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What do you use for both on site and off site backups?

VitoBotta

VitoBotta

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Dec 2, 2020
924
378
Espoo, Finland
I use TimeMachine to two different drives for local backups (my data is also synced between multiple macs), and Arq to two destinations (iDrive e2 and Backblaze B2) for off site backups.

I am curious as to what others use in terms of tools and backup strategy.
 
I use a Synology NAS at home for easy network access, also a Samsung T7 and T5 SSD of photos and videos in a small safe that can handle a decent fire temp (don't remember off the top of my head) but because of the size and whatnot it isn't safe from theft of course. I also keep a backup 1:1 copy on a NAS located at my mothers house across the U.S. from my (I live west coast and she lives on the east coast).

I have considered Backblaze before though and it still pops in my head every so often.
 
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Time Machine to do a local back up of my MacBook Air, onto an external SSD that's kept off site (at my mum's house). Backups every week when I go to visit.

BackBlaze for a regular off-site backup that's completely up-to-date. I have this on both my Mac mini and MacBook Air.

As for local backups on the Mac mini, it's a bit more complicated.

I have all my important stuff (photo libraries, music libraries etc.) on an external SSD, due to only having base storage on the internal drive. That is then backed up to a 2nd external SSD via. Carbon Copy Cloner rather than Time Machine.

I experienced a few glitches when trying to backup external drives with Time Machine in the Big Sur days and never went back. If I recall correctly it kept backing up the whole drive every time rather than just the files that changed.

I do still use Time Machine to backup what little is kept on the internal drive though, and that backup data goes to a 2nd partition on the same external SSD I use with Carbon Copy Cloner.

A bit complex really, hopefully if I get a new Mac mini with more internal storage I'll be able to steamline things a bit more.
 
On my primary Mac: time machine to a 2012 quad Mini fileserver on my LAN, frequent clones of all my disks to external SSD's with Carbon Copy and Backblaze for continuous cloud backups. Media server is automatically cloned nightly with Carbon Copy, plus Backblaze. I also have a variety of old backup disks from previous computers and older versions of MacOS.

Got rid of my PC a few years ago and now run Windows in a VM. So, all my Windows files are stored in the MacOS filesystem where they are backed up like everything else. The VM itself has almost no content except a standard install of Windows, but it gets backed up when I clone the Mac.
 
Arq backup to NAS thrice-daily. Daily backup (Arq) to local USB SSD. Cloud backup to ProtonDrive. Also sync'd to iCLoud. Occasional TM backup to another local SSD
 
I have a 2TB external ssd that I store all my photos/videos too. I use chronosync to sync it to a 12TB 2 drive external raid as well as my synology NAS. Backblaze syncs the 12TB external to it's cloud. I don't sync deletions with chronosync to my NAS so I can always revert back to something I may have deleted months ago, but I do go and clean up every 6 months or so.
 
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VitoBotta said:
I am curious as to what others use in terms of tools and backup strategy.
Click to expand...

I maintain backups using Time Machine and Carbon Copy Cloner. The Time Machine drive is always connected. The CCC drive is disconnected most of the time. I do a CCC backup about once a week or before installing an OS update.

I do this for redundancy and to increase the chances of having a clean version of my entire setup in the event of a catastrophic failure or a security breach.

More discussion:
 
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Time Machine for daily backups (loving the new Ventura option to run daily instead of hourly).
Carbon Copy Cloner for a monthly backup I keep offsite.

I know it's not strictly speaking a backup service, but iCloud Drive fills in any gaps between the two. If there was a disaster that took out my Mac and my Time Machine drive, I'd restore off the CCC offsite backup, and iCloud would pull in anything that had been changed since my last monthly offsite backup.
 
My devices backup to my Synology NAS, the NAS runs a backup to an onsite Mac Pro RAID set and a large hard drive I keep offsite
 
Time Machine on a desktop hard drive, Backblaze for offsite storage. Backblaze now backs up all the drives attached to your computer. Nice because you don’t have to manage them one-by-one.

Backblaze saved my bacon this year. I ran into an issue and needed all my files. At my request they sent me an SSD with a copy of all my files. What a relief.
 
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neutrino17 said:
Time Machine on a desktop hard drive, Backblaze for offsite storage. Backblaze now backs up all the drives attached to your computer. Nice because you don’t have to manage them one-by-one.

Backblaze saved my bacon this year. I ran into an issue and needed all my files. At my request they sent me an SSD with a copy of all my files. What a relief.
Click to expand...
How long did it take to receive it? Where are you based? (to understand how quick they are)
 
neutrino17 said:
Backblaze saved my bacon this year. I ran into an issue and needed all my files. At my request they sent me an SSD with a copy of all my files. What a relief.
Click to expand...
How does that work? Do you send the drive back when you're done with it?
 
Internal disk (hourly): TM and CCC
External SSDs (hourly): CCC
Offsite (daily): Arq to B2 and OneDrive
Local synchronisation (daily): CCC and ChronoSync
 
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I don't do regular backups.

I'm looking for a reliable 2TB SSD to use for backup with Time Machine.
It doesn't have to be fast since it is only for backup. It can be USB 3 speeds.
Reliable is my biggest criteria.

Any suggestions?
 
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