Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Two backups? (TM and CCC)

Calby

Calby

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Dec 30, 2015
332
40
Sweden, Gävle
Hi,
I'm setting up a backup system for my MBP now.
I have a 500GB harddrive in my router that I currently use for Time Machine backups, mainly because if I need to revert back a file or something.

But I also got a USB 3.1 SSD drive with 256GB (the same size that the SSD on my MBP) and I'm wondering if I should use it for CCC?
It should bee nice to know that if my MBP crashes I can just plug the external drive in to an other MBP and run the system.

But I have some questions regarding the CCC.
Can I exclude folders in the backup?
Does CCC write over the prevues backup or does it make a new IMG file every time?
 
Calby said:
Thanks, this sounds good and I'll use CCC as my other backup.

Got it on a external ssd so it's fast :)
Click to expand...
Just be aware of it's limitations. Yes, it gets you up and running. But because it is an exact copy it can copy flaws too. So it's not nearly as robust as the versioned, TM backup, where you can go back further and further to get past the problem. Usually you want to freeze the clone at a point where you were absolutely sure it was rock solid; if it were to say auto-clone just after an update, for example, and that update had problems, now you got two wonky drives and ONE backup.
 
Calby said:
Hi,
I'm setting up a backup system for my MBP now.
I have a 500GB harddrive in my router that I currently use for Time Machine backups, mainly because if I need to revert back a file or something.

But I also got a USB 3.1 SSD drive with 256GB (the same size that the SSD on my MBP) and I'm wondering if I should use it for CCC?
It should bee nice to know that if my MBP crashes I can just plug the external drive in to an other MBP and run the system....
Click to expand...

I do basically what you’re considering with my MBP which I use between two locations.
I have the data on the internal MBP drive.
Then I have three USB3 drives.

Drive 1 stays at location 1 and is a backup using CCC. (Incremental and bootable)
Drive 2 stays at location 2 and is a backup using CCC. (Incremental and bootable)
Drive 3 travels in my MBP bag with me and is a backup using TM. I do not do continuous TM backups but only periodic (self initiated) ones. But I typically do that backup prior to moving locations.

Backups, after the initial one, typically take only about 5 minutes.

All have various levels of encryption but that’s a different discussion.
 
What do you think are the best solution, having the TM on my external SSD or should I have the CCC backup on the external SSD?

Which one should I have on my network drive?

The CCC backup are backing up once a day.

I have the external SSD attached to the MBP almost all the time, so it's not an issue regarding that it's not attached.
 
Calby said:
I have the external SSD attached to the MBP almost all the time, so it's not an issue regarding that it's not attached.
Click to expand...

I think you will find that almost all of us who use both CCC and TM, leave the TM disk attached full time for the hourly, incremental backups... then attach the CCC drive occasionally for the clones. That is what I do.
 
  • Like
Reactions: ignatius345, simonsi and Jayderek
Weaselboy said:
I think you will find that almost all of us who use both CCC and TM, leave the TM disk attached full time for the hourly, incremental backups... then attach the CCC drive occasionally for the clones. That is what I do.
Click to expand...
Weaselboy said:
I think you will find that almost all of us who use both CCC and TM, leave the TM disk attached full time for the hourly, incremental backups... then attach the CCC drive occasionally for the clones. That is what I do.
Click to expand...


So you have the ccc on the external drive then or?
 
Weaselboy said:
I have two drives, both external. One for TM and another for CCC. That way my backups are not dependent on one piece of hardware (the one drive).
Click to expand...

I have one external drive that I'll have with me all the time almost and one attached to my home network.
 
Calby said:
I have one external drive that I'll have with me all the time almost and one attached to my home network.
Click to expand...
If that is all you have to work with, I would use the external drive for CCC (so you could boot to it if need be), then the networked drive for TM. This is assuming your networked drive is on hardware that works with TM, because this has been a problematic area for many users.
 
  • Like
Reactions: ignatius345 and paulCC
I use CCC exclusively because of reliability problems I've had with TM across many versions of macOS. The one nice thing about TM was the ability to go "back in time" to get a non-squiffed version of a file. My limited work-around, which works for me, is to have seven backups on my backup server (a Mini), one for each day of the week. I use CCC to back up my entire main user directory and a few critical data filesystems each night to that day's backup copy. So using this I can at least go back a week. The normal use-case for me is that I accidently step on a file (or sometimes a directory, 'rm *' and all that) and this lets me go back a few days to recover. Given CCC's reliability I've never had this fail me.
 
Yes. Two backups is the way to go.
Set CCC or SuperDuper! to make a BU every Sunday night.
I've had Time Machine go south on me several times now.
It's nice when it works, but counting on TM alone is a fool's strategy.
 
  • Like
Reactions: ignatius345
I've done backup professionally since 1988, from very small stuff to massive enterprise stuff, and I would agree with you - have one backup that enables you to get back individual files but keeps a lot of history (TM) and an image-based backup that allows you to get back a working machine quickly, but doesn't need a long backup history (CC).

I would however test both backups and make sure they work. If you can't recover it's pointless. :)
 
  • Like
Reactions: ignatius345 and Partron22
shaunp said:
I would however test both backups and make sure they work. If you can't recover it's pointless. :)
Click to expand...
I can't tell you the number of times in the past I thought I was backed up, only to find out that my backups didn't work. So you are spot on. I now use a combination of backups as you describe and test occasionally to make sure they are all functional. Of course, since implementing this whole system, I haven't had a need to use it. :)
 
mic j said:
I can't tell you the number of times in the past I thought I was backed up, only to find out that my backups didn't work. So you are spot on. I now use a combination of backups as you describe and test occasionally to make sure they are all functional. Of course, since implementing this whole system, I haven't had a need to use it. :)
Click to expand...

It's always the way - you only need it if you don't have it. Better safe than sorry though.
 
Weaselboy said:
I think you will find that almost all of us who use both CCC and TM, leave the TM disk attached full time for the hourly, incremental backups... then attach the CCC drive occasionally for the clones. That is what I do.
Click to expand...

Me too. The bootable clone generally only gets updated once I am sure a major change (OSX update etc), is solid.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Weaselboy
One weak point of your plan is that it relies on local backup. If your place gets burglarized, or burns down, your data is gone.

If you have a reasonably fast Internet access you should consider an offline backup like Crashplan. That is what I use in addition to Timemachine to an Synology NAS and CCC to a SSD in an USB3 enclosure.

Calby said:
Hi,
I'm setting up a backup system for my MBP now.
I have a 500GB harddrive in my router that I currently use for Time Machine backups, mainly because if I need to revert back a file or something.

But I also got a USB 3.1 SSD drive with 256GB (the same size that the SSD on my MBP) and I'm wondering if I should use it for CCC?
It should bee nice to know that if my MBP crashes I can just plug the external drive in to an other MBP and run the system.

But I have some questions regarding the CCC.
Can I exclude folders in the backup?
Does CCC write over the prevues backup or does it make a new IMG file every time?
Click to expand...
 
paulCC said:
One weak point of your plan is that it relies on local backup. If your place gets burglarized, or burns down, your data is gone.

If you have a reasonably fast Internet access you should consider an offline backup like Crashplan. That is what I use in addition to Timemachine to an Synology NAS and CCC to a SSD in an USB3 enclosure.
Click to expand...

I would normally recommend this approach too, but not always for home users due to poor broadband upload speeds. If you have several terabytes of stuff you are never getting that offsite with ADSL. Better to just use a second USB disk.
 
Weaselboy said:
I think you will find that almost all of us who use both CCC and TM, leave the TM disk attached full time for the hourly, incremental backups... then attach the CCC drive occasionally for the clones. That is what I do.
Click to expand...
Same here. I keep the CCC drives (two of them, one for my internal, one for my external media drive) OFFSITE, at my office. If something terrible happened at home (fire, theft) I'd have a full clone less than 30 days old, and any meaningful gaps would be filled by syncing with iCloud and Dropbox.

Oh, and since the CCC drives are kept at work, I encrypted them using the Mac's built-in system, so if anybody steals those, they're just getting the hardware, not my data.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Weaselboy
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back