TimeMachine in 2021

[xmlninja]

Do you use time machine in 2021? Should I use time machine in 2021?

I don't know. I stopped use it one year ago when my MacBook broke and when restoring from my Time machine backup for temporary MacBook the time machine drive wasn't working properly.

I have a tweaked system with most configs on iCloud Drive. Now that I go the MacBook Pro m1 pro I just symlink my configs into my homedir, run some config scripts and install some packages from brew and I basically got an identical setup as my other Macs.

All work I do is in remote git repositories, which I push to daily so I don't have any local files Id be missing on a crash.

Question is of course, what happens when iCloud goes down or gets corrupt or hacked?

Well I wonder if Id be able to restore from a drive anyway given how built in iCloud is to the OS these days.

How do you manage backup and settings for your Mac?

 

[bradl]

Disclaimer: I’m a 27-year and still going Unix/Linux systems admin, network admin, and DBA.

One thing about your backups (that is actually the most important about backup) is that you are never safe in your backups as your latest RESTORE. That means that your backups don’t mean a thing unless you can test them in a restore. If your restore fails, then your backups don’t mean a damned thing except wasted space.

In my case, yes I still use Time Machine, and when needed I’ve blown my Mac away and restored completely from Time Machine. Each time a new version of MacOS comes out, I blow my Mac away, install from USB, then bring over all my apps, data, and settings from Time Machine. That way I’m testing the validity of my backups as well as restore process.

Besides, you also need to take into account if anything happens to those other places that have your data, or you’re in a place that can’t access them. Those scenarios are valid reasons to have your own backups. Besides; cloud storage is great for convenience, but to totally depend on them to handle everything for you may not be a good idea.

Politically, it’s a dangerous game, because once your data is on their servers, it is no longer your data; it is their data. Their service is to have it available for you, yes; but if they closed up shop, they could legally take that data and not have to give it back.

But time machine? Definitely used here.

BL.

 

[theramajor]

Do you use time machine in 2021? Should I use time machine in 2021?

I don't know. I stopped use it one year ago when my MacBook broke and when restoring from my Time machine backup for temporary MacBook the time machine drive wasn't working properly.

I have a tweaked system with most configs on iCloud Drive. Now that I go the MacBook Pro m1 pro I just symlink my configs into my homedir, run some config scripts and install some packages from brew and I basically got an identical setup as my other Macs.

All work I do is in remote git repositories, which I push to daily so I don't have any local files Id be missing on a crash.

Question is of course, what happens when iCloud goes down or gets corrupt or hacked?

Well I wonder if Id be able to restore from a drive anyway given how built in iCloud is to the OS these days.

How do you manage backup and settings for your Mac?

After deleting some important files that took me days to recover I'm paranoid about backups. I use Carbon Copy Cloner to make bootable backups of my Mac. I also use Time Machine in case CCC craps out but CCC has been solid thus far.