Repairing Data Loss Via (hopefully) Shrewd Time Machine Restore

[jordii]

I accidentally deleted a few thousand random docs from iCloud/Documents in such a way that iCloud doesn’t offer any for recovery in “Recently Deleted” folder. Fun!

That was last week, so my ravaged documents folder meanwhile has added some new items (and newly modified items) that I don’t want to lose during Time Machine restore. So I guess I need to:

1. Back up current Docs folder to external drive (Question: since some docs live in cloud, and not local, will a simple “Select All” and “Copy” work?)

2. Restore Docs folder from my last Time Machine prior to the catastrophe (I guess just nuke current folder contents, Select All in Time Machine backup window, and hit Restore?)

3. Add/swap in new and newly edited items from external backup to bring my Docs folder up to date.

Any tricks, warnings, or suggestions? I wonder if SuperDuper might be intelligent enough to handle #3?

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

Think of iCloud storage just like local drive storage. Copy all Docs still in iCloud to a local drive(s). Carefully verify you have them all. Note that iCloud downloads can take a while so be sure they are actually downloaded to a local drive before taking other steps. If you check a bunch of file sizes on the local and they show 0 bytes, you need to wait longer to give them time to actually get from iCloud to local.

Then, recover the missing files from your backups and- if that recovery takes out copies of files you just downloaded locally- you can copy the local ones back to complete the set of files.

If me, I'd break this dependency on iCloud and get them all locally, perhaps using iCloud only as one more backup (and certainly NOT as an only backup) or as a conduit for temporarily sharing select files between more than 1 computer.

For most people, there's no need to install stranger middlemen between them and their data. Local and portable storage is towards dirt cheap.

I hope the above helps.

 

[throAU]

Any tricks, warnings, or suggestions? I wonder if SuperDuper might be intelligent enough to handle #3?

Have multiple backups to external media (hard drives, etc.).

One backup isn't enough - Time Machine disks do get corrupted from time to time (especially if encrypted it seems), so having only one of them is not enough.

I use iCloud for sync in case one of my devices dies. However that doesn't protect me from account compromise - that's why I run multiple Time Machine backups as well - one at work and one at home.

In case of:

• single backup drive corruption
• house/work fire

I also store copies of important stuff on my NAS.

iCloud sync has saved my butt when I have inadvertently device wiped (MDM policy was 4 bad passwords, I'd changed pin and figured I had more than 4 attempts ) and had me back up and running on the same device after logging into iCloud in half an hour. But I wouldn't rely on any cloud sync as a backup. You need offline storage for that.

Whether it is Time Machine or something else - pick the off-line hard drive backup method of your choice, I just use Time Machine because it is built in and doesn't fail frequently enough for me to be overly concerned.

 

[jordii]

Both great advice. Thanks!

Problem: iCloud would not copy my Docs folder to external drive. Presumably it wanted to download all items first to my computer's drive, which created issues. Idunno.

Here's what I did: I copied a pre-crisis Documents folder backup from Time Machine to an external drive. And I'll just let it sit there dumbly. Next time I'm missing something, I'll just search the external drive. Nice fallback.

I suspect it wasn't a complete backup (I don't think TM backs up everything every time), but folder size is within a few GB of my current folder's size, so odds are it contains anything I'd sorely miss. Lazy and efficacious. Lazficacious.

Lingering issue: should I let Spotlight index that folder? If not, search results would be partial. But if I do, I'll have to wade through duplicate results (from both Docs folders). I may just use HoudahSpot's "text content" to search on the back-up folder when a Spotlight search fails to find what I need.