6 ms·

> > Snapshots > If those can be sent: Finally Time Machine done right. If this ends up being true I can't wait—it's so frustrating watching tiny incremental b

> > Snapshots > If those can be sent: Finally Time Machine done right. If this ends up being true I can't wait—it's so frustrating watching tiny incremental backups take forever over the network. It seems like "Preparing" and "Cleaning up" take longer than moving the data.

PhantomGremlin 10y ago
it's so frustrating watching tiny incremental backups take forever over the network While waiting for APFS to become stable, buy Carbon Copy Cloner. $40. I love it. It's fundamentally rsync, but tailored to OS X. For personal use a single license covers an entire household. Every night CCC fires up on each laptop and each does an incremental clone to its own dedicated directory on my desktop machine. This clone is usually less than a few GB and takes about a minute to run. CCC doesn't have to be run daily, it can be told to run hourly instead. Time Machine running on my desktop then copies everything off to yet another disk. So my backup environment is: each laptop uses CCC to periodically clone to desktop the clones on the desktop are "traditional", CCC is told not to keep its own copies of modified files desktop runs time machine, makes hourly backups to a TM disk, old versions of files can be found there This gives me 3 copies of all data on each laptop: 1) on the laptop 2) on the desktop 3) on the desktop's Time Machine Volume If you create your users in the same order on each machine, or later go back and change the User IDs to match (under advanced options in Users and Groups) then the uids will match everywhere, and all files can be easily browsed in each location, with all file permissions intact.
- tedmiston 10y ago
  CCC was what I used back in the day (IIRC it used to be free) to make the most reliable bit-for-bit backups of OS X machines. Time Machine skipping over so many files is kind of a nuisance to me.
  - newscracker 10y ago
    Unless you set the privacy in Time Machine to ignore certain drives/volumes/folders, you shouldn't really miss anything with a Time Machine backup. It usually ignores those files that aren't necessary and can be created by the OS or applications (like caches or temporary files, for example). What kinds of personal files did you lose with a Time Machine backup?
    - tedmiston 10y ago
      Of course you can see the full list at /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd.bundle/Contents/Resources/StdExclusions.plist. One of the biggest is iPhone backups from iTunes. If I were a normal user and my MacBook didn't boot up tomorrow, I'd be surprised to find my backup didn't include critical files like this. For example, apps that are no longer in the App Store but are in your backup can be restored. Once you don't have that backup anymore, they can't. It's just one of the reasons Apple users are forced to have multiple backup services if they want reliable and complete backups.
      - newscracker 10y ago
        I'm not sure why the iPhone backups on your system didn't get backed up. The device backups stored in ~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup/ is not in the exclusions file that I see. P.S.: The latest app binary files may not get updated/synced on the Mac post iOS 9/iTunes upgrade.
        tedmiston 10y ago
        I double checked my drive and you're correct with regard to mobile backups. That's reassuring. It would be nice to have a utility to give a definitive diff of what's on your hard drive that's not on your: Time Machine drive / [Carbonite, Backblaze, etc] backup.
- peckrob 10y ago
  I've migrated many Macs using Carbon Copy Cloner. Works fabulously and is a great tool.
- dcosson 10y ago
  Not trying to troll, but I see so many HN comments about backups and I just don't have this need anymore. What are people using traditional backup software like time machine, carbon copy cloner, etc. for on their laptop these days? I use google docs for all my docs and spreadsheets, occasionally I use excel or word or keynote for files but if I do I save the docs to my dropbox or google drive folder, I have my photos synced with google photos, my music is synced through itunes match (or I can sync my music library files to dropbox, or use spotify), all my code is in git repos pushed to github or bitbucket. What else is there to back up? Is it a matter of not wanting to re-install apps manually to get your computer back to its current state? Or is it a matter of not wanting to pay for the extra storage space on dropbox?
  - orionblastar 10y ago
    I agree cloud based backups like Dropbox just sync in the background. Got any souce code store it in Github or Bitbucket. Documents and source code doesn't take up much space. Unless you want music and video files which iTunes can always sync for you to your Apple mobile device. I use a USB hard drive to back up my Thunderbird and Firefox profiles. Also my downloads and other stuff too big for Dropbox. $100 for a 4T USB 3.0 hard drive is cheap.
    - simonh 10y ago
      Sync is not backup. If you corrupt or delete a file, the destructive action will get propagated as well. Time machine and many other backup systems gives you access to previous versions of files and folders.
  - sametmax 10y ago
    - Some people don't want to use the cloud to store their stuff for privacy / ethic / commercial / legal reasons. - Some others have been burnt by the cloud failing them (corruption, data loss, copyright abuse, etc) and want an additional layer of security. - There are many activities that are fully not covered by the cloud, such as 3D / video / music edition, art in general, programming (all those dev envs)... - You may want / need to be able to be able to recover from a dataloss even if you are offline. - Some file types don't match the cloud sync paradigm very well such as system and configurations, non online game saves and all stuff that needs to be at a precise place on the system. - You got stuff you want to manipulate as files in dirs, not as an entry into app. Power users usually dislike the loss of control and freedom the apps imply. - You like to have 3 backup because of the rule "one on site, on off site". - You like to have all your backups at the same place. - You have collections off files that just don't fit in the cloud, such as Tera of Videos. - Sex tapes still need to be backed up, and you won't send that to your dropbox. - Some people still have a shitty internet connections and can't sync reliably. - It's less work to manage one backup than to setup all the parameters of all those apps to be sure they sync only what you want. - You read the licence for some sync plateform and couldn't decently click "I accept". - You got a NAS at home on which you plug your hard drive with the backups for the whole familly.
- Twisell 10y ago
  18 years ago, while being a teenager, I misconfigured CCC only to find out that only the active user folders where synced after a full erase/reinstall upgrade of MacOS. This was my epic "there is to kind of people those who lost data and those who will loose data" story. All my dad and mum files where gone, luckily nothing professional and no pictures (analog camera still ruled back then). This is just a reminder that no tool is ever perfect. CCC is great, TimeMachine is sluggish but "dumbproof" to a certain extend (but you have to keep faith in a black box). Personally I'm pretty paranoid so I perform my monthly off-site backup by rebooting my Mac on recovery partition and I perform a full disc copy to an external drive using DiskUtils (because ultimately this will be the recovery tools I'll use if things goes bad so I need to use my off-site backup...). It really sluggish so I run it while sleeping. I get that for professionals with more than 1To you will need to get to some more serious stuff anyway.
  - laumars 10y ago
    I appreciate this was a long time ago and you've learned a lot since, but your story perfectly illustrates the importance of not just performing backups, but periodically testing them as well. That way you eliminate your blind faith in a black box by ensuring you actually have a working solution to fallback on.
    - Twisell 10y ago
      I my case (and I can't emphasis more on my teenager status back then) it was a permission issue, everything looked fine from my perspective, but CCC somewhat didn't have the right permissions to sync folder of others users. So their home folder where actually empty. From my perspective the backup was a success... This traumatizing error is when I first learned about superuser and permissions. I guess CCC has gone a long way since then and added more safeguard. But I must confess that I've sticked to a "use the goddam standard tools" since then. Sure there must be a lot of more customizable or faster tools out there. But Time Machine stay "the backup tool my mum can't use wrong" I can't give enough to credit to Apple for that. And putting aside NSA/FBI problem, iCloud backup for iPhone is exactly as smooth. Literally every time I go to a Genius Bar, someone is about to hug a genius because of a successful restore from the iCloud of their broken/stolen iPhone. This is how you build a "faithful" customer base and no other tech company understand that better than Apple so far.

PhantomGremlin 10y ago

it's so frustrating watching tiny incremental backups take forever over the network While waiting for APFS to become stable, buy Carbon Copy Cloner. $40. I love it. It's fundamentally rsync, but tailored to OS X. For personal use a single license covers an entire household. Every night CCC fires up on each laptop and each does an incremental clone to its own dedicated directory on my desktop machine. This clone is usually less than a few GB and takes about a minute to run. CCC doesn't have to be run daily, it can be told to run hourly instead. Time Machine running on my desktop then copies everything off to yet another disk. So my backup environment is: each laptop uses CCC to periodically clone to desktop the clones on the desktop are "traditional", CCC is told not to keep its own copies of modified files desktop runs time machine, makes hourly backups to a TM disk, old versions of files can be found there This gives me 3 copies of all data on each laptop: 1) on the laptop 2) on the desktop 3) on the desktop's Time Machine Volume If you create your users in the same order on each machine, or later go back and change the User IDs to match (under advanced options in Users and Groups) then the uids will match everywhere, and all files can be easily browsed in each location, with all file permissions intact.

tedmiston 10y ago
CCC was what I used back in the day (IIRC it used to be free) to make the most reliable bit-for-bit backups of OS X machines. Time Machine skipping over so many files is kind of a nuisance to me.
- newscracker 10y ago
  Unless you set the privacy in Time Machine to ignore certain drives/volumes/folders, you shouldn't really miss anything with a Time Machine backup. It usually ignores those files that aren't necessary and can be created by the OS or applications (like caches or temporary files, for example). What kinds of personal files did you lose with a Time Machine backup?
  - tedmiston 10y ago
    Of course you can see the full list at /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd.bundle/Contents/Resources/StdExclusions.plist. One of the biggest is iPhone backups from iTunes. If I were a normal user and my MacBook didn't boot up tomorrow, I'd be surprised to find my backup didn't include critical files like this. For example, apps that are no longer in the App Store but are in your backup can be restored. Once you don't have that backup anymore, they can't. It's just one of the reasons Apple users are forced to have multiple backup services if they want reliable and complete backups.
    - newscracker 10y ago
      I'm not sure why the iPhone backups on your system didn't get backed up. The device backups stored in ~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup/ is not in the exclusions file that I see. P.S.: The latest app binary files may not get updated/synced on the Mac post iOS 9/iTunes upgrade.
      - tedmiston 10y ago
        I double checked my drive and you're correct with regard to mobile backups. That's reassuring. It would be nice to have a utility to give a definitive diff of what's on your hard drive that's not on your: Time Machine drive / [Carbonite, Backblaze, etc] backup.
peckrob 10y ago
I've migrated many Macs using Carbon Copy Cloner. Works fabulously and is a great tool.
dcosson 10y ago
Not trying to troll, but I see so many HN comments about backups and I just don't have this need anymore. What are people using traditional backup software like time machine, carbon copy cloner, etc. for on their laptop these days? I use google docs for all my docs and spreadsheets, occasionally I use excel or word or keynote for files but if I do I save the docs to my dropbox or google drive folder, I have my photos synced with google photos, my music is synced through itunes match (or I can sync my music library files to dropbox, or use spotify), all my code is in git repos pushed to github or bitbucket. What else is there to back up? Is it a matter of not wanting to re-install apps manually to get your computer back to its current state? Or is it a matter of not wanting to pay for the extra storage space on dropbox?
- orionblastar 10y ago
  I agree cloud based backups like Dropbox just sync in the background. Got any souce code store it in Github or Bitbucket. Documents and source code doesn't take up much space. Unless you want music and video files which iTunes can always sync for you to your Apple mobile device. I use a USB hard drive to back up my Thunderbird and Firefox profiles. Also my downloads and other stuff too big for Dropbox. $100 for a 4T USB 3.0 hard drive is cheap.
  - simonh 10y ago
    Sync is not backup. If you corrupt or delete a file, the destructive action will get propagated as well. Time machine and many other backup systems gives you access to previous versions of files and folders.
- sametmax 10y ago
  - Some people don't want to use the cloud to store their stuff for privacy / ethic / commercial / legal reasons. - Some others have been burnt by the cloud failing them (corruption, data loss, copyright abuse, etc) and want an additional layer of security. - There are many activities that are fully not covered by the cloud, such as 3D / video / music edition, art in general, programming (all those dev envs)... - You may want / need to be able to be able to recover from a dataloss even if you are offline. - Some file types don't match the cloud sync paradigm very well such as system and configurations, non online game saves and all stuff that needs to be at a precise place on the system. - You got stuff you want to manipulate as files in dirs, not as an entry into app. Power users usually dislike the loss of control and freedom the apps imply. - You like to have 3 backup because of the rule "one on site, on off site". - You like to have all your backups at the same place. - You have collections off files that just don't fit in the cloud, such as Tera of Videos. - Sex tapes still need to be backed up, and you won't send that to your dropbox. - Some people still have a shitty internet connections and can't sync reliably. - It's less work to manage one backup than to setup all the parameters of all those apps to be sure they sync only what you want. - You read the licence for some sync plateform and couldn't decently click "I accept". - You got a NAS at home on which you plug your hard drive with the backups for the whole familly.
Twisell 10y ago
18 years ago, while being a teenager, I misconfigured CCC only to find out that only the active user folders where synced after a full erase/reinstall upgrade of MacOS. This was my epic "there is to kind of people those who lost data and those who will loose data" story. All my dad and mum files where gone, luckily nothing professional and no pictures (analog camera still ruled back then). This is just a reminder that no tool is ever perfect. CCC is great, TimeMachine is sluggish but "dumbproof" to a certain extend (but you have to keep faith in a black box). Personally I'm pretty paranoid so I perform my monthly off-site backup by rebooting my Mac on recovery partition and I perform a full disc copy to an external drive using DiskUtils (because ultimately this will be the recovery tools I'll use if things goes bad so I need to use my off-site backup...). It really sluggish so I run it while sleeping. I get that for professionals with more than 1To you will need to get to some more serious stuff anyway.
- laumars 10y ago
  I appreciate this was a long time ago and you've learned a lot since, but your story perfectly illustrates the importance of not just performing backups, but periodically testing them as well. That way you eliminate your blind faith in a black box by ensuring you actually have a working solution to fallback on.
  - Twisell 10y ago
    I my case (and I can't emphasis more on my teenager status back then) it was a permission issue, everything looked fine from my perspective, but CCC somewhat didn't have the right permissions to sync folder of others users. So their home folder where actually empty. From my perspective the backup was a success... This traumatizing error is when I first learned about superuser and permissions. I guess CCC has gone a long way since then and added more safeguard. But I must confess that I've sticked to a "use the goddam standard tools" since then. Sure there must be a lot of more customizable or faster tools out there. But Time Machine stay "the backup tool my mum can't use wrong" I can't give enough to credit to Apple for that. And putting aside NSA/FBI problem, iCloud backup for iPhone is exactly as smooth. Literally every time I go to a Genius Bar, someone is about to hug a genius because of a successful restore from the iCloud of their broken/stolen iPhone. This is how you build a "faithful" customer base and no other tech company understand that better than Apple so far.