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Eventually, I also fell victim to TimeMachine’s reliability issues
- Thread starter VitoBotta
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I like Time Machine for continuous backups, but more and more I'm seeing the need for a second form of backup, especially after I lost some files to accidental deletion and discovered that Time Machine had pruned backups up to a point where the missing files were no longer backed up. (That's on me, not Time Machine, as I just didn't have a big enough drive). So I'm considering the following on my iMac:
1. Time Machine drive attached 24/7, set for daily backups - first line of defense for something I need to restore quickly. This would also be what I'd use with Migration Assistant in the event of a hardware failure.
2. Carbon Copy Cloner clone kept at work, brought home once a month - for use in case #1 fails. Gaps between backups would be plugged by #3 below and iCloud Drive.
3. Carbon Copy Cloner backup of *just* my home directory. The idea here is that I'm using a large enough drive to have as long a backup history as possible. The size of my home directory is about 400 GB, and the drive is 1 TB. Thinking I might expand this to a 2 TB drive for more backup history.
I figure this gives me at any moment multiple copies of anything, lots of history of my home folder, and an offsite clone in case of disaster. Also pretty much all of my most important data is synced with iCloud Drive, which could help in some circumstances.
As far as Time Machine, I also am starting to wonder how many of the more recent issues I've had with it stem from the fact that I'm using HDDs for backup, and APFS plays quite poorly with them. Howard Oakley of Eclectic Light Company has done some very deep dives into this and I'm inclined to believe him when he says:
1. Time Machine drive attached 24/7, set for daily backups - first line of defense for something I need to restore quickly. This would also be what I'd use with Migration Assistant in the event of a hardware failure.
2. Carbon Copy Cloner clone kept at work, brought home once a month - for use in case #1 fails. Gaps between backups would be plugged by #3 below and iCloud Drive.
3. Carbon Copy Cloner backup of *just* my home directory. The idea here is that I'm using a large enough drive to have as long a backup history as possible. The size of my home directory is about 400 GB, and the drive is 1 TB. Thinking I might expand this to a 2 TB drive for more backup history.
I figure this gives me at any moment multiple copies of anything, lots of history of my home folder, and an offsite clone in case of disaster. Also pretty much all of my most important data is synced with iCloud Drive, which could help in some circumstances.
As far as Time Machine, I also am starting to wonder how many of the more recent issues I've had with it stem from the fact that I'm using HDDs for backup, and APFS plays quite poorly with them. Howard Oakley of Eclectic Light Company has done some very deep dives into this and I'm inclined to believe him when he says:
[source]
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Huh? Migration Assistant is incredibly reliable and thorough in my experience. I just used it for a Mac-to-Mac migration a few months ago and it was fast and yielded a perfect copy of my old iMac onto my new one. I've used it many times in the past as well, usually via a Time Machine backup made immediately prior to retiring the old Mac.
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Just based on forum posts here, I think most of the people having Time Machine (TM) problems are using it to backup over the network like you are to your NAS.
I have used TM for years to a directly attached USB drive and never had a problem.
As far as my backup strategy, I have one attached SSD for TM, a second SSD attached for daily CCC backups, then I use Arq app to backup my users folder to BackBlaze B2 servers.
Arq encrypts the data as the backup occurs, so even if somehow the data on BackBlaze was accessed by evil doers, all they would see is jibberish.
Like you I used TimeMachine for years via Apple TimeCapsule without issue then it failed spectacularly (TimeCapsule was purchased coincidentally with an iMac. The iMac HD failed on the Friday before tax due date on Monday. Apple Genius Bar replaced the HD on Sunday afternoon. Sunday evening the TC HD failed during attempted restore from backup. Luckily the TC HD failure was due to a bad controller board and Apple Genius Bar was able to salvage the disk on Monday in time to file taxes before 11:59pm. Apple made things right by replacing my 3 year old top of the line iMac with a brand top-of-the line iMac, and new TC. The Genius Bar engineer then asked me why don’t I just use iCloud to backup my data instead of TC/TM? His logic was that iCloud was likely more reliable than any local backup option and it was easy enough to reinstall macOS and apps. I followed his advice and have not lost a file or data in the 12+ years of relying on iCloud for secure, reliable data backup.I've been using TimeMachine for years without any problems. I used to defend it all the time whenever people complained about it thinking it was garbage...
Well, I changed my mind
In the past, I successfully restored a few times, but this time when I needed something urgent, I couldn't restore anything. I kept getting random errors for backups stored on an AsuStor NAS, despite having a healthy RAID 1 volume and TimeMachine verifying its backup files correctly.
Luckily, I had other backups (I’m a bit paranoid about backups, so I have different destinations for them both onsite and offsite).
After that incident, I got rid of TimeMachine, formatted the NAS, and set up restic instead. It’s very fast and reliable—not just for me, it has a great reputation—and it hasn't failed me in years when used on servers for critical data.
I used to like TimeMachine because you could use its backups with Setup Assistant to switch Macs, but I have a license for Carbon Copy Cloner which serves the same purpose. So that’s another option available now for restoring from backup files.
Right now, my backup strategy looks like this:
1) Onsite
- Clone to USB hard drive using Carbon Copy Cloner 7.
- Restic to AsuStor NAS
2) Offsite
- Restic to Storj and iDrive e2.
- My most important data is also stored on my Nextcloud instance (managed by Hetzner), with everything synced across two Macs.
Have you had issues with TimeMachine too, and what's your current backup strategy?
No, no, no, no, actually a small number on iCloud, no (streaming after iTunes Match lost everything), no
In my experience TM is great free tool, when used correctly and with proper expectations. Its value is that it is included, free and easy to setup. There is really no excuse not to have AT LEAST TM, when you have Mac...
TM on local disk (=usb disk) works reasonably well and reasonably reliable. Its default setup is easy to use for anyone and is useful incremental backup.
TM is SLOW for anything, plan for that.
TM is great to restore occasionally files from past - which got accidentally lost or when older version is needed.
TM for whole system restore is pain to use, even on local TM disk and especially over network. But generally shoudl work.
If restore is planned, use CCC or DiskDuper to make simple copy on external disk and restore from there, it will be much faster and easier.
TM over network (NAS) is unreliable, awfully slow and should be avoided. Especially on wifi... To be fair, that is probably true about most network based backups as including the network does not improve anything.
TM should not be trusted as the only backup mechanism. At least two TM backups should be alternating, if the data value is more than trivial.
Other type of whole system backup should be used for higher value data.
TM disks structures should be expected to fail occasionally (when they get too complicated), in which case TM disk should be removed from use and either stored (I have TM disks back to 2007, "if needed") or reformatted. New TM needs to be started; attempts for repairs have never worked for me (and took forever to run).
***
NOTE: iCloud, NAS, and other network services are NOT backups. At least not long term backups. That is not their primary purpose.
File deleted from Mac drive will get deleted from iCloud (NAS, other cloud services) and, depending on the versioning policy there, eventually all versions will get deleted at some point. Typically, that policy is month or so, obviously varies. My current TM HD backups go years back, one 7/2023, the other 9/2024. My saved Hard drives with TM backups go back to 2007.
TM on local disk (=usb disk) works reasonably well and reasonably reliable. Its default setup is easy to use for anyone and is useful incremental backup.
TM is SLOW for anything, plan for that.
TM is great to restore occasionally files from past - which got accidentally lost or when older version is needed.
TM for whole system restore is pain to use, even on local TM disk and especially over network. But generally shoudl work.
If restore is planned, use CCC or DiskDuper to make simple copy on external disk and restore from there, it will be much faster and easier.
TM over network (NAS) is unreliable, awfully slow and should be avoided. Especially on wifi... To be fair, that is probably true about most network based backups as including the network does not improve anything.
TM should not be trusted as the only backup mechanism. At least two TM backups should be alternating, if the data value is more than trivial.
Other type of whole system backup should be used for higher value data.
TM disks structures should be expected to fail occasionally (when they get too complicated), in which case TM disk should be removed from use and either stored (I have TM disks back to 2007, "if needed") or reformatted. New TM needs to be started; attempts for repairs have never worked for me (and took forever to run).
***
NOTE: iCloud, NAS, and other network services are NOT backups. At least not long term backups. That is not their primary purpose.
File deleted from Mac drive will get deleted from iCloud (NAS, other cloud services) and, depending on the versioning policy there, eventually all versions will get deleted at some point. Typically, that policy is month or so, obviously varies. My current TM HD backups go years back, one 7/2023, the other 9/2024. My saved Hard drives with TM backups go back to 2007.
Geez, why have a computer at all?😂 living for the moment, huh?
Is there still an option to format a HDD as HFS+? At least up to Monterey the boot SSD could be APFS and a second HDD could be HFS+. I'm not sure about Sequoia. My laptop is backed up to a Linux box and has no Time Machine drive.
I think TM is great, but only as a versioning system, enabling you to find files you've previously deleted. For that, its interface is outstanding (though slow).
But I don't consider it a backup. Not at all. Even though I have it on a directly-attached drive, it gets corrupted far too often.
TM's versioning capabilities significantly increase complexity, and the more complex something is, the more likely it is to fail.
Thus I have a directly-attached drive with TM, and a second directly-attached drive with CCC. In addition, I have a pair of portable drives, also with CCC—one is kept at home, and the other is kept in my safety deposit box. When I want to update the one in the safety deposit box, I swap it out with the one at home.
But I don't consider it a backup. Not at all. Even though I have it on a directly-attached drive, it gets corrupted far too often.
TM's versioning capabilities significantly increase complexity, and the more complex something is, the more likely it is to fail.
Thus I have a directly-attached drive with TM, and a second directly-attached drive with CCC. In addition, I have a pair of portable drives, also with CCC—one is kept at home, and the other is kept in my safety deposit box. When I want to update the one in the safety deposit box, I swap it out with the one at home.
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I’ve used migration assistant from time machine backups many times and never had an issue
To and fro from Intel Mac to hackintosh to apple silicon and it always works as expected
back 4 years or so ago my Aperture library (probably around 70k photos at the time) crashed, I had used TM as a backup (USB attached HDD) but was unable to restore (there's a post of mine here somewhere). That's when I ditched TM and switched to CCC. I was able to retrieve the original photos but lost all metadata.
Yes. Both GUI and command line Disk Utility support HFS+.
/System/Library/Filesystems/hfs.fs/Contents/Info.plist
Code:
<key>Case-sensitive HFS+</key>
<key>Case-sensitive Journaled HFS+</key>
<key>HFS</key>
<key>HFS+</key>
<key>Journaled HFS+</key>
ADD: what you can no longer do encrypt new HFS volumes.
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I might be the outlier here, but I’ve been using TimeMachine for as long as can remember, without a single hitch! I mean, I had disks fail (not TM’s fault), but just replaced it and started a new backup (the Mac had no problem).
I have replaced several Macs throughout the years and always got my data from the old to new one by using TimeMachine. Probably since my Mac Mini G4…
I have replaced several Macs throughout the years and always got my data from the old to new one by using TimeMachine. Probably since my Mac Mini G4…
I use two Time Machine disks, both always connected and working in rotation.I've been using TimeMachine for years without any problems. I used to defend it all the time whenever people complained about it thinking it was garbage...
Well, I changed my mind
In the past, I successfully restored a few times, but this time when I needed something urgent, I couldn't restore anything. I kept getting random errors for backups stored on an AsuStor NAS, despite having a healthy RAID 1 volume and TimeMachine verifying its backup files correctly.
Luckily, I had other backups (I’m a bit paranoid about backups, so I have different destinations for them both onsite and offsite).
After that incident, I got rid of TimeMachine, formatted the NAS, and set up restic instead. It’s very fast and reliable—not just for me, it has a great reputation—and it hasn't failed me in years when used on servers for critical data.
I used to like TimeMachine because you could use its backups with Setup Assistant to switch Macs, but I have a license for Carbon Copy Cloner which serves the same purpose. So that’s another option available now for restoring from backup files.
Right now, my backup strategy looks like this:
1) Onsite
- Clone to USB hard drive using Carbon Copy Cloner 7.
- Restic to AsuStor NAS
2) Offsite
- Restic to Storj and iDrive e2.
- My most important data is also stored on my Nextcloud instance (managed by Hetzner), with everything synced across two Macs.
Have you had issues with TimeMachine too, and what's your current backup strategy?
One daily CCC backup at 7am, on another disk, always connected.
One monthly CCC backup held off-site, on yet another disk.
iCloud synchronisation.
Old school guy running TM and rsync backups of folders.
Had always considered CCC but wondered if it’s just easier than rsync?
Cloud backup I’ve been against for all the reasons above, mostly encryption. Played with Cryptomator but not seen Arq until now. Not sure of benefits vs drawbacks between but I just know encryption means decryption for data restore so I would not want to solely rely on it; just like TM.
Had always considered CCC but wondered if it’s just easier than rsync?
Cloud backup I’ve been against for all the reasons above, mostly encryption. Played with Cryptomator but not seen Arq until now. Not sure of benefits vs drawbacks between but I just know encryption means decryption for data restore so I would not want to solely rely on it; just like TM.
Time Machine has been notorious for silent corruption for years, and it’s especially unreliable over the network (losing the connection or sleeping during a backup are problematic).I've been using TimeMachine for years without any problems. I used to defend it all the time whenever people complained about it thinking it was garbage...
Well, I changed my mind
In the past, I successfully restored a few times, but this time when I needed something urgent, I couldn't restore anything. I kept getting random errors for backups stored on an AsuStor NAS, despite having a healthy RAID 1 volume and TimeMachine verifying its backup files correctly.
Luckily, I had other backups (I’m a bit paranoid about backups, so I have different destinations for them both onsite and offsite).
After that incident, I got rid of TimeMachine, formatted the NAS, and set up restic instead. It’s very fast and reliable—not just for me, it has a great reputation—and it hasn't failed me in years when used on servers for critical data.
I used to like TimeMachine because you could use its backups with Setup Assistant to switch Macs, but I have a license for Carbon Copy Cloner which serves the same purpose. So that’s another option available now for restoring from backup files.
Right now, my backup strategy looks like this:
1) Onsite
- Clone to USB hard drive using Carbon Copy Cloner 7.
- Restic to AsuStor NAS
2) Offsite
- Restic to Storj and iDrive e2.
- My most important data is also stored on my Nextcloud instance (managed by Hetzner), with everything synced across two Macs.
Have you had issues with TimeMachine too, and what's your current backup strategy?
That said, I do still use it, but mostly for ‘oh bleep, I didn’t mean to delete that’ kinds of things rather than a full restore. I actually disable it if I’m traveling for an extended period of time because of how Apple changed it to work on APFS - it snapshots the whole drive, you can’t exclude files, so when I use VM’s while traveling, it eats free space, and the snapshot deletion doesn’t work reliably (you can mitigate it by putting the VM’s into a sparse bundle so it only snapshots the segments that actually changed vs the whole multi-gig virtual disk).
I use CCC for a daily clone and periodic secondary full clones, but without snapshots. Those are my total restore backups (just make sure you remove the archived backup folders before restoring, otherwise you blow up your new machine’s storage with the archive folders). They aren’t bootable, but that’s much less an issue anymore - and migration runs much faster from a clone than it does over the wire.
For critical data, I use backblaze with my own encryption keys. The only thing I can’t backup to it are virtual machines, so those get a second local periodic backup (in a disaster, I’ll just rebuild them).
I have CCC (it's great software, much easier and safer to use than rsync) but barely use it any more. Time Machine to three Time Capsules. Yes, the Apple ones, still going strong. Two of them have had new HDDs, which was easy on the "square flat" TC and not so easy, but achievable, on the "tower" one. They work perfectly, and yes, I have tried and succeeded in using them for restoration.
Photos, videos and music are copied to a Mac Mini 2014 (because it takes internal drives) acting as a low-energy server, with a 4TB Sandisk SSD internally, which itself is backed up to an 8TB TC. This replaced a reliable but noisy and energy-inefficient N54L HP micro server with 4xWD Red drives running ZFS.
Additional copies of the photos and music are made to external drives "just in case" but I've never had to use them. It's all hands-off and easy to setup and use, even my family can use it on their MacBooks and iMacs.
TM is probably not one of Apple's priorities, as iCloud is their "solution", but I do appreciate that they keep it going. Let's be honest, 99.9% of Mac users (the ones who don't post on MR) just use iCloud, and aren't going to futz about with NAS, CCC or other home-brew solutions that take any time. TM was a great offer to them, back in the days before iCloud, to make something simple.
Photos, videos and music are copied to a Mac Mini 2014 (because it takes internal drives) acting as a low-energy server, with a 4TB Sandisk SSD internally, which itself is backed up to an 8TB TC. This replaced a reliable but noisy and energy-inefficient N54L HP micro server with 4xWD Red drives running ZFS.
Additional copies of the photos and music are made to external drives "just in case" but I've never had to use them. It's all hands-off and easy to setup and use, even my family can use it on their MacBooks and iMacs.
TM is probably not one of Apple's priorities, as iCloud is their "solution", but I do appreciate that they keep it going. Let's be honest, 99.9% of Mac users (the ones who don't post on MR) just use iCloud, and aren't going to futz about with NAS, CCC or other home-brew solutions that take any time. TM was a great offer to them, back in the days before iCloud, to make something simple.
I came to using Mac as a tired linux user, never looked at TimeMachine. My only automatic solution is simply using iCloud, but I do regular backups:
1. Everything to AWS S3, large, replaceable files included. The important files go to a versioned bucket. Just an easy sync command with aws cli, no prepaid storage quota, I just pay for what I use. I might write a cron job to do it autmatically, but it needs to detect which network it is connected to, and I was too lazy.
2. Most important things (documents, pictures, etc) get backed up to an encrypted external drive (rsync) and to Proton Drive (manually uploading zips). Luckily these fit into the basic storage quota that comes with Mail Plus.
3. Source codes, LateX documents in private GitHub repos.
This is vague. What do you mean by "Time Machine verifying its backup files correctly"?
If these were other Time Machine backups, then Time Machine worked just fine.
This setup doesn't protect against ransomware's (maybe there's not one yet for mac, but you wouldn't wanna be the first victim), I'd use at least one method that can't be accessed by malicious code running on your Mac. Like a weekly backup to a drive that's only connected for the duration of the backup.
I wonder if all these TM issues are related to having TM Backups stored on a network device, ie a NAS.....
I have been using TM fine for years, although I only use a local SSD - never on a network drive.
I have used TM for general file restores, as well as system migrations when changing/upgrading systems.
Saying that, I do keep a SuperDuper clone alongside on another drive as well.....
I have been using TM fine for years, although I only use a local SSD - never on a network drive.
I have used TM for general file restores, as well as system migrations when changing/upgrading systems.
Saying that, I do keep a SuperDuper clone alongside on another drive as well.....