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MBA M1 and Time Machine backups

ivanwi11iams

ivanwi11iams

Contributor
Original poster
Nov 30, 2014
4,507
3,066
Georgia, USA
So, you have purchased and received your MBA M1. And, now you have it connected to a monitor for day to day use. But, you now want to do Time Machine backups (or any backups to external drives). What connections are you using?

Seems with this new model, one has to have a 'few' USB type connections and cables, no?
Currently, I have a MBA 2015, and seriously thinking about purchasing an M1. But, thinking of my day to day process, it generated the above question. Thanks all...
 
circatee said:
So, you have purchased and received your MBA M1. And, now you have it connected to a monitor for day to day use. But, you now want to do Time Machine backups (or any backups to external drives). What connections are you using?

Seems with this new model, one has to have a 'few' USB type connections and cables, no?
Currently, I have a MBA 2015, and seriously thinking about purchasing an M1. But, thinking of my day to day process, it generated the above question. Thanks all...
Click to expand...
Personally, for the moment I'm using an old USB HDD with an Apple USB-A to USB-C adaptor.
Drive formatted to APFS and TM changes it to APFS - something else, can't remember what.
Backups have run fine.
 
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What you want is a USB-C dock with a variety of ports on it (HDMI, USB, sometimes an SD card reader, etc). You plug your monitor and whatever drives you want, etc, into it -- then you plug one single cable into the MacBook, which connects everything and (if you get one with pass-through charging) keeps your battery topped up as well. USB-C is pretty great for this.

The only thing you have to remember to do when you unplug your MacBook is to eject the drive(s) first. The Finder will scold you about data loss if you don't.
 
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I use my old 4th generation 2 TB Time Capsule. It works pretty well even though it is old (2011), slow, and noisy. From past experience it won't last much longer at which point I will switch to a NAS or an external drive. I have a hub that has a USB-C and a USB-A connection. The external drive for Time Machine doesn't have to be fast so I would probably use the 5Gbps USB-A.
 
I had an Samsung SSD 500GB drive. So, I purchased a hard drive enclosure to put it in.
I then partitioned the drive down the middle. Thus, using half for Time Machine and the other half for Carbon Copy Cloner.

Still new to Mac OS. So, feel free to share your thoughts on the above...
 
For my M1 MBA, I use Time Machine once a day via Time Capsule and Carbon Copy Cloner once a day via an external drive connected to my Mac mini. That way, I don't need to be connecting and disconnecting external drives every day.
 
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Apple_Robert said:
For my M1 MBA, I use Time Machine once a day via Time Capsule and Carbon Copy Cloner once a day via an external drive connected to my Mac mini. That way, I don't need to be connecting and disconnecting external drives every day.
Click to expand...
Hmm, I like that. I was not aware that people even used the Clone software that often.
Then again, I am new to this, and giving the Clone software a try, prior to purchasing it...
 
circatee said:
Hmm, I like that. I was not aware that people even used the Clone software that often.
Then again, I am new to this, and giving the Clone software a try, prior to purchasing it...
Click to expand...

Using Clone every day gives you extra insurance. I use Super Duper which is set to do a smart clone (only picks up changes after initial full clone) every night. Unfortunately, it has been down since Big Sur came out so I'm waiting for the developer to figure things out. Meanwhile, I have Time Machine backups and data double-backed up externally...
 
Every Sunday morning I do a TM backup via an external drive.
For important files like database & QuickBooks, I drop a copy in DropBox daily

I run a CCC backup 4 times a year on a separate drive stored in a different building incase my house suffered a disaster.
My theory is if there was a malicious something lurking, with a fuse to raise hell at a later date, I might be able to go back to before I got it & not risk that the TM drive had been compromised by a clever malicious something.
 
dborja said:
Using Clone every day gives you extra insurance. I use Super Duper which is set to do a smart clone (only picks up changes after initial full clone) every night. Unfortunately, it has been down since Big Sur came out so I'm waiting for the developer to figure things out. Meanwhile, I have Time Machine backups and data double-backed up externally...
Click to expand...
If you just want to backup your user data, SuperDuper! will work. You just need to get the previous stable version. Details here: ShirtPocket Blog. And the version of software is here:

https://www.shirtpocket.com/mint/pe...irtpocket.com/downloads/SuperDuper!+3.2.5.dmg

Neither SuperDuper! or Carbon Copy Cloner can currently create a bootable drive. Apple's security changes are making it tough.
 
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jdb8167 said:
If you just want to backup your user data, SuperDuper! will work. You just need to get the previous stable version. Details here: ShirtPocket Blog. And the version of software is here:

https://www.shirtpocket.com/mint/pepper/orderedlist/downloads/download.php?file=https://www.shirtpocket.com/downloads/SuperDuper!+3.2.5.dmg

Neither SuperDuper! or Carbon Copy Cloner can currently create a bootable drive. Apple's security changes are making it tough.
Click to expand...

Yes, hopefully, they can find a solution. My intended use for SuperDuper! is for the case where my machine fails so I can quickly go to another like machine and boot up with my current system setup. I know I can use Migration Assistant to bring in my Time Machine backup but there's also the case where I might have to borrow someone else's machine and I don't want to disturb or write over his/her setup.
 
Apple_Robert said:
A lot of people let Time Machine run default , which is every hour.
Click to expand...
My backup drive is horrible and loud, so I used TimeMachineEditor to set Time Machine to make 2 backups a day. Since they get pruned down to one a day later on anyway, I figure I'm not likely to miss anything.
 
OP: one additional thought. I don't know how mission critical or irreplaceable your data is but you might want to think about keeping your Time Machine and Carbon Copy Cloner backups on separate drives. Using one drive for both is a single point of failure.

I use both TM and CCC. My TM drive is always connected. I keep my CCC drive disconnected except for weekly backups and for safety backups before any macOS updates. I do this for both redundancy and security--if my machine became infected by malware or a virus, there's a better chance for a clean CCC clone.
 
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KaliYoni said:
OP: one additional thought. I don't know how mission critical or irreplaceable your data is but you might want to think about keeping your Time Machine and Carbon Copy Cloner backups on separate drives. Using one drive for both is a single point of failure.
Click to expand...

This ^^^
I used to keep both on one partitioned drive until I thought the same!
Now I keep my Time Machine on a Glyph Atom Pro 2TB SSD, and a CCC clone on a SanDisk Extreme Pro 1TB SSD.
Both drives are massively overkill in terms of speed etc, but I had them spare so thought why not! Should make any restores faster at least! lol
 
KaliYoni said:
OP: one additional thought. I don't know how mission critical or irreplaceable your data is but you might want to think about keeping your Time Machine and Carbon Copy Cloner backups on separate drives. Using one drive for both is a single point of failure.

I use both TM and CCC. My TM drive is always connected. I keep my CCC drive disconnected except for weekly backups and for safety backups before any macOS updates. I do this for both redundancy and security--if my machine became infected by malware or a virus, there's a better chance for a clean CCC clone.
Click to expand...
Thanks for the feedback. Just yesterday I made some changes :)
 
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