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Gotta be honest, I find the idea of a bootable backup disk to be defective. What if it was an OS bug that wiped out your volume, and booting the backup does the

Gotta be honest, I find the idea of a bootable backup disk to be defective. What if it was an OS bug that wiped out your volume, and booting the backup does the exact same thing to the backup, because of the same bug?

replete 2y ago
It's actually insanely useful. Weekly clone to disk is something I value because if the machine dies I can use my clone on another machine and boot my real desktop without fuss and Continue Doing Things
perfectra1n 2y ago
The hope there would be that the backup is from before the OS bug reared its ugly head, so you can get what you need off of it. (or hope it doesn’t happen again)
codazoda 2y ago
Yeah, I don’t understand system backups anymore. I keep everything I care about in a single directory and clone that to the cloud. I no longer need to worry about backups outside of this. It’s easy enough to install a fresh OS and restore my directory. I’ll need to install a few apps but I’ll also have a nice clean system to work with.
- eviks 2y ago
  And if you have many apps and don't treat your carefully edited configs as dirt, you'll understand it'd be a giant waste of time to recreate from scratch
  - avalys 2y ago
    I don’t carefully edit any configs. I try to be productive with the default/recommended configuration as much as possible, and be flexible when things change rather than fight to restore the familiar behavior. Otherwise you’re constantly fighting a lonely battle.
    - eviks 2y ago
      You don't need to fight anything, yo can be just as flexible, just starting from a much better base that the defaults. But this is not about you, but the inability to understand the value of backing up apps and their configs
    - wruza 2y ago
      You cannot be productive with the default configuration. You’re just telling it to yourself, but it really sucks.
      - datadrivenangel 2y ago
        What are key configuration that needs to be changed?
        wruza 2y ago
        Prevent taskbar from collapsing apps into a single icon.
      - jeffbee 2y ago
        Are you sure you measured your net productivity, deducting the config editing and the evangelism?
      - khana 2y ago
        [dead]
sonofhans 2y ago
Oh, I’ve used SuperDuper for years, and I adore it. Several years ago I had a spinning rust HD die in a Macbook. I plugged my backed drive into it, booted, and had access to all my stuff. Without that drive I would have needed another computer. I could keep going making a list of all the ways I’ve found a bootable clone of a MacOS machine to be useful, but damn, I’d hate to live without it.
radicality 2y ago
I’m thinking similarly. I’ve been using normal Time Machine backups, together with iCloud (not really backup), occasional copies of data I care about to external SSDs, and occasional encrypted backups to remote storage (rsync.net) But it never even occurred to me to want a bootable backup or include the OS in it. In fact whenever I upgrade my MacBook, I choose to set it up as a fresh device and don’t use any of the tooling to copy everything-and-anything.
alwayslikethis 2y ago
You can roll back to a backup right before the OS update that caused the bug. For example I have hourly snapshots using btrfs. Each snapshot is entirely bootable by itself, so if I ever broke anything, I just roll back. The system snapshots are read-only, so they are unlikely to be destroyed by bugs like that. You can also just make another snapshot of the same snapshot to be safer. It's also separate from the user data I care about.
srhtftw 2y ago
> Gotta be honest, I find the idea of a bootable backup disk to be defective Well, having relied on a similar product (Carbon Copy Cloner) to keep a bootable backup in addition to time machine backups for myself and members of my family to reduce MTTR for many years, I find the idea of being unable to trivially recover from a hardware failure in a few minutes to be defective. Any of our clones can be booted on any similar system. On a few occasions people have used borrowed machines until repairs were complete without relying on cloud or internet connectivity. Of course these are all older systems and working while booted from an external drive is definitely a degraded experience akin to driving on a spare tire until you can get to a proper service station.

replete 2y ago

It's actually insanely useful. Weekly clone to disk is something I value because if the machine dies I can use my clone on another machine and boot my real desktop without fuss and Continue Doing Things

perfectra1n 2y ago

The hope there would be that the backup is from before the OS bug reared its ugly head, so you can get what you need off of it. (or hope it doesn’t happen again)

codazoda 2y ago

Yeah, I don’t understand system backups anymore. I keep everything I care about in a single directory and clone that to the cloud. I no longer need to worry about backups outside of this. It’s easy enough to install a fresh OS and restore my directory. I’ll need to install a few apps but I’ll also have a nice clean system to work with.

eviks 2y ago
And if you have many apps and don't treat your carefully edited configs as dirt, you'll understand it'd be a giant waste of time to recreate from scratch
- avalys 2y ago
  I don’t carefully edit any configs. I try to be productive with the default/recommended configuration as much as possible, and be flexible when things change rather than fight to restore the familiar behavior. Otherwise you’re constantly fighting a lonely battle.
  - eviks 2y ago
    You don't need to fight anything, yo can be just as flexible, just starting from a much better base that the defaults. But this is not about you, but the inability to understand the value of backing up apps and their configs
  - wruza 2y ago
    You cannot be productive with the default configuration. You’re just telling it to yourself, but it really sucks.
    - datadrivenangel 2y ago
      What are key configuration that needs to be changed?
      - wruza 2y ago
        Prevent taskbar from collapsing apps into a single icon.
    - jeffbee 2y ago
      Are you sure you measured your net productivity, deducting the config editing and the evangelism?
    - khana 2y ago
      [dead]

sonofhans 2y ago

Oh, I’ve used SuperDuper for years, and I adore it. Several years ago I had a spinning rust HD die in a Macbook. I plugged my backed drive into it, booted, and had access to all my stuff. Without that drive I would have needed another computer. I could keep going making a list of all the ways I’ve found a bootable clone of a MacOS machine to be useful, but damn, I’d hate to live without it.

radicality 2y ago

I’m thinking similarly. I’ve been using normal Time Machine backups, together with iCloud (not really backup), occasional copies of data I care about to external SSDs, and occasional encrypted backups to remote storage (rsync.net) But it never even occurred to me to want a bootable backup or include the OS in it. In fact whenever I upgrade my MacBook, I choose to set it up as a fresh device and don’t use any of the tooling to copy everything-and-anything.

alwayslikethis 2y ago

You can roll back to a backup right before the OS update that caused the bug. For example I have hourly snapshots using btrfs. Each snapshot is entirely bootable by itself, so if I ever broke anything, I just roll back. The system snapshots are read-only, so they are unlikely to be destroyed by bugs like that. You can also just make another snapshot of the same snapshot to be safer. It's also separate from the user data I care about.

srhtftw 2y ago

> Gotta be honest, I find the idea of a bootable backup disk to be defective Well, having relied on a similar product (Carbon Copy Cloner) to keep a bootable backup in addition to time machine backups for myself and members of my family to reduce MTTR for many years, I find the idea of being unable to trivially recover from a hardware failure in a few minutes to be defective. Any of our clones can be booted on any similar system. On a few occasions people have used borrowed machines until repairs were complete without relying on cloud or internet connectivity. Of course these are all older systems and working while booted from an external drive is definitely a degraded experience akin to driving on a spare tire until you can get to a proper service station.