Time Machine vs Cloning

[Ambrosia7177]

Texas_Toast, I've been following this with interest (my backup days began with a tape drive that did a nightly incremental backup).

Howdy, @monokakata!

I think it would be helpful if you said what your goals are. I mean, for example, from what sort of difficulty or difficulties would you like to recover? And how quickly do you need to recover? I mean in general.

I apologize if this thread has somewhat mushroomed.

To answer your questions, I am trying to better understand how Time Machine works so I can compare it against what cloning offers.

Truth be told, I have been using CCC for a couple of years now, and I'm not exactly sure why people use Time Machine, so I figured I would do deeper dive here and make sure I understand how backups compare to clones.

As mentioned above, I am neurotic when it comes to manually versioning documents I create. For example, I am working on a guide now, and in in maybe a few days' time I have like 90 versions of the document.

And I just don't have issue with accidentally deleting emails or files, because I save versions of everything.

In addition, I'm not sure what advantage Time Machine has over CCC considering you can update your clone every day if you wanted to.

I suppose for people who accidentally lose or delete things regularly, having an hour-by-hour or day-by-day backup would be helpful, although if you're that absent-minded I'm not sure if any software can truly help.

I probably should get into a habit of cloning my Mac more often, like at least once a week, so that is a shortcoming of mine. But Time Machine wouldn't help me with that if I didn't have an external drive plugged in, so that is just me making a decision to want to backup/clone more often.

I like how clones are *exact* copies of what you had, and that you can plug-and-play and not miss a beat.

This thread has helped me to see the differences better with Time Machine, although I still had some questions in post #24.

In summary, just exploring areas that I don't know so much about (e.g. Time Machine) and tryng to learn new things and get better at protecting my data - although I think I "get it" better than most.

And would love to hear your thoughts and recommendations!

 

[monokakata]

One of the (paid) jobs I do is design books for a handful of small publishers. Some jobs are on deadlines, some are not. Like you, I do my own versioning when I'm on a project. At various times I move the older versions into a project folder "Old," and they stay there for a longish time. Eventually -- a couple of months after I've finished -- I'll delete all the "Old" folders (interior, cover, ebooks, etc.) in that project. On very rare occasions, I've needed to look at something that I'd moved to "Old" and then deleted. Time Machine easily gets me to that material -- I restore the "Old" folder, and there it is.

I use IMAP mail mirrored on my Mac. I have sometimes needed an email that I've deleted, and Time Machine can get me that email.

Of course a backup strategy needs to take account of careless or stupid/foolish actions the user makes. We talk about accidents and disasters but what about imprudence? Not long ago I was on a really tight deadline for a Kindle, and when I ran one of Amazon's Kindle creation apps it asked to update itself and I unthinkingly agreed . . . the update didn't like the epub I was feeding it, and the new version had wiped out the old version. Time Machine to the rescue -- went to the last hourly backup and restored to the version that worked. And of course was angry at myself for having violated the rule of not updating anything until the project's complete.

What I like about TM is that it's set-and-forget, and that restoring something can be done very quickly. So for me, it's been the proverbial no-brainer. Big externals are cheap. My current TM backup dates from 2015 and is more than 4 TB -- to me, a TM backup is cheap insurance.

Edit -- what you asked in #24. All versions would be available to you, because to TM they are independent files. Only you know that they are successive versions of the same file.

 

[Ambrosia7177]

One of the (paid) jobs I do is design books for a handful of small publishers. Some jobs are on deadlines, some are not. Like you, I do my own versioning when I'm on a project. At various times I move the older versions into a project folder "Old," and they stay there for a longish time. Eventually -- a couple of months after I've finished -- I'll delete all the "Old" folders (interior, cover, ebooks, etc.) in that project. On very rare occasions, I've needed to look at something that I'd moved to "Old" and then deleted. Time Machine easily gets me to that material -- I restore the "Old" folder, and there it is.

Interesting!

What I like about TM is that it's set-and-forget, and that restoring something can be done very quickly. So for me, it's been the proverbial no-brainer. Big externals are cheap. My current TM backup dates from 2015 and is more than 4 TB -- to me, a TM backup is cheap insurance.

So you just leave an external hard-drive plugged into your computer, and you benefit from perpetual backups?

Edit -- what you asked in #24. All versions would be available to you, because to TM they are independent files. Only you know that they are successive versions of the same file.

To be clear, when you say "all" versions, I assume you mean...

In TM, I would be able to access "document.doc" (v01, v02, v03), as well as "document.doc" (v05, v06, v07). However, "document.doc" (v04) - which somehow became corrupt - would not be accessible.

Is that correct?

 

[monokakata]

Interesting!




So you just leave an external hard-drive plugged into your computer, and you benefit from perpetual backups?

Yes. That's all it takes. When I was running a classic Mac Pro, the TM drive was internal. Now I'm running an iMac with an OWC 4-bay Thunderbolt external, and my 6 TB TM drive is in one of the bays. I had a 4 TB drive there; when it filled up, I got a 6 TB drive, cloned the 4 to the 6, and that was that. Rocking on.

 

[Ambrosia7177]

Yes. That's all it takes. When I was running a classic Mac Pro, the TM drive was internal. Now I'm running an iMac with an OWC 4-bay Thunderbolt external, and my 6 TB TM drive is in one of the bays. I had a 4 TB drive there; when it filled up, I got a 6 TB drive, cloned the 4 to the 6, and that was that. Rocking on.

Oops, you replied before I could edit post #28.

Could you please respond to my last comment asking for clarification?

BTW, why are you using so much storage? Either you write an enormous amount, or I am thinking you are into photography or video as well?

 

[monokakata]

I believe that your v04 document would be accessible but -- because it was corrupted -- wouldn't be usable. But you could see it, I think, and recover it if you wanted to.

Unless the file system and TM in some way "know" that v04 has been corrupted, TM's just going to treat it the way it treats any other file. Perhaps someone who knows more about TM internals than I do can answer. But I do think that if the file looks OK to the file system as a file, it's treated just like any other file.

Yes, lots of storage: photo/video/audio and all kinds of archives. I'm running an iMac with a 1 TB SSD, so I don't have a lot of room on the iMac. In the 4 bay external there's a 1 TB ssd with images (RAW) that are fairly current but I don't have room for on the iMac, the 6 TB TM drive, a 6 TB "Stills" drive (which is regularly cloned to a 6 TB "Stills Clone" drive), and a 4 TB "Video-Audio" which gets cloned like the Stills drive. Then I have a 1 TB clone of the iMac drive.

Of course I could be more efficient. Absolutely. I don't have any trouble remembering the joyous day in 1983 when I got a 5 MB disk drive for my PDP-11. Then a 10. Then a 70, and so on. Once I got to multi-GB and then terabyte drives I got sloppy. I admit this.

 

[Ambrosia7177]

I believe that your v04 document would be accessible but -- because it was corrupted -- wouldn't be usable. But you could see it, I think, and recover it if you wanted to.

Unless the file system and TM in some way "know" that v04 has been corrupted, TM's just going to treat it the way it treats any other file. Perhaps someone who knows more about TM internals than I do can answer. But I do think that if the file looks OK to the file system as a file, it's treated just like any other file.

You misunderstood what I was trying to say... I was asking about what would happen if Time Machine (itself) ended up corrupting a file or failing to backup a file (e.g. "document.doc" (v04)).

While reading up on "incremental backups" last night, one website I visited implied that if one of your incremental backups in the chain failed, then anything after it would also fail, because the chain had been broken.

Maybe that was more with something like "version control" software where you need all of the pieces to put the puzzle (i.e. file) back together?

If every time a file(s) change, TM just saves the new version in a new folder, then it would seem like if one backup became corrupt, that what came before and after that would still be usable.

Yes, lots of storage: photo/video/audio and all kinds of archives. I'm running an iMac with a 1 TB SSD, so I don't have a lot of room on the iMac. In the 4 bay external there's a 1 TB ssd with images (RAW) that are fairly current but I don't have room for on the iMac, the 6 TB TM drive, a 6 TB "Stills" drive (which is regularly cloned to a 6 TB "Stills Clone" drive), and a 4 TB "Video-Audio" which gets cloned like the Stills drive. Then I have a 1 TB clone of the iMac drive.

Of course I could be more efficient. Absolutely. I don't have any trouble remembering the joyous day in 1983 when I got a 5 MB disk drive for my PDP-11. Then a 10. Then a 70, and so on. Once I got to multi-GB and then terabyte drives I got sloppy. I admit this.

Wow, interesting history lesson!

Glad that you have all of the storage you need in the modern world!

 

[monokakata]

Well . . . TM doesn't just save the entire new file each time, but I admit I don't know anything about its internals. So it could be that if TM damages a file, that the subsequent versions will be built on that damaged version.

Probably somebody knows enough to answer that question. I don't, so we'll have to wait for somebody to jump in and answer.

 

[casperes1996]

So you just leave an external hard-drive plugged into your computer, and you benefit from perpetual backups?

Or keep it on the network. Smart if your Mac gets stolen or whatnot - then your backup is still hidden somewhere else and not attached and lost with the system.

If every time a file(s) change, TM just saves the new version in a new folder, then it would seem like if one backup became corrupt, that what came before and after that would still be usable.

If TM for some reason skips over one file or somehow corrupts it, all the other versions are still accessible both forward and backwards in time. That said, I've never had TM corrupt any file (that I've found out about anyhow).

Another nice feature I'd like to add about TM, is that by default when you "Enter the Time Machine" it opens a Finder window with your backup and your current system side-by-side, if you have something like Pages open when you click to "Enter the Time Machine", it'll open the Time Machine for whatever you have open in a live view, so you can, without pulling them to your machine, go through your old versions of your documents, copy & paste, etc into the new one.

So if you have a Pages document you've been working on for a while, and you go back into its TM, you can copy something from v1 into your newest v9, copy a bit from v6, check up on a sentence from v5 and compare it to newer versions side-by-side and then decide to take the sentence from v7 into your newest doc. Cool ****

 

[Ambrosia7177]

Or keep it on the network. Smart if your Mac gets stolen or whatnot - then your backup is still hidden somewhere else and not attached and lost with the system.

If TM for some reason skips over one file or somehow corrupts it, all the other versions are still accessible both forward and backwards in time. That said, I've never had TM corrupt any file (that I've found out about anyhow).

Another nice feature I'd like to add about TM, is that by default when you "Enter the Time Machine" it opens a Finder window with your backup and your current system side-by-side, if you have something like Pages open when you click to "Enter the Time Machine", it'll open the Time Machine for whatever you have open in a live view, so you can, without pulling them to your machine, go through your old versions of your documents, copy & paste, etc into the new one.

So if you have a Pages document you've been working on for a while, and you go back into its TM, you can copy something from v1 into your newest v9, copy a bit from v6, check up on a sentence from v5 and compare it to newer versions side-by-side and then decide to take the sentence from v7 into your newest doc. Cool ****

@casperes1996, I am impressed by your responses and perspective. I especially like what you said at the end of your last response. (Maybe @monokakata will find some value in your workflow - assuming he doesn't already do that.)

Personally, I am still very happy with CCC, however, after everyone's thoughts in this thread, I am going to try and start using Time Machine in 2018 as well.

Thanks everyone for helping to help me better understand Time Machine!

 

[casperes1996]

Personally, I am still very happy with CCC, however, after everyone's thoughts in this thread, I am going to try and start using Time Machine in 2018 as well.

Both good tools that have their place. I think what I like the most about Time Machine though, is just that the software is already there on any Mac. It's a nice out of the box backup solution. Because I already had a Time Capsule on the network, when I bought my last Mac, I connected to the network, opened System Preferences for TM, selected my TM and it was backing up. No hunting for software or anything. Not that CCC is hard to find or anything, but still.

Thanks everyone for helping to help me better understand Time Machine!

You're welcome

 

[katetx]

I backup both my 1TB iMac as well as my 256GB MacBook Pro to a 2TB Time Capsule, and I've got about 8 months backed up or so.

Is Time Capsule the same as Time Machine? What's the difference/pros & cons? I'm trying to set up a backup strategy better than hit-or-miss. Next I'm going to look at photo library back up for my 10,000 photos, many of which are dupes!)

 

[Bart Kela]

Is Time Capsule the same as Time Machine? What's the difference/pros & cons? I'm trying to set up a backup strategy better than hit-or-miss. Next I'm going to look at photo library back up for my 10,000 photos, many of which are dupes!)

AirPort Time Capsule is a physical device that combines the function of a wireless router and a backup storage device. Apple still markets this device, but I do not recommend purchase at this time as Apple has apparently discontinued the AirPort product line and reassigned engineering staff to other parts of the organization. There is no expectation that Apple will release new versions; it's a dead end.

Time Machine is a software feature built into macOS that creates incremental backups, whether to a drive within an Apple computer or to third-party storage like an external disk drive.

If you search for "difference between time capsule and time machine" on a search engine, you will invariably find several discussions that potentially describe this in better detail.

In any case, here in late 2017, it is better seeking out third-party wireless routers (or using the one provided by your ISP) for wireless networking and third-party external storage solutions for your backup needs.

 

[370zulu]

I have a 2015 15" rMBP and my wife has a 2015 MBA. We use BackBlaze for offsite backup and a WD MyCloud EX2 Ultra (which recently replaced my Time Capsule) for local backups for each machine. I also use my rMBP with VMware Fusion 8 Pro. Virtual machines are sensitive to any kind of corruption, so I exclude those files from BackBlaze and from Time Machine backups. To back them up I have Carbon Copy Cloner and I copy them from the local SSD to a Nifty Drive in the SD card slot. Carbon Copy Cloner will let me run a shell script that verifies that the virtual machines that are being backed up are not in use - this way I can be fairly sure that there will not be any corruption of the backed up files.

3-2-1 Backup strategy is what I have decided is best for all of our data.

No matter what you decide to use as the tool to perform backups, the strategy should play nice with the tools chosen.