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Please give me some Mac backup app recommendations

baryon

baryon

macrumors 68040
Original poster
Oct 3, 2009
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Time Machine can only back up one source for whatever weird reason. Like most people, I have multiple external hard drives and I can't back all of those up to one single location because drives of that size simply don't exist.

Basically I just want backup software that is incremental and is simple and cheap, and can execute multiple backup tasks. I don't need anything else. I've looked at the usual apps but many of these seem strangely outdated (such as Mac Backup Guru).

I've searched on the App Store but when I type in Backup, I get a bunch of apps that don't seem to be for backup. When I type in "incremental backup", I only get ONE result, Backup Buddy, which I currently use but I'm not happy with it (when the backup disk fills up with old backups, you have no other choice but to format it and start over from scratch, and it doesn't tell you how long the backup is going to take or anything useful for that matter, really). It also tells me that my 3TB drive won't fit on an identical blank 3TB drive, and then goes ahead and does the backup anyway.

Thanks!
 
What type of backup? Time Machine does versioning, in other words it keeps copies of files as they change between saves. Or files that have been deleted.

A clone is a current snapshot of your current drive, an exact copy. So it will not do versioning per se. So if say you accidentally deleted a file and after that the cloning software ran you would have an exact copy of that drive...without the deleted file, unlike what TM would have done. Some cloning programs can, however, archive a copy of the files you delete. Strictly speaking that's not cloning, but it can serve a similar function to versioning. But it might make a difference when you go to restore, or if you say clone less frequently than you run TM. Point being, be aware of the differences.

The nice thing about clones, however, is that you can create a bootable clone. Or an exact copy of say that external drive (which can be handy; say if one fails and you just wanna start using the backup clone. It's ready to go without any restoring, so sometimes handy for say a drive full of media files).

Having owned CCC, Super Duper and some others, I'd say the best application for backups is Chronosync. Not only can it make clones, archives and other backups, it can also backup to the cloud, and sync files across devices. It can sync with mobile devices as well, and is very useful if you transfer stuff from say drive to drive aside from just backing up stuff. And you get free upgrades forever. https://www.econtechnologies.com/chronosync/what-is-chronosync.html
 
robgendreau wrote:
"What type of backup? Time Machine does versioning, in other words it keeps copies of files as they change between saves. Or files that have been deleted.
A clone is a current snapshot of your current drive, an exact copy. So it will not do versioning per se"

BZZZZZZZZTTTT !!!
WRONG !!!!

CCC can archive "changed files" just like TM, but more efficiently.
If you choose the "safety net" option, it will save files that you delete or change from your source drive, to an "archived older files" folder.

Thus, you still have a clone of the source drive, AND you ALSO have changed files.

Personally, I can't recall ever needing "an older version" of a file I was working on. "The last-backed-up" file was all I needed. YMMV.
 
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As everyone else here is saying, Carbon Copy Cloner is excellent and well supported. Been using it for many years and it's saved my ass on more than one occasion.

I personally run Time Machine for ongoing local backups and easily recoverable versioning, and then do a monthly clone of my iMac (kept offsite, thank you very much) using Carbon Copy Cloner.

A fair amount of stuff is also continously uploaded to iCloud or Dropbox, which is another layer of offsite protection.
 
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This is interesting. I had no idea the CCC archives changed files and SD doesn't. From what I have read in other threads CCC also copies the OSX recovery file while SD does not.
 
I believe the latest version of SuperDuper has been improved to include some of the things that CCC does. I don't use SD so can not verify if that's true or not. I've been a CCC user now for 10 years and it has saved me from disaster on several occasions.
 
I've used SuperDuper, CCC and ChronoSync. For what I want and need, ChronoSync does it. The others are good, just not what I wanted.
 
Fishrrman said:
robgendreau wrote:
"What type of backup? Time Machine does versioning, in other words it keeps copies of files as they change between saves. Or files that have been deleted.
A clone is a current snapshot of your current drive, an exact copy. So it will not do versioning per se"

BZZZZZZZZTTTT !!!
WRONG !!!!

CCC can archive "changed files" just like TM, but more efficiently.
If you choose the "safety net" option, it will save files that you delete or change from your source drive, to an "archived older files" folder.

Thus, you still have a clone of the source drive, AND you ALSO have changed files.

Personally, I can't recall ever needing "an older version" of a file I was working on. "The last-backed-up" file was all I needed. YMMV.
Click to expand...
You know that there's a difference between a clone and a piece of software that happens to have "clone" in it's name, right? It's not a proprietary process. It's nice CCC does all that, but it doesn't change what a clone is.

In fact, you don't need CCC or SD to clone a drive. You can do it for free with Disk Utility:

https://www.imore.com/how-to-clone-your-mac
 
Last edited:
robgendreau said:
You know that there's a difference between a clone and a piece of software that happens to have "clone" in it's name, right? It's not a proprietary process. It's nice CCC does all that, but it doesn't change what a clone is.

In fact, you don't need CCC or SD to clone a drive. You can do it for free with Disk Utility:

https://www.imore.com/how-to-clone-your-mac
Click to expand...
Did you read the article? It talks about how to setup your external drive for use with SuperDuper for the cloning process.
 
robgendreau said:
You know that there's a difference between a clone and a piece of software that happens to have "clone" in it's name, right? It's not a proprietary process. It's nice CCC does all that, but it doesn't change what a clone is.

In fact, you don't need CCC or SD to clone a drive. You can do it for free with Disk Utility:

https://www.imore.com/how-to-clone-your-mac
Click to expand...
Disk Utility doesn't clone drives. It's only used to format the drive to prepare it for cloning. You need a cloning app such as CCC or SD to create the clone.
 
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baryon said:
Time Machine can only back up one source for whatever weird reason. Like most people, I have multiple external hard drives and I can't back all of those up to one single location because drives of that size simply don't exist.

Basically I just want backup software that is incremental and is simple and cheap, and can execute multiple backup tasks. I don't need anything else. I've looked at the usual apps but many of these seem strangely outdated (such as Mac Backup Guru).

I've searched on the App Store but when I type in Backup, I get a bunch of apps that don't seem to be for backup. When I type in "incremental backup", I only get ONE result, Backup Buddy, which I currently use but I'm not happy with it (when the backup disk fills up with old backups, you have no other choice but to format it and start over from scratch, and it doesn't tell you how long the backup is going to take or anything useful for that matter, really). It also tells me that my 3TB drive won't fit on an identical blank 3TB drive, and then goes ahead and does the backup anyway.

Thanks!
Click to expand...
iCloud?
2TB is $9.99 per month.

3TB seems like an awful lot of changing data that needs to be continually backed up. Two thoughts ( and assumptions here, which make an A55 out of me ):
1) You are a bit lost on best practices for backup
2) You are insanely busy and need pro tools

For 1) You need to read a bit and possibly offload some of your static data to multiple offsite servers. You can get pretty much unlimited static storage for about $5US per month

For 2) You need to hire a pro or do a lot of reading up on Rsync tools

Soapbox > Standing on > Me:
Backing up important data to local storage devices is silly.
  • What if a house fire burns your place to the ground while you are visiting family or away from your home for any period of time longer than the two hours it may take to completely flatten your home?
  • What if a tornado rips through your house?
  • What if burglars steam the shiny computer and the shiny backup drives?
  • What about lighting strikes, flash floods, Donald Trump becomes President?
Soapbox put away, last thing; look into best practices.
 
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Weaselboy said:
You can use the restore function in Disk Utility to clone a drive. It will even bring along the recovery partition.

https://support.apple.com/guide/disk-utility/restore-a-disk-dskutl14062/mac
Click to expand...
I tried that process again, with no luck. First, it doesn't allow you to create a clone from your Mac drive while booted, which means I have to restart and boot from the recovery partition to launch Disk Utility and create the clone. CCC allows me to clone from my Mac's internal drive while I'm booted from it, so the clone can work while I do other things.

Also, I have a 1TB internal drive and a 1TB external drive. When formatted, Disk Utility says there isn't enough space on the external, and the clone fails. CCC accepts the external as a target, even though Disk Utility did not.

So Disk Utility can clone a drive, theoretically. In actual practice, it doesn't work for me.
 
960design said:
iCloud?
2TB is $9.99 per month.

3TB seems like an awful lot of changing data that needs to be continually backed up. Two thoughts ( and assumptions here, which make an A55 out of me ):
1) You are a bit lost on best practices for backup
2) You are insanely busy and need pro tools

For 1) You need to read a bit and possibly offload some of your static data to multiple offsite servers. You can get pretty much unlimited static storage for about $5US per month

For 2) You need to hire a pro or do a lot of reading up on Rsync tools

Soapbox > Standing on > Me:
Backing up important data to local storage devices is silly.
  • What if a house fire burns your place to the ground while you are visiting family or away from your home for any period of time longer than the two hours it may take to completely flatten your home?
  • What if a tornado rips through your house?
  • What if burglars steam the shiny computer and the shiny backup drives?
  • What about lighting strikes, flash floods, Donald Trump becomes President?
Soapbox put away, last thing; look into best practices.
Click to expand...
BackBlaze is an excellent choice at $50 dollars a year for unlimited data backup. I have been using them and have been happy with the speed and accessibility. I am guessing that that is who you were referring to.
 
GGJstudios said:
Also, I have a 1TB internal drive and a 1TB external drive. When formatted, Disk Utility says there isn't enough space on the external, and the clone fails.
Click to expand...
That is likely where you went wrong. The destination needs to be at least as large as the source or it won't work. I suspect if you looked you would find the formatted size of your destination is slightly smaller than the source. You can work around that by slightly shrinking the source partition.

But I can assure you, it does work. Myself and many others here have done it.

I agree if you are regularly doing clones, CCC or similar is easier. But for occasional use, Disk Utility can do the trick and it is free.
 
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My backup strategy is two-fold
1. Time Machine
2. Carbon Copy Clone with SafetyNet on

I do both for different reasons... CCC because it is bootable and Time Machine because of its extensive versioning
I like having both options

I would do an offsite backup but all of my essential files are in Dropbox anyway
 
Weaselboy said:
That is likely where you went wrong. The destination needs to be at least as large as the source or it won't work. I suspect if you looked you would find the formatted size of your destination is slightly smaller than the source. You can work around that by slightly shrinking the source partition.

But I can assure you, it does work. Myself and many others here have done it.

I agree if you are regularly doing clones, CCC or similar is easier. But for occasional use, Disk Utility can do the trick and it is free.
Click to expand...
I don't doubt that it can work with sufficient extra steps. It just proved to be more problematic and far less elegant than CCC. I agree that it may be an option for occasional use, but as a general rule, backups be more frequent than occasional. In addition, CCC can quickly update a clone by backing up only what changed since the last update. Disk Utility would have to completely clone the drive each time. Can it work? Yes. But the drawbacks would be an impediment that could discourage most from using it for regular backups.
 
960design said:
iCloud?
2TB is $9.99 per month.

3TB seems like an awful lot of changing data that needs to be continually backed up. Two thoughts ( and assumptions here, which make an A55 out of me ):
1) You are a bit lost on best practices for backup
2) You are insanely busy and need pro tools

For 1) You need to read a bit and possibly offload some of your static data to multiple offsite servers. You can get pretty much unlimited static storage for about $5US per month

For 2) You need to hire a pro or do a lot of reading up on Rsync tools

Soapbox > Standing on > Me:
Backing up important data to local storage devices is silly.
  • What if a house fire burns your place to the ground while you are visiting family or away from your home for any period of time longer than the two hours it may take to completely flatten your home?
  • What if a tornado rips through your house?
  • What if burglars steam the shiny computer and the shiny backup drives?
  • What about lighting strikes, flash floods, Donald Trump becomes President?
Soapbox put away, last thing; look into best practices.
Click to expand...

I work in film and produce about 300-700 GB per shoot, that's the reason for the huge amounts of data. RAW video is extremely space hungry. Projects are in constant flux and I may be "working on" 5-7 projects simultaneously, which means I need immediate access to all my stuff. iCloud is not a solution because it's very slow compared to a hard drive, you can't directly edit and grade video through the cloud. Maybe in 10 years but not today. I don't make enough money to hire people or to buy more hardware — two 3TB drives every 6 months is about as much as I can afford. I'm a beginner and not making any money from it yet.
 
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