Guys - what are most of you doing? Choosing APFS encrypted drive and then choosing encryption again within Time Machine setup or just the latter? Just wondering if double encryption is really required and if it'll drastically slow down the backup process. I plan to do this only once a year and keep the external HDD at another physical location. My most important documents are backed up to 2 separate cloud networks daily. Thanks
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Time Machine double encryption?
- Thread starter etaleb
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Doesn't encryption in Time Machine just switch on APFS encryption in case it wasn't already on? Anyhow, double encryption does not give any benefits. I encrypt all of my drives on the APFS level.
So you simply format with APFS encryption and on Time Machine setup, you choose no encryption correct?
Yes. Unfortunately had 2 failures at the same time. Luckily I had other backups - Carbon Copy Cloner I think.
Understood also a Time Machine would you recommend double encryption like my original post or just keep encryption turned on at the hard drive level when doing erase
There is no double encryption. Time Machine will reformat your drive/volume, so if you choose to encrypt your Time Machine backup, it'll just replace what you've already done. (https://apple.stackexchange.com/que...-apfs-encrypted-redundant-for-time-machine-wi)
Now let's forget about encryption for a second. Is Time Machine designed to only be run once a year? My understanding is that once you turn it on, it'll start keeping local backups waiting to be pushed to the external drive when it's reconnected again. How much space does that take up locally? What happens when you reconnect in a year? Will there be a gap from the local backups that eventually got purged?
If all you're trying to do is capture yearly snapshots, Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper may be a better option.
Now let's forget about encryption for a second. Is Time Machine designed to only be run once a year? My understanding is that once you turn it on, it'll start keeping local backups waiting to be pushed to the external drive when it's reconnected again. How much space does that take up locally? What happens when you reconnect in a year? Will there be a gap from the local backups that eventually got purged?
If all you're trying to do is capture yearly snapshots, Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper may be a better option.
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I do understand your point and reasoning. I do have other back ups and all my documents are also on Evernote so the real reason of backing up to my external hard drive is the 10 TB of photos and videos. I like to stick with in-built applications so is there a big difference between Time Machine and carbon copy cloner for my use case? I have set Time Machine to manually backup only so it should not create any local backups at regular intervals at all. After a year, I guess Time Machine will only back up the files that are new or have been changed?