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We also recommend backing up your data on a regular basis until you receive a replacement drive. Why stop there? With tools and services like Time Machine, Car

We also recommend backing up your data on a regular basis until you receive a replacement drive. Why stop there? With tools and services like Time Machine, Carbon Copy Cloner and Crashplan, there's no excuse not to maintain a backup. As evidenced by this page, shit happens.

jnsaff2 13y ago
Exactly my thought when reading this. From my experience as an Ops guy I can say that in my opinion all storage media is perishable. And also that most friends know that they should back-up as when shit hits the platter the first thing they say is: "I know I should have backed up and my latest is from September last year, can you help me?" At least with OSX, backups are made very easy for you via Time Machine and even better a Time Capsule.
epo 13y ago
And where is it implying that you can stop backing up after the replacement? Are you so dense or literal-minded that you need everything spelling out for you? "do not dry your pets in this microwave".
- gnur 13y ago
  How about the part where it says: >> until you receive a replacement drive
- quarterto 13y ago
  until you receive a replacement drive Uh, there? Basic reading comprehension is not literal-mindedness.
Tyrannosaurs 13y ago
I keep two backups, one onsite through Time Machine, one offsite using BackBlaze. After initial set up the maintenance time on them is about 2 minutes a month to check they've been running properly, total cost is a cheap external drive and $5 a month. Not backing up in 2013 is just irresponsible.
- tedivm 13y ago
  Well, be extremely careful with Backblaze. I got bit on the ass by them. It turns out their dashboard is just caching it's results, and there are instances where the dashboards will say they have data when they really don't. I learned this the hard way when we brought my girlfriend's computer in for repair. We gave them permission to replace the drive, went to restore the data from Backblaze, and got a nasty surprise when it errored out and their support team let us know the data wasn't there. As far as I'm concerned using Backblaze is not the same as actually having off site backups, unfortunately.
  - rsync 13y ago
    I'll just leave this right here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5640700 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5640700 All accounts guaranteed to have no dashboard or gui of any kind.
    - tedivm 13y ago
      That's not a real solution though, it's half of a solution at best. All you're providing is a place to dump files, with none of the services that a backup solution would actually provide. This may be fantastic for technical users, but it would be a nightmare if I used this to manage the backups of friends and family. Ultimately I switched to CrashPlan, as that not only gave me offsite backups (for far cheaper than you, sorry) but using the same technology also offers me on site backups and the ability to back up to any server I control and choose. This allows me to have my friends backup to the CrashPlan service, to their own local drive, and to a computer I setup just in case both of those fail. Best part is I'm not stuck doing a bunch of work. As a final note, your service is extremely expensive compared to just about everything else.
    - mahyarm 13y ago
      I would be paying $50/month to just back up my photo & video collection at that rate unfortunately.
  - Tyrannosaurs 13y ago
hsuresh 13y ago
Do not rely completely on Time Machine backups. I learnt the lesson in a painful way. My MBP crashed a few years back, and Apple decided to replace the motherboard. Unfortunately, Time Machine detected this as a new laptop, and won't let me restore from the backups. These days, i backup only user data and i don't worry about the base OS. In fact, i prefer this over TimeMachine style backups. Photos go to Google Drive, work related documents to Dropbox, all code goes to BitBucket/Github, and thats about it. Videos and other personal stuff get backed to an external disk.
- free652 13y ago
  Huh? I restored the same TimeMachine backup to multiple different machines, including a hackintosh. Just weird. But yea, I have dropbox, timemachine, a drobo with 16tb for photos/videos.
- mdmarra 13y ago
  You can absolutely use time machine backups with a different Mac, the process is slightly different but still works. Migrating a Time Machine backup to a new Mac When you buy a new Mac, you can transfer all of your applications, files, settings, and other information from a Time Machine backup you've already made. You will be asked if you want to transfer files when you start up your new Mac for the first time. Or, you can use the Migration Assistant (located in Applications/Utilities). After Migration Assistant completes the transfer and you select your existing Time Machine backup drive, you will be prompted with "Inherit Backup History". Once selected you will be able to continue to use your existing Time Machine backup on your new Mac. http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1427 http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1427
- danieldk 13y ago
  Do not rely completely on Time Machine backups. I learnt the lesson in a painful way. My MBP crashed a few years back, and Apple decided to replace the motherboard. Unfortunately, Time Machine detected this as a new laptop, and won't let me restore from the backups. But Time Machine backups are just a folder with (yet another) folder per backup timestamp. It doesn't use deltas or anything fancy, unchanged files are just hard linked. In other words, you can browse a Time Machine backup like any other filesystem. For instance, you could just use cp or rsync to restore an exact copy. On a Time Capsule or Airport Extreme with external hard disk, the files live in some disk image IIRC, but even there it is generally not hard to restore files.
hrktb 13y ago
Just as heads up: - Time machine: is not reliable for network backups (yes, really) - CCC: needs a USB connected drive for a MBA - Crashplan: recurring payment service based in the US All of the above solution are useful, but none are reasonable and no brainer backup solutions for everyone, especially for MBA owners. As for now, bittorent sync with a mirror on the same network feels like the best solution IMO.
- ejdyksen 13y ago
  CrashPlan doesn't require that you use their service. The client software (which is free) is also server software, and you can backup to your own server(s).
  - hrktb 13y ago
    Thanks for the info, looking at it there's even a synology package for the headless server. Nice.
- ValentineC 13y ago
  Could you elaborate on why Time Machine isn't reliable for network backups? That's my setup at the moment. (My 2012 MBA's SSD failed, but thankfully much of my data was automatically backed up to my NAS the previous night. The backup restored fine, too.)
  - mikestew 13y ago
    Time Machine will regularly (as in once a month or two for my household of Macs, sometimes in as little as a week) complain "Time Machine completed a verification of your backups. To improve reliability, Time Machine must create a new backup for you." Apple says don't backup to a NAS. Plenty of folks have reported problems. Thankfully it's easy to fix: http://www.garth.org/archives/2011,08,27,169,fix-time-machine-sparsebundle-nas-based-backup-errors.html http://www.garth.org/archives/2011,08,27,169,fix-time-machin...
    - glhaynes 13y ago

jnsaff2 13y ago

Exactly my thought when reading this. From my experience as an Ops guy I can say that in my opinion all storage media is perishable. And also that most friends know that they should back-up as when shit hits the platter the first thing they say is: "I know I should have backed up and my latest is from September last year, can you help me?" At least with OSX, backups are made very easy for you via Time Machine and even better a Time Capsule.

epo 13y ago

And where is it implying that you can stop backing up after the replacement? Are you so dense or literal-minded that you need everything spelling out for you? "do not dry your pets in this microwave".

gnur 13y ago
How about the part where it says: >> until you receive a replacement drive
quarterto 13y ago
until you receive a replacement drive Uh, there? Basic reading comprehension is not literal-mindedness.

Tyrannosaurs 13y ago

I keep two backups, one onsite through Time Machine, one offsite using BackBlaze. After initial set up the maintenance time on them is about 2 minutes a month to check they've been running properly, total cost is a cheap external drive and $5 a month. Not backing up in 2013 is just irresponsible.

tedivm 13y ago
Well, be extremely careful with Backblaze. I got bit on the ass by them. It turns out their dashboard is just caching it's results, and there are instances where the dashboards will say they have data when they really don't. I learned this the hard way when we brought my girlfriend's computer in for repair. We gave them permission to replace the drive, went to restore the data from Backblaze, and got a nasty surprise when it errored out and their support team let us know the data wasn't there. As far as I'm concerned using Backblaze is not the same as actually having off site backups, unfortunately.
- rsync 13y ago
  I'll just leave this right here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5640700 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5640700 All accounts guaranteed to have no dashboard or gui of any kind.
  - tedivm 13y ago
    That's not a real solution though, it's half of a solution at best. All you're providing is a place to dump files, with none of the services that a backup solution would actually provide. This may be fantastic for technical users, but it would be a nightmare if I used this to manage the backups of friends and family. Ultimately I switched to CrashPlan, as that not only gave me offsite backups (for far cheaper than you, sorry) but using the same technology also offers me on site backups and the ability to back up to any server I control and choose. This allows me to have my friends backup to the CrashPlan service, to their own local drive, and to a computer I setup just in case both of those fail. Best part is I'm not stuck doing a bunch of work. As a final note, your service is extremely expensive compared to just about everything else.
  - mahyarm 13y ago
    I would be paying $50/month to just back up my photo & video collection at that rate unfortunately.
- Tyrannosaurs 13y ago

hsuresh 13y ago

Do not rely completely on Time Machine backups. I learnt the lesson in a painful way. My MBP crashed a few years back, and Apple decided to replace the motherboard. Unfortunately, Time Machine detected this as a new laptop, and won't let me restore from the backups. These days, i backup only user data and i don't worry about the base OS. In fact, i prefer this over TimeMachine style backups. Photos go to Google Drive, work related documents to Dropbox, all code goes to BitBucket/Github, and thats about it. Videos and other personal stuff get backed to an external disk.

free652 13y ago
Huh? I restored the same TimeMachine backup to multiple different machines, including a hackintosh. Just weird. But yea, I have dropbox, timemachine, a drobo with 16tb for photos/videos.
mdmarra 13y ago
You can absolutely use time machine backups with a different Mac, the process is slightly different but still works. Migrating a Time Machine backup to a new Mac When you buy a new Mac, you can transfer all of your applications, files, settings, and other information from a Time Machine backup you've already made. You will be asked if you want to transfer files when you start up your new Mac for the first time. Or, you can use the Migration Assistant (located in Applications/Utilities). After Migration Assistant completes the transfer and you select your existing Time Machine backup drive, you will be prompted with "Inherit Backup History". Once selected you will be able to continue to use your existing Time Machine backup on your new Mac. http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1427 http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1427
danieldk 13y ago
Do not rely completely on Time Machine backups. I learnt the lesson in a painful way. My MBP crashed a few years back, and Apple decided to replace the motherboard. Unfortunately, Time Machine detected this as a new laptop, and won't let me restore from the backups. But Time Machine backups are just a folder with (yet another) folder per backup timestamp. It doesn't use deltas or anything fancy, unchanged files are just hard linked. In other words, you can browse a Time Machine backup like any other filesystem. For instance, you could just use cp or rsync to restore an exact copy. On a Time Capsule or Airport Extreme with external hard disk, the files live in some disk image IIRC, but even there it is generally not hard to restore files.

hrktb 13y ago

Just as heads up: - Time machine: is not reliable for network backups (yes, really) - CCC: needs a USB connected drive for a MBA - Crashplan: recurring payment service based in the US All of the above solution are useful, but none are reasonable and no brainer backup solutions for everyone, especially for MBA owners. As for now, bittorent sync with a mirror on the same network feels like the best solution IMO.

ejdyksen 13y ago
CrashPlan doesn't require that you use their service. The client software (which is free) is also server software, and you can backup to your own server(s).
- hrktb 13y ago
  Thanks for the info, looking at it there's even a synology package for the headless server. Nice.
ValentineC 13y ago
Could you elaborate on why Time Machine isn't reliable for network backups? That's my setup at the moment. (My 2012 MBA's SSD failed, but thankfully much of my data was automatically backed up to my NAS the previous night. The backup restored fine, too.)
- mikestew 13y ago
  Time Machine will regularly (as in once a month or two for my household of Macs, sometimes in as little as a week) complain "Time Machine completed a verification of your backups. To improve reliability, Time Machine must create a new backup for you." Apple says don't backup to a NAS. Plenty of folks have reported problems. Thankfully it's easy to fix: http://www.garth.org/archives/2011,08,27,169,fix-time-machine-sparsebundle-nas-based-backup-errors.html http://www.garth.org/archives/2011,08,27,169,fix-time-machin...
  - glhaynes 13y ago