourly, is that taking up significant space, or is it comparable to CCC's backups which never took up enough space for me to pay much attention?

Both CCC and TM make incremental backups so I don't think there is a first order difference in the space used. With TM of course backups could back years so could get large. I suppose CCC's safety net could let them get large too.

 

[Weaselboy]

That is not true. If you boot to Recovery and chose "Restore from TM" you are offered a choice of restoring from a TM backup (which are on your external TM backup drive as your screenshot) or restoring from Snapshots which are on your internal boot drive. Choosing Restore from Snapshot rolls back the machine to the selected snapshot. You are correct that TM only backs up the Data volume to the external TM backup drive. The local snapshots are also only of the Data volume.

What changed with the "whole sealed volume thing" is that you can only roll back the Data volume. So, as I said earlier, you cannot use local snapshots to roll back the OS version, which used to be possible.

I'm talking about if you replace a drive. There is no OS on the TM drive to restore. You will need to install the OS from recovery first.

Restore your Mac from a backup - Apple Support

Restore files from your backup.

support.apple.com

You can see at top of this support article it talks about installing the OS first.

 

[Mike Boreham]

I'm talking about if you replace a drive. There is no OS on the TM drive to restore. You will need to install the OS from recovery first.

Restore your Mac from a backup - Apple Support

Restore files from your backup.

support.apple.com

You can see at top of this support article it talks about installing the OS first.

Yes indeed...that is why I said that rolling back via a local snapshot was "obviously not applicable to all situations" when I first mentioned snapshots in post #6.

But it is applicable and useful in many situations, eg as the OP mentioned about simply wanting to go back to yesterday. I suspect many people do not consider the snapshot roll backup option as an alternative to erase/restore/migrate when things go wrong.

 

[thestudentisrea]

Forgot to ask:

I just bought the m1 mini for now as it's all I could afford at the moment, but will very likely upgrade to a more powerful machine in a year or two. When I do, I'm assuming all the m2, m3 or whatever machines will be similarly setup with BIOS functions residing on same internal drive.

And... I just spent nearly 3 WEEKS getting all of my A/V apps, plugins, authorizations, etc working on this machine, so when I DO get a new one I don't want to have to go through any of this again, and would like to just clone the drive on this one and move it over to the bigger machine with the hundreds of authorizations, etc already in place.

Is there anything I should know about either TM or CCC that would make this migration easier? Off the top of my head, I can think of a few potential issues like authorizations that asked me for machine ID or mac address. Overall, just looking for smoothest path when I inevitably switch machines.

 

[Weaselboy]

I just spent nearly 3 WEEKS getting all of my A/V apps, plugins, authorizations, etc working on this machine, so when I DO get a new one I don't want to have to go through any of this again

It will depend on what apps you are using. MS and Adobe apps in particular are bad about this. They will recognize the app is running on different hardware and make you reauthorize even if you cloned everything over. There is just no way around this.

 

[thestudentisrea]

Yeah, I figure it's inevitable that SOME authorizations will break. Just wondering if there's something about the way CCC or TM works that means theirs is less likely to break authorizations in a migration or might otherwise speed up the migration process.

 

[Mike Boreham]

It will depend on what apps you are using. MS and Adobe apps in particular are bad about this. They will recognize the app is running on different hardware and make you reauthorize even if you cloned everything over. There is just no way around this.

Backblaze, CrashPlan, ClamXav, Parallels, are some others which will require sorting on different hardware. Many apps allow installation on two machines and may see your new machine as a third seat. All solvable but takes time.