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Good alternatives to Time Machine

Zaroff

Zaroff

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Sep 23, 2016
24
7
Hi all,

Anyone knows of a viable, practical and efficient alternative to TM?
This is THE worst piece of backup software I've ever had the displeasure of using, and I'm basically fed up wasting so much time with it. I don't mean only the snail pace of the backup itself -that is, when it works, but I can't keep count of the times it got stuck, frozen, or basically not working at all. What a piece of crap.

Any suggestions welcome...

Thx
 
Thanks for the suggestion. Ideally, I'd aim for something that backups more or less continuously, as TM theoretically does, incrementally.
 
I haven't had any issues with TM myself. Works, and even helped me recover a family system with it. When does it freeze or crash on you if you dont' mind me asking?
 
Hanging mid-backup, freezing, plain not starting, getting stuck on preparing backup even though the last one was one hour ago, the works. I'm just fed up wasting time troubleshooting it over and over again.
Extreme solution is regularly wiping out the backup disk and starting from scratch. Maybe I'm unlucky but TM has, for me, always been a piece of crap.
 
I don't have those issues. I know it's preparing for backups while it did some recently. But it's a live constantly making updates system. It's not a scheduled 'lets do it once at midnight and only then use 1% of the cpu..' solution.
That it doesn't start, or hangs or something.. i dont have those issues.

When it doesn't work, it doesn't work. CCC is a good alternative. One thing I do is simply not rely on TM. I have multiple backup solutions. Including using TM on 2 physical drives. and both drives also get manually copied files to them. All drives are encrypted of course. And Once a season I backup one more time manually and leave that drive at an offsite location where I know people won't touch it. Just in case i get robbed or place burns down.

Once a week I move my projects to the manual drive, and copy it again to the other one. And in the meantime TM is just updating both external drives. I hope I never have to use any of these 3 drives. restoring from a fail sucks, no matter how you do it.
 
time machine works really well for most people, so you could consider finding out what's actually the problem for you. meanwhile, carbon copy cloner is a great app (it's what i use on my macbook pro); on my macbook, am only using crashplan (online backup); first backup takes forever, thereafter, like time machine, it's regular, incremental.

but seriously, you might want to investigate your TM issues...
 
Time Machine works really well in my experience with local disks, and with the AirPort Time Capsule. Only issues I typically see are with unsupported devices, e.g. 3rd party NAS and the like.

I'm running Time Capsule and also CrashPlan on all my Macs.
 
The only real issue I've had with TM is on a relative's system the backup drive fills up and it fails to overwrite the old data. Annoying...
 
Zaroff said:
Hi all,

Anyone knows of a viable, practical and efficient alternative to TM?
This is THE worst piece of backup software I've ever had the displeasure of using, and I'm basically fed up wasting so much time with it. I don't mean only the snail pace of the backup itself -that is, when it works, but I can't keep count of the times it got stuck, frozen, or basically not working at all. What a piece of crap.

Any suggestions welcome...

Thx
Click to expand...

You can build a home / personal file server for a few hundred bucks (or with spare parts if you happen to have them lying around), run something like FreeNAS or RockStor on it, and install as many hard drives as you want in a RAID config (you can have 2, 3, 4+ drive redundancy if you want). Then you can simply work directly off the server from any computer in your house, and everything is saved instantly / you're always backed up.

This provides you with all sorts of additional options / functionality as well. For example, you can setup periodic snapshots of all your data / files, so you can retrieve a file / your data as it was at some point in the past. You could also install something like Plex and use the server to stream movies, TV shows, music, to any device on your home network (i.e. like your own personal Netflix).

Anyway, just something you might want to check out, as it's a far more robust solution for data backups, and you can do all sorts of additional cool stuff as well.
 
Zaroff said:
Hi all,

Anyone knows of a viable, practical and efficient alternative to TM?
This is THE worst piece of backup software I've ever had the displeasure of using, and I'm basically fed up wasting so much time with it. I don't mean only the snail pace of the backup itself -that is, when it works, but I can't keep count of the times it got stuck, frozen, or basically not working at all. What a piece of crap.

Any suggestions welcome...

Thx
Click to expand...

TM has worked flawlessly for my three macs at home for years now. If you are having problems with TM then possibly try either formatting your existing TM drive and starting over, or, buying a new local drive or TimeCapsule to start over.

Backblaze or CrashPlan are great for set-it-and-forget-it offsite backup, and CCC or SuperDuper! are great for local backups as well. Personally, I would never get caught without 1) TM, 2) Cloud, and 3) local clones. These are all necessary yet separate components of a wise backup plan.
 
CCC can be set to hourly--

I use CCC and CrashPlan

Time Machine too plus manual drag and drops to my externals of certain files.
 
OP:

You could try QRecall. It has much more robust feature set compared to Time Machine.

I got fed up with Time Machine bugs and switched to QRecall.
 
Interesting as I've had no problems using TimeMachine backing up a 3 TB fusion iMac, 256 GB MBP, and a 128 GB MBA. Used it for file restores multiple times and it's never hung up. I'm curious if you have custom or bad permissions or if you have a corrupt file that would cause TimeMachine to hang up.
 
I've also given up on TM and use CCC with a daily cadence on my main user directory into an external drive that has a different sparse image for each day of the week. That allows me to catch something I accidentally deleted some time in the past week. I don't really need an hourly backup, but you would probably rig this up to run hourly using CCC. I also run a full system CCC backup monthly. Unlike TM, I've never had a CCC backup fail me.
 
Thanks for all the replies!

I'll opt to try some of the options, like CCC or QRecall, and see what gives. I don't do anything esoteric with TM, I just set it up to backup to a Time Capsule, maybe part of the problems I'm having are due to the capsule and not entirely to TM itself, but I can't tell.
 
Last edited:
FreakinEurekan said:
Time Machine works really well in my experience with local disks, and with the AirPort Time Capsule. Only issues I typically see are with unsupported devices, e.g. 3rd party NAS and the like.

I'm running Time Capsule and also CrashPlan on all my Macs.
Click to expand...

I'm using a synology NAS and TM has been working great. I would highly recommend it actually. Sucks the OP is having issues.

My only other back up is one I do manually every month or so just to protect important files on an external HDD that I keep in a safe.

On occasion I notice my TM back up moving rather slow (it will back up ~3 gb of new data every day) but I ignore it and it completes on its own. It's kind of like a watched pot never boils situation.
 
OP wrote:
"Ideally, I'd aim for something that backups more or less continuously"

Unless it's mission-critical for business, why does one really need "continuous backup"…?

Just wonderin' ...
 
Zaroff said:
Thanks for all the replies!

I'll opt to try some of the options, like CCC or QRecall, and see what gives. I don't do anything esoteric with TM, I just set it up to backup to a Time Capsule, maybe part of the problems I'm having are due to the capsule and not entirely to TM itself, but I can't tell.
Click to expand...
I know this is yet another unhelpful "TM works for me" answer. Yet, I want to reinforce that TM works like a dream for me. It has saved me from severe data loss several times (I also have online backup as further security). Actually, it's one of the main reasons I stay with Mac rather than a Surface. Windows just has nothing even close to TM. My wife, who runs Windows, has lost important data several times -- we thought we had backup, but because of the complexities of Windows, we did not. TM just works (but not for you, obviously).
 
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Fishrrman said:
OP wrote:
"Ideally, I'd aim for something that backups more or less continuously"

Unless it's mission-critical for business, why does one really need "continuous backup"…?

Just wonderin' ...
Click to expand...

Sometimes that last little bit of data (the data you lose from not backing up very often) is some of the most important.

I'll often dip into my TM for that random file I had on my desktop for a minute. Or a previous version of an app/driver that was in my downloads. An unmodified version of a document, photo etc.

All reasons it's nice to have a back up system that operating very often. Maybe not continuous but near it.
 
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