How risky to update Big Sur > Monterey without a full backup?

[iTundra]

We are having consistent problems with Macs / Time Machine not backing up to Synology NAS devices. So, local data has to be backed up manually which means getting some, very likely missing some and not getting any settings.

My 2020 13" MacBook Pro is suffering from the 'reboot with every sleep' problem along with other problems. I'm hoping that Monterey might fix some or all. Any thoughts on how risky this is without a good full backup?

Thanks,

 

[ArkSingularity]

Ordinarily, I'd say it's not that risky. I've never once had a Mac OS upgrade fail, but if you're experiencing kernel panics and random reboots, it's probably a safer call to make some sort of backup first. Something else could be going on and it might increase the chances of something going wrong during the update.

Many stores sell surprisingly cheap SD cards and flash drives now. I've grabbed throwaway drives for $30 before and used it to do a quick backup, and they're perfect for this sort of purpose (they're not exactly durable or fast, but that doesn't much matter for quick backups like this. You can get 400GB drives for this price now).

 

[iTundra]

Thanks. This is a 4tb drive with a bit over 3tb of data. Even with a chunk excluded it still needs larger than a 2tb usb drive.

 

[MarkC426]

Do NOT risk an upgrade without a backup.
If your data is unimportant then fine, but for the cost of a drive I wouldn't take the chance.

You SHOULD have a backup anyway for peace of mind.
I don't know what Mac you have, but if something happened to it, everything is gone.

I have always done backups before every security update.

 

[MarkC426]

We are having consistent problems with Macs / Time Machine not backing up to Synology NAS devices. So, local data has to be backed up manually which means getting some, very likely missing some and not getting any settings.

Can you not still do a Time Machine backup with a drive connected directly.
This would backup your whole disk.

 

[artfossil]

Do NOT risk an upgrade without a backup.
If your data is unimportant then fine, but for the cost of a drive I wouldn't take the chance.

You SHOULD have a backup anyway for peace of mind.
I don't know what Mac you have, but if something happened to it, everything is gone.

I have always done backups before every security update.

Thank you for this.

I would never ever ever ever upgrade to a new OS without a current bootable clone.

A 4 TB external drive is very cheap compared to losing all your data AND incurring a huge investment of time.

 

[iTundra]

Thanks All. Buying a $300-500 external drive to do a job that our $7,000 Synology is supposed to do but does not is a tough nut. I was able to borrow a drive from a friend for this immediate need.

 

[Fishrrman]

Question:
"How risky to update Big Sur > Monterey without a full backup?"

Answer:
Well, kid, do you feel lucky???

In other words...
... If you want a way to "get back, get back, get back to where you once belonged" if things go wrong with the upgrade,
then...
You'd BETTER HAVE a "full backup".

 

[iTundra]

Can you not still do a Time Machine backup with a drive connected directly.
This would backup your whole disk.

Yes. Time Machine works fine with direct connected drives and NAS other than Synology. The problem is that none that I have available has sufficient space. We've about 18tb free on the Synology but it will not complete a backup from this machine and has been unreliable with others.

 

[HDFan]

Do NOT risk an upgrade without a backup.

I just did an OS restore on instructions from Apple. They estimated the risk of data loss at ~3%.

Buying a $300-500 external drive to do a job that our $7,000 Synology is supposed to do but does not is a tough nut.

Are you in the U.S.? Costco has a 5 TB external drive for $89.99 and an 8 TB for $149.99.

Time Machine works fine with direct connected drives and NAS other than Synology.

TM in my experience just doesn't work on NAS units. It also tends to fail. I would definitely have at least 2 backups, 1 TM and another a cloned drive using something like Carbon Copy Cloner. Probably time to implement a 3-2-1 backup strategy.

 

[MisterSavage]

I would never do it myself. I've had an upgrade to a new OS fail and I had to drag my damn iMac to the Apple Store. They wiped it and I had to restore from my Time Machine backup.

 

[Sandman824]

I've been a mac user for 30 years. Never had an update fail. Montery totally screwed my iMac. I had to erase the drive and do an internet recovery. Fortunately I had a backup. Problem was I am using usb3 external ssd to boot. Montery didn't like the drivers of my ssd case. I didn't lose anything with my backups except for a whole weekend getting everything back up and running. I had to buy a new ssd case. So I would say have a backup