Mac back up.
Posted by: lutyens on 29 October 2015
I use Time Machine as you do and I also just copy whole folders to a mobile hard drive every two weeks or so, but I wanted to start using a second back up system that might make that simpler and one that is frankly easier to find my way through than Time Machine. TM seems to great if you want to simply restore everything but finding anything in it is incredibly difficult.
What do others use? Any recommendations?
many thanks
I use Time Machine and also regularly backup with Carbon Copy, which is a great program. It has the advantage of producing a bootable copy of your whole computer. Very flexible, highly recommended.
+1 for Carbon Copy. Very flexible and does what it says on the tin.
Only ever needed TM myself, had a HD fail in an iMac, got a new HD fitted by local Apple repair place in Bristol, connected TM HD, it was recognised immediately and within 60-80 minutes all was back to normal, including 15k of pictures!
TL;DR 3 pronged attack in my case. Time Machine, Carbon Copy Cloner and Crashplan online backup.
Since Mountain Lion it's been possible to use 2 volumes for Time Machine thus providing some additional redundancy. Mine is setup to alternate between a Pegasus R6 Thundebolt RAID array, and a Synology NAS.
Like @tonym I also use Carbon Copy Cloner. Mine runs on a portable Thunderbolt drive and clones my system daily at midnight. Finally I use Crashplan for offsite backups. I find the service excellent, but I don't like the Java app.
My backup strategy similar to yours Greg; I've two NAS in different locations backing up with Time Machine, a separate LaCie HD that backs up once a week using Carbon Copy Cloner and is kept elsewhere, and also Crashplan. The latter takes a l o n g time to backup my files though.
On a more positive note, I put the stuff that matters into the documents folder. Then use a free app called 'Mac Drop Any' to sync this with cloud storage (I use Dropbox, but it's supposed to work with others.) In effect, my documents folder and Dropbox are one and the same thing. As well as having a backup function, I can access the folder from any computer or iOS device.
Thank you all. Very helpful. I will investigate Carbon Copy.
All files I need to preserve, are copied into a rugged 1TB LaCie that I have almost always connected to the computer, and that one, I backup into other rugged 1TB LaCie using SuperDuper which is a very fast very ease to use disk copying software. I use it in a way that only copies new or modified files.
I use rugged LaCie because I usually move one of them to my office or when traveling and at least in my case have been reliable (not cheap). Many HDD are not manufactured to be "mobile" disks.Time ago using other brand I lost almost all my ripped music. After a long process I recovered most files but without the file structure and without original names. I decided to rip again my cd's and lost most of the mp3's that I never missed.
Regards.
Erich
I use Chronosync, which does exactly what you would think it does from its name! Very similar to SyncBack Pro on Windows
I use it to to 'mirror' various drives/directories, so that if I make changes on the source directory, be it add or delete files, then the changes will be transferred to the backup. Should anything happen to the original, then it's a simple process to copy the data back.
It all depends whether you want to keep a record of your current status, or backups in case you change your mind