Mac buy and back up

[reteP llewoN]

I plan on moving from windows to Mac and I think I'll be buying the MacBook Air.
First is the MacBook Air a reasonable Mac product for someone who is retired and does not do gaming or any heavy duty work?
Importantly, I currently image my operating system with my computer to macrium reflect using an external hard drive formatted as NTFS.
Which program is the easiest way to back up the MacBook Air To my external drive which I would format as ex fat? If my formatting is incorrect please let me know. I am trying to do this the easiest way I can as I am quite elderly and ill. I cannot stand Windows after 20 years for many reasons.
Thank You

 

[rpmurray]

I would recommend Time Machine which would reformat the drive as APFS. But Time Machine sometimes gets cranky and stops backing up your files, which is bad if you then need them later. Better might be to get Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper and create scheduled backups with them, you can also do manual backups whenever you want. You'd need to format the drive as APFS or HFS+ (using Disk Utility which comes with macOS). There are conflicting opinions about which backup software and which formatting is best.

As far as the Air, it should be more than adequate for your use case, although I'm partial to the iMac for the bigger display.

 

[reteP llewoN]

Thank you for your advice. I was wondering what you thought of Disk Drill? I think it is free but could be wrong.
I can format my external drive before I use Mac but it seems you suggest APFS instead of exfat.
I want to take an image and then unplug so if ransomware etc. strikes it will not affect the eternal drive. I would take an image every couple of weeks but always keep the first so I do not have to reinstall as I would have a baseline image. I always take weekly flash drives oof my docs so if one fails the other is ready for me to recreate another.
I do not mind if you shoot holes in my ideas.
Time machine does not sound reliable. The only way to format the external drive would be with Mac as Apfs which I will do. I thought exfat was ok but will do Apfs. I am watching videos of how to which help a bit.
Thank you for your help.

 

[0128672]

Not everyone has experienced an issue with Time Machine. I've used it for years and never had an issue. I have 3 external drives I back up to. On each of those drives formatted as APFS (which Time Machine requires), I also created a separate volume (not a partition) into which I can drag a folder to backup outside of Time Machine.

Carbon Copy Cloner has an excellent track record with Macrumors users, although I don't use it. I might though at some point. It has a free trial version you might want to check out. https://bombich.com/features

Also you'll be very happy with an M1 Macbook Air. If you would like to save a little, consider buying one from the Apple Refurb Store where they start at $849. You still get the same-as-new one year warranty and can purchase Applecare+ for it if you like. I swear by Apple refurbs and every one I've bought, from Macbook Pros to Airs to iPads to Mac Minis and iMacs, have all been flawless.

Refurbished Mac Deals - Apple

Save up to 15% on a refurbished Mac. Tested and certified by Apple including a 1-year warranty. Free delivery and returns.

www.apple.com

 

[rpmurray]

I swear by Apple refurbs and every one I've bought, from Macbook Pros to Airs to iPads to Mac Minis and iMacs, have all been flawless.

Every Apple refurb I've gotten has been indistinguishable from new.

 

[rpmurray]

Thank you for your advice. I was wondering what you thought of Disk Drill? I think it is free but could be wrong.
I can format my external drive before I use Mac but it seems you suggest APFS instead of exfat.

I think of Disk Drill as more of a data recovery utility. It's free to scan but if you ever have to restore data then you'd need to pay.

APFS and HFS+ are native formats for the Mac so would be a better choice than exFat. APFS works well for SSDs but HFS+ is thought to be better for HD spinners. Either one will work.

 

[reteP llewoN]

Thanks for the time saving advice. I'll update you with my plans.

 

[Fishrrman]

If you're in the USA, the best buy in Macs right now IS at "best buy" -- the 2021 MacBook Pro 14" (base model) at $1,599.

GREAT PRICE, worth paying a little more than you would for a MacBook Air.

Other places are "clearing them out" at that price, as well, such as Costco and amazon.

What this means... is that a new m2 version of these is coming and due to ship late in the year, but again, for $400 off, the m1 version remains a great deal.

 

[reteP llewoN]

I will look into it and thanks.

 

[HDFan]

Using the recommended 3-2-1 backup strategy I would use only 1 TM backup disk due to its tendency to fail. The other 2 could be Carbon Copy Cloner (which could be rotated to an off-site location) and maybe a cloud backup service such as BackBlaze, Carbon Copy Cloner or Crashplan business.

 

[reteP llewoN]

I will look into them. I never knew Time Machine was so undependable. Can you back a MacBook up to the cloud like you can with the phone. I use the cloud for my iPhone 13. I understand you can buy more space.
If you could format the external drive as Apfs could you back it up to that drive.
I have 2 Samsung T7's I image my PC OS to with Macrium but Macrium does not handle Mac.
Is there a reliable Mac program I could use in lieu of Macrium?

 

[Boyd01]

I never knew Time Machine was so undependable.

Why have you drawn this conclusion? The point that has been made - and I agree completely - is not to trust your backup to a single device or software package. You might also call it a "belt and suspenders" approach.

Time machine is very nice for continuous, versioned backups where you can revert to an earlier copy of a file or restore something that you accidentally deleted. I certainly would not call time machine "undependable", it's just not the be-all and end-all solution for everything. Personally, I have time machine backups to a network drive on my home network. I supplement that with Carbon Copy clones to several 2tb Samsung T7's and I have continuous cloud backups of all my computers with Backblaze.

No experience with Macrium, I used Acronis on my Windows computers for many years and liked it. However I now run Windows in a virtual machine on my Mac, so it gets backed up with everything else. And now I kind of regret using Acronis, because their format is proprietary and I can't access any of my old backups since I no longer have Acronis.

The nice thing about Carbon Copy is that it makes an exact copy of the original disk that you can access just like any other disk without special software. Whatever you do, I would urge you to get dedicated backup disks for your new Mac and not use the same disks as your PC (unless you erase them and reformat for the Mac).

 

[theorist9]

I have two attached local backup drives, one with Carbon Copy Cloner (CCC) and one with Time Machine (TM), both formatted as APFS-Encrypted. I consider CCC my primary backup, but add TM because if I accidentally trash a file, or want to go back to an earliler version, I can usually do this with TM, since it updates hourly. But since you can recover your entire disk from TM, the TM backup drive also serves as a secondary backup.

For CCC, you want your backup volume to be ~1.5 - 2 x the size of the data you will need to keep backed up. [Since I use TM for history, while I keep CCC's Safety Net on, I turn the APFS snapshots off in CCC.] For TM, you probably want at least 3x (you can get by with 2x, but then your TM backups won't go that far back in time until they are pruned to make space).

Local backups protect from you if your machine's drive fails or becomes corrupted, but they don't protect from fire or theft. Thus I also have a pair of drives I use for a remote CCC backup. I store one in a remote, secure location, and swap it out with the one I keep at home every few months. Alternately, you can use the cloud for remote backup.

For the local backups, to start you could see if your existing external HD is big enough to fit both CCC and TM on separate volumes on the same drive. If not, you could choose one or the other, or you could buy a new, larger HD. If you get an HD, avoid those that use Shingled Magnetic Recording, because they're really slow (for the remote backups, since you only use those once every few months, the speed doesn't matter, so I use a pair of cheap low-speed HD's that probably do use SMR).

Bombich's recommendations for SSD's, while fine, are getting a bit out of date, but their HD recommendation looks good:

Choosing a backup drive | Bombich Software

bombich.com

Oyen Digital Novus 6TB External USB-C 7200RPM Hard Drive

The Novus external hard drive delivers fast, high-capacity storage in a rugged, stylish design. The Novus features an aluminum encased in a silicon rubber sleeve for maximum protection and impact resistance. Through rigorous Development and testing, The most reliable hard drives and components ar...

www.amazon.com

If you want your external backups to be encrypted (a good idea), then you will need to format them as APFS-Encrypted rather than HFS (you used to be able to encrypt HFS, but now any HFS-formatted drive that's encrypted automatically changes to APFS-Encrypted, so you might as well start with that.

 

[HDFan]

Why have you drawn this conclusion? The point that has been made - and I agree completely - is not to trust your backup to a single device or software package.

My TM experience is based on maybe 30 or so TM corruptions, both on locally based HD and NAS units. Haven't had a single CCC corruption. That's not to say that I don't use it. It is the most convenient recovery tool given all the file history it contains. I just run a lot of TM disks - some 5 or so - to protect myself.

And yes, ideally you should be backing up to 3 different media types on 3 different interfaces. As for software I certainly wouldn't use more than 1 TM backup. I also use CCC and 3 backup services - Carbonite, Crashplan and Backblaze.

 

[reteP llewoN]

@Boydo11 - Just to clarify about TMM and undependable I was only referring to the information in post 2.
Otherwise I get the idea I should use APFS and more than one backup destination. I may use iCloud for one and my external drive for the other?

 

[Boyd01]

Time machine has worked very well for me over the years, but it's just one piece of a backup stategy. Personally, I wouldn't want to rely on just time machine and iCloud.

Don’t Get Trapped in iCloud

iCloud doesn't offer you the security of a true backup. Understand the difference to protect your important files.

www.backblaze.com

 

[reteP llewoN]

That is all very good to know. Changing ecosystems is like learning a new language.
In Windows I used a program called macrium reflect and weekly performed an image to an external hard drive. It did not fail in 20 years, to recover as new. I have Samsung T7's. I also keep My Docs and passwords on 2 seperate flash drives.
Those flash drives which are encrypted never leave my neck. Can I do the same with Macbook? An image was the entire operating system and was similar to a backup. So is it possible to send documents to different destinations like flash drives?

 

[HDFan]

I may use iCloud for one

iCloud is not a backup service as deleted files are removed after 30 days. The services I mentioned are true backup services in that they have longer retention policies. You can restore files that were deleted up to a year (or longer) depending on the service.

 

[Boyd01]

I also keep My Docs and passwords on 2 seperate flash drives. Those flash drives which are encrypted never leave my neck. Can I do the same with Macbook? An image was the entire operating system and was similar to a backup. So is it possible to send documents to different destinations like flash drives?

You should be able to use disks in the same ways you did under Windows. One of the great things about Carbon Copy (and a similar app called "SuperDuper") was that you could make exact clones of your internal drive such that you could boot your computer directly from the external disk.

Apple has thrown a monkey wrench into this with recent versions of MacOS however. To increase MacOS security, Apple is now discouraging this and wants you to only use verified software from their servers. So, you can make an image of all your own files, but not the operating system itself. See this article

"Copying Apple's system is now an Apple-proprietary endeavor; we can only offer "best effort" support for making an external bootable device on macOS Big Sur (and later OSes). We present this functionality in support of making ad hoc bootable copies of the system that you will use immediately (e.g. when migrating to a different disk, or for testing purposes), but we do not support nor recommend making bootable copies of the system as part of a backup strategy."

Creating legacy bootable copies of macOS (Big Sur and later) | Bombich Software

bombich.com