4 ms·

I have been bitten by Time Machine in the past. There is not much more frustrating than a fried computer and a backup that doesn't work and can't be recovered.

I have been bitten by Time Machine in the past. There is not much more frustrating than a fried computer and a backup that doesn't work and can't be recovered. Since then I only use Carbon Copy Cloner [0]. It has very very very excellent documentation and it is well the worth the purchase. The documentation covers lots of backup scenarios, how to do recovery and dealing with error cases. It also lets you create bootable backups on external drives, though I have only used it for backups over the network. I'm not affiliated, but I can't praise their work enough. [0] https://bombich.com/ https://bombich.com/

Pamar 7y ago
Thanks, but I wanted to understand what the actual problems of Time Machine are, especially with Catalina, and - most importantly - which are the symptoms I should be wary of.
- climb_stealth 7y ago
  Apologies, I haven't heard of anything and I haven't dared upgrade yet either. Good luck!
- jeromeof 7y ago
  Well one problem I ran into was because of the changes to iTunes audiobooks are now stored in the Books app but the Books app doesn't support external drives for media so the Catalina update includes hours of copying files from my external HDD to my primary Macintosh HD - filling it up almost entirely (I have/had about 300GB of audiobooks) - this was bad enough (as their was no UI telling me it was doing this) but then Time Machine kicked in trying to back up these files (I had excluded the external drive but obviously not the primary partition) but because I ran out of space during the initial Catalina upgrade run, their were lots of artifacts which also got added to Time Machine. Time machine itself started trashing for hours. I lost probably a day (to a day and a half tidying things up and cleaning up stuff that was not my fault) and of course I have no decent way of managing audiobooks now.
armitron 7y ago
For backups, you can simply use rsync. No reason for proprietary solutions when rock-solid opensource alternatives exist.
- inapis 7y ago
  Yeah, no. CCC goes way above and beyond. Creating verifiable, bootable copies, being able to bundle tasks together, creating recovery volumes, being able to backup locally, remotely or to images etc etc. Rsync is a good tool but CCC gives massive quality of life. Some of that won’t even be possible with rsync. And rest would require building a complicated set of scripts. Paying Bombich, to deal with all the headaches and mac os shenanigans, $50 every couple of years is a much better deal. And its not a lock-in like other backup tools. You can access specific files inside the backup without CCC. CCC + Arq cover all my bases when it comes to backup and restore.

Pamar 7y ago

Thanks, but I wanted to understand what the actual problems of Time Machine are, especially with Catalina, and - most importantly - which are the symptoms I should be wary of.

climb_stealth 7y ago
Apologies, I haven't heard of anything and I haven't dared upgrade yet either. Good luck!
jeromeof 7y ago
Well one problem I ran into was because of the changes to iTunes audiobooks are now stored in the Books app but the Books app doesn't support external drives for media so the Catalina update includes hours of copying files from my external HDD to my primary Macintosh HD - filling it up almost entirely (I have/had about 300GB of audiobooks) - this was bad enough (as their was no UI telling me it was doing this) but then Time Machine kicked in trying to back up these files (I had excluded the external drive but obviously not the primary partition) but because I ran out of space during the initial Catalina upgrade run, their were lots of artifacts which also got added to Time Machine. Time machine itself started trashing for hours. I lost probably a day (to a day and a half tidying things up and cleaning up stuff that was not my fault) and of course I have no decent way of managing audiobooks now.

armitron 7y ago

For backups, you can simply use rsync. No reason for proprietary solutions when rock-solid opensource alternatives exist.

inapis 7y ago
Yeah, no. CCC goes way above and beyond. Creating verifiable, bootable copies, being able to bundle tasks together, creating recovery volumes, being able to backup locally, remotely or to images etc etc. Rsync is a good tool but CCC gives massive quality of life. Some of that won’t even be possible with rsync. And rest would require building a complicated set of scripts. Paying Bombich, to deal with all the headaches and mac os shenanigans, $50 every couple of years is a much better deal. And its not a lock-in like other backup tools. You can access specific files inside the backup without CCC. CCC + Arq cover all my bases when it comes to backup and restore.