Eventually, I also fell victim to TimeMachine’s reliability issues

[MacBH928]

It runs in background without docker on your Mac.

this looks like an awesome solution. Its foss, its Multiplatform, it backs up to any cloud, it encrypts and looks like its easy enough to setup. And unlike cryptomator, does not require me to install mac-fuse to mess my macos system.

dd creates a byte level "copy" so its great for cloning media (HD's,etc) since it preserves the disks state byte by byte. There are plenty of free command line tools that can replace backup/duplication apps (rsync, rdiff, ditto....)

interesting, so it can do bootable copies ?

dd is most often run from the command line, in Terminal. It can copy anything, but I believe the suggestion is that @poi ran is copying a full volume to a destination volume, since they mentioned "backup OS" in their post.

And as you said, if used that way, every backup writes the full volume to the destination every time it is run. I don't know much about how that would impact longevity of the target if one were to back up frequently. Of course if the backup is interrupted or fails in some way, you've completely lost your last backup to that destination and have nothing.

dd is a particularly poor choice if done incorrectly. Just copying from a volume where active processes might be writing will result in a backup that probably is internally inconsistent or even unreadable. Backup tools like Carbon Copy and Time Machine take a volume snapshot and back up that snapshot.

If one were to use dd to backup a volume that's in use, then a snapshot should be taken, the snapshot mounted, and that volume be selected as the source of the backup. Carbon Copy and Time Machine can make snapshots on demand.

rsync is a more efficient choice since only changes are written to the destination. Also, a failure or interruption does not corrupt the entire destination volume. rsync has the same issue with regard to needing a snapshot, but the severity of that depends on the scope of what you're trying to copy. For example, backing up ~/Library would be vulnerable to changes during the copy.

Using Finder to make backups maybe also has the problem that files could be written to during the copy. I found

File exclusive access on macOS | Apple Developer Forums

developer.apple.com

You are right about files that are getting updated live. You say they create a "snapshot" , how does that work? do they freeze the current hard drive directories + files , create a copy, then backup from that? that will easily need double size the storage. I am sure there is a smarter way to do this. CCC developer said you can even continue to use the machine while you do the backup no problem.

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I am looking for options and its overwhelming. I already found rsync, rdiff-backup, borg, rsnapshot each with its own different functions, hieroglyphics commands and perplexing lingo like "initialize a repository" AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH. Why can't they do it simple like SuperDuper : Copy "X" To "Y" , click "Copy Now" . Further more, why not create a GUI?

I do not want to sound entitled, but I am willing to pay for a reliable working application even if its FOSS. Just make my life easier not harder.

 

[agregson]

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.

TM and rsync here also - older M2 mini with local drive is my backup computer and host. Local external 2TB SSD and 4TB HDD. TM to SSD, rsync to SSD and HDD from Documents and Photos via Photos backup Anywhere then rsync HDD to remote HDD. Also using Arq as additional backup and for very clean interface to browse backups and restore files. Arq also backups to Arq and Google Cloud. Backup mini also has advantage of a place to keep copies of all iCloud data downloaded for backup and a very reliable file and TM share for my primary M4 mini and MBA.

I had an issue with a memory leak on Arq and stopped using for a while but it appears to have been resolved so back in the mix.

 

[svenmany]

You say they create a "snapshot" , how does that work? do they freeze the current hard drive directories + files , create a copy, then backup from that? that will easily need double size the storage. I am sure there is a smarter way to do this. CCC developer said you can even continue to use the machine while you do the backup no problem.

A snapshot doesn't create a copy. After the snapshot is done, files that are subsequently written to are copied. I enjoyed this:

APFS: Snapshots – MacMegasite

macmegasite.com

It mentions that snapshot creation takes .01 seconds.

Carbon Copy and Time Machine allow you to use the machine while the backup is in progress because they are backing up the snapshot which is not being modified by your activities. CCC deletes its snapshot once the backup is done. Time Machine does not do that right away, but eventually prunes them; I seem to have 24 hours of snapshots at the moment. You can see all your snapshots in Disk Utility.

 

[Bregalad]

I'm impressed by how thorough you all are about your backups. I dare say that most users have no backup system whatsoever.

Oh they may use iCloud, but that's a synchronization tool, NOT a backup system. If a file is altered/corrupted or accidentally deleted on any device that change is propagated to iCloud and then to every other device. So even though a file might exist in 4 different places, it's really just one copy that's 4x as vulnerable as it would be if it was being manually copied to other devices and/or cloud accounts.

Years ago I was completely paranoid: manual copies on internal and external drives plus TM and CCC backups on external drives rotated between home, work and a trusted family member.

Then I got lazy and was down to just a single TM hard drive that died last year.

I'm finally getting serious about protecting my stuff again and this thread has helped me choose backup options going forward.