Time Machine no longer working for me: replace with Carbon Copy Cloner or Chronosync or ?

[mudflap]

TLDR: I can no longer trust Time Machine and need a recommendation for a replacement that does the exact same thing; scheduled incremental backups of multiple volumes that keep as many older daily, weekly and monthly versions as the volume can hold, with automatic pruning, simple browsing of older versions, and easy restoring of single files or entire volumes. No subscription apps.

--

I have a late 2015 27" iMac with an internal SSD, two ThunderBay 4 running SoftRAID 5 populated with 4 - 3TB HDDs (HFS format for Media and Work volumes) and 4 - 4TB HDDs (APFS format for Time Machine), respectively.

Time Machine has worked well for me since day 1 but over the last couple years it's not reliable and I need a better solution. I keep experiencing restarts when TM backs up while I'm concurrently downloading torrents with qBittorrent and/or viewing movies via Plex on my living room TV connected through wired ethernet. Those downloads and Plex files are on my Media volume and when TM tries to back them up while they're being used it causes restarts with no real evidence of crashes in Console — it's driving me nuts. The SoftRAID developer has helped me a ton with this but there is no known fix so he recommended giving up on TM, so here we are.

CARBON COPY CLONER

I've owned and loved Carbon Copy Cloner forever. I use it to make a bootable clone (with SafetyNet) of my startup SSD, on an external USB 3 SSD. I'm using Time Machine to backup my first SoftRAID unit holding my Work and Media volumes on my SoftRAID HDDs, as well backup my my internal SSD (data only, for more reliable versioning over CCC). But now I might need to use CCC or ChronoSync or something else you recommend to replace the functionality of Time Machine entirely, as closely as possible, faster. I don't need backups to be bootable for emergencies because Apple no longer allows booting from SoftRAID anymore, and I already have the CCC clone I mentioned.

TIME MACHINE REQUIRES APFS on HDDs — SLOW

Time Machine is now slow as molasses because it requires APFS on HDDs, which negates the speed advantage of running SoftRAID 5 entirely. You don't notice it at first but as the drive fills up you soon realize that APFS is much slower than HFS on HDDs. Time Machine backups are now even slower than usual. Entering Time Machine to flip through old snapshots to retrieve an old, lost file takes forever, or sometimes doesn't work at all, which is unacceptable. Otherwise I get 500MB/s with 4 HFS HDDs with SoftRAID 5 volumes.

CHRONOSYNC VS CCC, APFS VS HFS, SNAPSHOTS

So this is where I get confused: CCC warns in their documentation that "SafetyNet is not designed to offer backup versioning. If you're looking for access to older versions of your files, enable snapshot support on your APFS-formatted backup volume." So it sounds like I have to have my SoftRAID backup volume HDD formatted as APFS to utilize snapshots, which will slow it down, but will allow versional more easily? But it appears ChronoSync can handle versioning a bit better than CCC, without APFS?

SPEED

I tested a 100GB folder-to-folder backup with both apps and CCC was about 1.5 X faster than ChronoSync, from HFS to HFS. After adding files to the source, changing a few and removing some then running an incremental backup proved CCC to be a little faster but nothing dramatic.


Can anyone make a recommendation? Can I get CCC or ChronoSync to do what I want at a reasonable speed? Do I have to forget about speed and go with APFS over HFS on my HDDs so I can l leverage the power of APFS snapshots?

Thanks!

 

[me55]

I'm also tired of Time Machine not working correctly anymore. APFS on hard drives is a pain, also you can't eject a Time Machine drive easily anymore (no matter if it's a HDD or SSD). So I used a Raspberry Pi 4 and built a Samba server for Time Machine backups over Ethernet, worked great for a couple of months. Now Time Machine stopped backing up to that, Disk Utility says that the sparsebundle is corrupted.

Time Machine worked so well in older macOS versions but this is just crap.

 

[mudflap]

I'm also tired of Time Machine not working correctly anymore. APFS on hard drives is a pain, also you can't eject a Time Machine drive easily anymore (no matter if it's a HDD or SSD). So I used a Raspberry Pi 4 and built a Samba server for Time Machine backups over Ethernet, worked great for a couple of months. Now Time Machine stopped backing up to that, Disk Utility says that the sparsebundle is corrupted.

Time Machine worked so well in older macOS versions but this is just crap.

Right??? I really hate to say it too because I've been an Apple freak for decades, but I have to call them out when they get something wrong, and they screwed up Time Machine. I just can't trust it to keep my data safe anymore. Restores take forever or don't work at all. Right now I can't even enter TM and click on the timeline to go back in time. I've erased TM and restarted from scratch 4 times in the last 6 months so i've done everything I can to stick with it but I can't go down with this ship when it will end up with all my data drowning.

And you're right, it worked perfectly for me since it was introduced with Leopard, even with SoftRAID volumes. It all went to hell when they forced HDDs to use APFS for Time Machine. Now it causes restarts constantly and it's it's even slower than it was before.

I've spent hours auditioning ChronoSync, Arq and CCC the last couple days and I'm learning towards Arq because it works like Time Machine but with more control, so X number of hourly backups, daily backups, weekly, monthly, etc., and I can set maximum archive sizes for each backup as well, plus online backups, all without a subscription and I can use it on all three of my Macs with one license.

I'm going to revisit Super Duper and see that it has to offer these days but Arq is going to be tough to beat.

Thanks for the reply.

 

[FarmerBob]

Personally, I'd stay away from CCC. The last time I used the new "fancified" version to put new drives in my tower it totally frelled everything up.

By the way, when the Developer saw me call it "Fancified" he got all shades of pissy. I emailed him, which we have worked together in the past with great results and no drama, and the next thing I get an eMail from PayPal with a complete, we'll recent amount that it costs refund followed by an eMail saying that I would be too difficult to work with. OK.

So what I am still finding awhile after is that it only copied the top two levels. And that was it. Well not entirely, it trash the one of four drives, that was really important. $7300 worth of recovery important! Nothing showed up in PayPal to cover that . . .

I've been using CCC for years and years, it was the only thing that when done I could be "in my heart" completely sure it was intact and proper. So this is the "first time" I have "EVER" had a problem like this and so severe. We've been able to fix things when I wasn't so difficult in the past. But I'm now too difficult to work with since I called a spade a spade.

I glanced through the choices that you posted and am going to give them a try. Although I did grab CCCs competition "SuperDuper" that I have yet to try.

Good Luck . . .
. . . fb

 

[me55]

I'll be jiggered, found out why Time Machine worked so crappily with USB drives. The antivirus (ClamXAV) somehow blocked the eject process every time, uninstalled it and now it works perfectly.

 

[mudflap]

I'll be jiggered, found out why Time Machine worked so crappily with USB drives. The antivirus (ClamXAV) somehow blocked the eject process every time, uninstalled it and now it works perfectly.

Great! Happy you found a fix. I however could not find a fix for the slowness of a multi-terabyte APFS Time Machine volume on HDDs. APFS is meant for SSDs. So after auditioning Are and ChronoSync, I went with Carbon Copy Cloner, which I've owned for years. Turns out it was just what I needed all along.

I do still wish Time Machine could use HFS HDDs because it's so easy — set it and forget it — but it just doesn't work for me and my setup. But SSDs are getting cheaper and by the time my 8 HDDs die I'll probably be able to switch to all SSD and then I'll revisit Time Machine.

 

[chinchillas]

Hi, I'm going through this as well. My set up: MBP 2015 retina (still working very well, so no plans on upgrading at least til next year). One 5 TB EHD has time machine clogging more than half of the drive. I have a 2nd EHD with no Time Machine. It's a clone of the first EHD. I use SuperDuper, recommended on this forum and it's done a good job. Not free but not expensive either, and I think you only play once. I'd like to know how to create a bootable drive in case something happens with my main computer, but since most of my data is backed up, I have no problem making a clean installation (Big Sur 11.7.1 tops) so the machine will work better and all I have to do is personalize again. So my question is, do you do this regular back up/sync with either CCC of SuperDuper? I do it manually but i think superdruper has a sync function. In any case I want to get rid of Time Machine ASAP. Does anu
yone miss Time Machine?

 

[mudflap]

Hi, I'm going through this as well. My set up: MBP 2015 retina (still working very well, so no plans on upgrading at least til next year). One 5 TB EHD has time machine clogging more than half of the drive. I have a 2nd EHD with no Time Machine. It's a clone of the first EHD. I use SuperDuper, recommended on this forum and it's done a good job. Not free but not expensive either, and I think you only play once. I'd like to know how to create a bootable drive in case something happens with my main computer, but since most of my data is backed up, I have no problem making a clean installation (Big Sur 11.7.1 tops) so the machine will work better and all I have to do is personalize again. So my question is, do you do this regular back up/sync with either CCC of SuperDuper? I do it manually but i think superdruper has a sync function. In any case I want to get rid of Time Machine ASAP. Does anu
yone miss Time Machine?

I changed my setup completely so now I'm using Time Machine to backup up only the startup drive of my new 14" M1 MacBook Pro wirelessly to a 2012 Mac mini with an attached SSD. That way I can attack to my MBP to restore if necessary. All my other drives are backed up every two hours with CCC to a 12TB ThunderBay SoftRAID RAID5. It's working well. I wish I could use Time Machine for everything, but CCC is so much faster for everything else. I did use CCC's bootable clone feature in the past, but if you keep using that clone to update it with incremental backups, it can break its bootability. So I don't bother anymore. I just created one bootable startup with CCC that I can use to boot from in emergencies if I have a catastrophe while I'm working. All my work files are kept on other drives, backed up by CCC.

Wish I could still use Time Machine for everything, but I gave up. I was probably expecting too much from it, but I'd been using it literally since it was introduced so I was reluctant to change my ways.

 

[maflynn]

I can no longer trust Time Machine

now I'm using Time Machine to backup

Why the change of heart? What caused you to lose faith in TM, to suddenly trusting it again?

 

[mlblacy]

TLDR: I can no longer trust Time Machine and need a recommendation for a replacement that does the exact same thing; scheduled incremental backups of multiple volumes that keep as many older daily, weekly and monthly versions as the volume can hold, with automatic pruning, simple browsing of older versions, and easy restoring of single files or entire volumes. No subscription apps.

I still use Time Machine for general backups, however it was useless when backing up a very large Aperture library. It would take as long as 3-4 days, and even just doing a library copy would take longer (and then usually fail). CCC was a life saver, the initial backup was slow (maybe a day), and then incremental back ups would only take 30-45 minutes. Not sure about the pruning and browsing ease, as my needs were for a entire large library database. It's rock solid, and extremely fast for that.

 

[piattj]

Right??? I really hate to say it too because I've been an Apple freak for decades, but I have to call them out when they get something wrong, and they screwed up Time Machine. I just can't trust it to keep my data safe anymore. Restores take forever or don't work at all. Right now I can't even enter TM and click on the timeline to go back in time. I've erased TM and restarted from scratch 4 times in the last 6 months so i've done everything I can to stick with it but I can't go down with this ship when it will end up with all my data drowning.

And you're right, it worked perfectly for me since it was introduced with Leopard, even with SoftRAID volumes. It all went to hell when they forced HDDs to use APFS for Time Machine. Now it causes restarts constantly and it's it's even slower than it was before.

I've spent hours auditioning ChronoSync, Arq and CCC the last couple days and I'm learning towards Arq because it works like Time Machine but with more control, so X number of hourly backups, daily backups, weekly, monthly, etc., and I can set maximum archive sizes for each backup as well, plus online backups, all without a subscription and I can use it on all three of my Macs with one license.

I'm going to revisit Super Duper and see that it has to offer these days but Arq is going to be tough to beat.

Thanks for the reply.

+1 here for Arq. Works flawlessly, with all the control you could want, to local USB, and (wireless from macbook) to NAS wired on local network. Worth every penny.

 

[Ifti]

I still use TM (with a USBC external SSD) and it seems to work fine for me TBH. No issues at all.
Saying that, I do keep a CCC clone of my drive on a second external SSD as well......just in case......

 

[rhett7660]

I haven't used TM for awhile now... Don't remember why. But I do use Chronosync. Been using it for quite some time. No complaints. I have everything on a schedule.

 

[Fishrrman]

CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper.

Works for me.