Network Time machine with a mostly remote MBA

[roadkill401]

Kids. they learnt in school how to use a computer and are a total wiz on an iPhone, but say them when was the last time you backed up your device and they give you a blank look as if you were speaking in latin.

So university kid who comes home likely every 3-5 weeks during school year and at home in the summer. I am looking for a workable solution to help them back up the MBA they use so if something did happen it wouldn't be a total disaster.

I have a Mac mini that I have a usb hard drive attached and use Time Machine. when I got my own MBA I forgot about doing a backup and after two weeks the drive inside the MBA failed and I lost some critical data. So life lesson learned for myself. As a solution as it's a laptop so used on the go and around the house it isn't practical to have a magnetic hard disk plugged in all the time for Time Machine so I got a NAS. the Synology runs Time Machine as a network drive and will automatically mount it and daily backup my laptop. it seems to be fine for me as if I don't use it for 3-5 days, when I open my MacBook up it just does the backup then and I don't get any notifications or hassles.

But if I put my kid onto the same Time Machine, I know it will work fine when they are here. but what about when they are at school. they won't be on the same network so it won't find the Time Machine when at their University house. will it cause any issues? Sadly Apple is just about useless as they no longer make any devices that support network Time Machine so they say ask Synoilogy who can't answer what the MacBook Air will do. typical finger pointing.

what do other parents of University kids do for backup strategies for their kids?

 

[chrfr]

I'd recommend something like Backblaze for a computer that's mostly away from home.

 

[pacmania1982]

What about using iCloud Drive and have all the data automatically sync up to the cloud? I don't store much on my MBA and my home folder syncs with the cloud so I don't have to think about it. I use iCloud Keychain also, which also saves all my passwords and syncs them across my devices. I know it's not as seamless when getting a new machine and restoring from a back up and having all your apps and preferences saved, but I prefer not to have to rely on a spinning hard drive or even an SSD that may fail to store my important info on.

I have iCloud + as part of Apple One so have 2.2TB of iCloud storage. For me it's a no brainer.

 

[roadkill401]

What about using iCloud Drive and have all the data automatically sync up to the cloud? I don't store much on my MBA and my home folder syncs with the cloud so I don't have to think about it. I use iCloud Keychain also, which also saves all my passwords and syncs them across my devices. I know it's not as seamless when getting a new machine and restoring from a back up and having all your apps and preferences saved, but I prefer not to have to rely on a spinning hard drive or even an SSD that may fail to store my important info on.

I have iCloud + as part of Apple One so have 2.2TB of iCloud storage. For me it's a no brainer.

I have several problems with iCloud

1. the cost of storage is outrageous. I already owned the Sinology so the cost to me was negligible . but Apple here in Canada charges $13 per month so it's about $175 per year after our taxes added.

2. the service isn't even designed for backup purposes. it doesn't have any file retention, or versioning. so according to Apple, if you have some files on your MacBook and you delete them, then 2 months later realized that you needed them, they won't be on iCloud as it will delete the files from the next snapshot sync. Or if you accidentally overwrite an important file, then that change gets reflected on the next sync.

3. the speed of the connection is only as fast as your internet connection. So here in Canada, we don't get symmetrical finer gigabit connections in many markets. So you try and backup a 500gb drive to the cloud at 7Mbps upload speed. Even retrieving data is a pain as the download speed is now you limitation. Try if something went wrong and rebuild a Mac where its 10-12 hours to download your data assuming an ultrafast internet speed.

Sorry. Cloud is a great solution for team work. multi people sharing data for a project. But it doesn't fit as a backup solution. it might work as an offsite extension for a backup.

 

[Le Big Mac]

Buy a hard drive and have child back up to that while at college. Leave backup in desk/dorm room or whatever. Not perfect, but at least greatly increases likelihood they have something if laptop gets stolen/broken.

(To be clear, this is what I have asked my child to do - if they don't back up it's on them).

 

[Apple_Robert]

I would definitely use Backblaze as @chrfr suggested, as well as @Le Big Mac suggestion.

 

[kirbyrun]

What someone really needs to create for situations like this is a backup drive embedded in a power adapter so that every night when your kid plugs in his computer to charge it up, it also automatically backs up.

I would do as others have recommended and do Backblaze plus a physical drive...and maybe add in a daily reminder that fires off every night to say "Hey! Plug in your backup drive!" Maybe with an obnoxious sound effect.

 

[arc of the universe]

What someone really needs to create for situations like this is a backup drive embedded in a power adapter so that every night when your kid plugs in his computer to charge it up, it also automatically backs up.

I would do as others have recommended and do Backblaze plus a physical drive...and maybe add in a daily reminder that fires off every night to say "Hey! Plug in your backup drive!" Maybe with an obnoxious sound effect.

yes. Air Mac Time Capsule, using Time Machine.

i really won't ever forgive apple for stopping that.
there was no need for any kind of special network knowledge; NAS and all that. and it (mostly) just worked.

iCloud and iCloud Drive does provide most of what i need for (built-in) data such as Notes; Contacts, etc. etc.
but in spite of apple saying deleted content files can be restored for a time, i have found that when i have needed it in the past, my deleted file was just not listed in the iCloud restore section.

 

[roadkill401]

From the looks of it, after finally prying the laptop from my kid to see what options can be done, I was surprised that we had actually bought a 2020 i7 air with 16gb ram and 500gb storage. I thought it was a lower spec machine.
but it turns out that trying to backup to my network NAS timemachine will take about 57h for the first backup. so not likely to ever be completed.

so it’s looking more like a usb hard drive is the only viable solution. I did plug in a usb nvme drive and loaded CarbonCopy to make a backup image that I can save as a snapshot for the time being. a 2tb external drive is about $100 here and should hopefully do the trick.

Now to see if I can get them off of Catalina and onto at least Ventura to work with the new iPad bought

update: it’s sort of crazy, but after upgrading the MacBook to Ventura, the time machine backups started to work much faster. The backup of 357gb went from About 57h down to just over two. It jumped from 0.1% done every 2-3 minutes to now geting 1.3% done every minute. I knew that I wasn‘t getting that bad of performance on my M series MacBook and Mini. Clearly there was something not working right with Catalina.

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

Yes for that situation, they will need an external drive or two for "local" TM and then hopefully the discipline to regularly connect their computers to it so it can backup their files. Perhaps have them bring the backup home when they visit and backup their backup drive giving them a second "offsite" backup?

Else, you need a cloud backup solution if you want a central store of backups unless- maybe (but unlikely) the school has some such option. Cloud can be relatively expensive but somewhat best fits this situation if you can't really trust the kid to connect to a backup drive and let TM run fairly regularly. Of course, then you are trusting total strangers in "the cloud" to caretake your kids data.

I suggest that YOU add to your setup with a NAS- I like Synology- with network support for TM (Synology has a TM app to make it work as if it's your hard drive hooked to your Mac). Then, your Mac can alternate between backing up to your hard drive one hour and then the Synology NAS the next hour. Bam! You have TWO backups. I have exactly this setup at my home. It "just works" fine.

Additionally though, you can connect the kids computers (and any others in the house) when they are home to auto-backup to the SAME via wifi. So when they visit, their TM backup on Synology will "catch up" even if they are neglecting backing up to the hard drive at school. Better than nothing.

Lastly, one more important thing in backups is getting one fresh one OFF site. That protects against very real scenarios of fire-flood-theft... which can take out all backups at home in one crack. So you may want to add one more BIG drive and rotate it and your existing hard drive every so many days so the one stored offsite is pretty fresh. If you suffer a fire-flood-theft scenario, you'll be able to fully record up to the last date of that offsite backup. I keep my backup drive in a bank safe deposit box a few miles from home.