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Should I use Time Machine to back up external drives?
- Thread starter jaybar
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In my opinion, I would leave TM out of the equation. Others will probably disagree.
1) You could use CCC to backup a CCC destination drive as well as other external drives.
2) You could also use Arq backup (offers a 30 day free trial) as a second backup process for the system as well as external drives.
I use CCC and Arq. Arq is also good for backup to the cloud of your choice, which is another good line of file security.
1) You could use CCC to backup a CCC destination drive as well as other external drives.
2) You could also use Arq backup (offers a 30 day free trial) as a second backup process for the system as well as external drives.
I use CCC and Arq. Arq is also good for backup to the cloud of your choice, which is another good line of file security.
Depends what sort of backup you want - TM provides a nice friendly way to take "continuous" backups and roll-back individual files if you accidentally delete or overwrite them, at the expense of speed, complexity and needing a ton of space on the backup drive.
If you just want a periodic back-up in case of disaster - CCC or SuperDuper are far more straightforward, with less to go wrong and the backup is a drop-in replacement for the original drive.
The correct answer is probably both - TimeMachine running continuously for convenience and easily finding historic versions and a periodic (daily/weekly/monthly/before major upgrades depending on your usage) "clone" for belt and braces.
Arq is even better than TM, in my opinion. It can do continuous backups with roll-back of individual files. You can also access your files from the web as well and see what is what.
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CCC is the way. It is reliable and creates a bootable copy.
TimeMachine is a mess, working in retarded unnatural ways. I would say use TimeMachine if you want to get older copies of files on your computer(make sure you have lots of storage). Otherwise backup externally with CCC.
There is also SuperDuper but I don't like that one.
TimeMachine is a mess, working in retarded unnatural ways. I would say use TimeMachine if you want to get older copies of files on your computer(make sure you have lots of storage). Otherwise backup externally with CCC.
There is also SuperDuper but I don't like that one.
I wouldn't trust syncing my whole computer files with an external server in a different country. Plus all the GB data going back and forth. Could work for work environemnts, but even that has clients details.
Arq doesn't back up every single thing. It just backs up user files, unless a person wants to back up more. You can also set a backup overall file size limit which I do. Arq is very versatile, secure and fast. I can backup all my external drives, as well as backup my Macs locally without cloud if I want. Everything is encrypted locally as well as the cloud, if someone wishes to use both. For what BackBlaze was charging, I get so much more with Arq and that all comes with great customer support.
If you use Time Machine, be sure to check the integrity of your backup every month or so. I've had TM backups go bad on me so many times that I use it as little as possible.
As others have suggested, I wouldn't use TM to back external drives.
I use SyncFolders to periodically backup the external drive of my Plex server to other physical backups.
Agreed.
Another angle - It depends on how you use the external disk.
If you work on and maintain work in progress on the external disk, then the considerations of whether to use Time Machine are similar to whether you use Time Machine on your main disk. For example, you might buy a really small system disk, choosing to keep all your personal files on the external disk. In that case, since the files on the external disk are constantly changing, TM can be really convenient to quickly revert to old versions of files.
On the other hand, you might only be using the external disk for bulk storage: files that are archived or otherwise infrequently change. TM would be an unneeded complexity for such a drive. CCC clones seem the right solution in that case.
Arq is a reasonable substitute for TM. (My Arq backups run hourly and backup to multiple destinations.) It's certainly the best approach to getting secure offsite backups.
No matter what, if files exist on the external drive currently exist no where else, you should get them backed up somehow. TM, Arq, or CCC are all candidates.
I've never considered running TM on a CCC clone. I've always considered my CCC clone to *be* a backup, not require a backup. If you're worried about the history of the CCC clone, perhaps keep rolling clones. I keep three, rotating through them for each nightly clone.
Yes, as part of a 3-2-1 backup strategy.
Same here. Never rely on TM.
Why not just keep another CCC bootable backup of your source volume on a separate HDD that you occasionally power on/mount? Thats redundancy in case something fails. HDD's are cheap.
I use TM to backup the Main OS and a separate drive holding various project files. The same OS is then backed up to an external SSD drive using CCC. Finally I have Backblaze for off-site backups.
I use TM as a manual backup every few days (daily and hourly backups for me is way overkill for how I use my system).
I also use CCC to take an image before any OSX update or major software install.
Obviously, make sure different backups are stored on different external drives - do NOT partition one drive and use for your different backup strategies - if that drive fails you lose ALL backups!
This seems to work well for me.
I just don't trust my data to offsite backups. I like to keep my data local.......
I also use CCC to take an image before any OSX update or major software install.
Obviously, make sure different backups are stored on different external drives - do NOT partition one drive and use for your different backup strategies - if that drive fails you lose ALL backups!
This seems to work well for me.
I just don't trust my data to offsite backups. I like to keep my data local.......
I can understand your reasons, but it's worth remembering two things. First that most off-site solutions allow you to pick and choose what is uploaded. Secondly that a local backup is worthless if you have a fire or theft.
Arq allows you to encrypt files in such a way that only have the keys to view the contents. Unless you're a target of interest and the focus of a serious decryption effort, your data backed up by Arq is private.
One thing that occurred to me recently is that backups that allow you to go far back in time could be critical. This came up when I started thinking about iCloud and other services which allow you to remove downloads and keep them only in the cloud. If you do that, even accidentally, your recent CCC clones will lose those files. You then count on the cloud service to be your backup. iCloud, as an example, only retains deletions for 30 days and provides no serious way to look back in time.
These various cloud replication services can be a significant hazard to a reliable backup strategy centered on a single computer as the home of all your important information.
One thing that occurred to me recently is that backups that allow you to go far back in time could be critical. This came up when I started thinking about iCloud and other services which allow you to remove downloads and keep them only in the cloud. If you do that, even accidentally, your recent CCC clones will lose those files. You then count on the cloud service to be your backup. iCloud, as an example, only retains deletions for 30 days and provides no serious way to look back in time.
These various cloud replication services can be a significant hazard to a reliable backup strategy centered on a single computer as the home of all your important information.
Using CCC right now. I mix it up with Time Machine too. Time Machine can be nice when you get a new Mac and it prompts for your Time Machine backup and also when you setup and just have it running 24x7 on your desktop Mac. You just have to make sure you exclude Virtual Machines so it doesn't fill your drive instantly.
You should back externals up with something, and I think TM does the job very well.
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true, but your home computer has too many private info to be stored some where out there. I am waiting for ProtonDrive that supposedly has end to end encryption. Even if someone can get his hands on the files they will not be able to crack the encryption.
I would still not trust it with everything though, make selected files only. Also upload speeds remains an issue. uploading a 500GB drive is no joke.
Have you checked out Arq and the encryption approach? Do you think it is inadequate in some way?
I guess you could call Arq end-to-end encryption if you consider yourself to be both ends.
People refer to Arq file storage as TNO (trust no one) storage; only you have the keys. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trust_no_one_(Internet_security)I suspect ProtonDrive will do something similar.
I use Arq to back up to Dropbox, OneDrive. Both Dropbox and OneDrive are not perfectly safe since those companies can get at the files. However, the files that Arq puts there are completely encrypted; even the file names are not visible. Arq has a solid reputation among security conscious people, and has so for years.
You can use Cryptomator to secure any folder(s) in cloud. There is no way someone can see file names much less read the files, unless they know the security key.
I have a really weird setup. I should probably streamline it, but it works despite being a bit confusing at first.
I have a Mac mini and two external solid state drives. Let's call them Internal, External 1 and External 2 respectively.
The big issue was it would keep losing track of what it had already backed up from my external, so it'd end up backing the whole load up all over and over again. 3 backups in and I'd completely ran out of space (and this is a 1 TB drive it was backing up to).
Decided to go for CCC and have it focus purely on the external drive. I have spare macs all over the house so a bootable backup isn't a massive necessity for me.
Eventually I think I'll continue using Time Machine to backup my MacBook Air as I have all my files on the internal. I'll switch over to CCC completely for the Mac mini, though. This is mainly due to the fact it's always got external drives attached with important files that need backing up, and I evidently can't trust Time Machines with externals.
I have a Mac mini and two external solid state drives. Let's call them Internal, External 1 and External 2 respectively.
- The Internal is the boot volume and contains apps / documents / system files etc.
- External 1 contains all my media libraries - music, photos etc.
- External 2 is a back up drive that's split into two partitions. One is a Time Machine partition that backs up the internal drive, and the other partition is used by CCC to backup the contents of External 1.
The big issue was it would keep losing track of what it had already backed up from my external, so it'd end up backing the whole load up all over and over again. 3 backups in and I'd completely ran out of space (and this is a 1 TB drive it was backing up to).
Decided to go for CCC and have it focus purely on the external drive. I have spare macs all over the house so a bootable backup isn't a massive necessity for me.
Eventually I think I'll continue using Time Machine to backup my MacBook Air as I have all my files on the internal. I'll switch over to CCC completely for the Mac mini, though. This is mainly due to the fact it's always got external drives attached with important files that need backing up, and I evidently can't trust Time Machines with externals.