Dennis833 Loc: Australia

Great software.

CTTonymm Loc: Connecticut

I have been using Chronosync for years now to backup my data external drives. I use Time Machine for backing up the computer and operating systems. You can schedule an automatic backup or just run the backups by initiating them when you want.

rleonetti Loc: Portland, Oregon

Apple's system has a built in "Time Machine." Simple to set up, usually to an external drive, and a breeze to go back and pick up one or many files from an earlier date--any date.

The best part is it is all automatic and is just an incremental back up of just the changes to any file.

JD750 Loc: SoCal

Super Duper, Carbon Copy Cloner,

bobbydvideo

Acronis True Image for Mac.

cyclespeed Loc: Calgary, Alberta Canada

Two questions
1 What is 3 2 1 bu

and

I searched on line and found no horror stories about TM problems. Can you give any specifics?

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

Most of the "problems" with Time Machine are PEBCACs — problems existing between computer and chair...

LarryFB Loc: Depends where our RV is parked

And it works great!

neillaubenthal

No worries…it is actually easier than one might think…especially with the latest versions of Windows. Back in the day XP and a couple after it were similar to macOS with minor differences…but as time went on the UI in Windows got crazy…even for a Windows sysadmin comfortable with pretty much any OS I saw. Feel free to PM me if you have additional questions…Mac user since the mid to late 80s and did a bunch of Mac consulting on the side from my day job.

neillaubenthal

Nope…Apple has stated that bootable clones are on the way out…not sure I think and agree that’s the smartest thing for them to do…but they’re doing it anyway. The best idea is to not clone but install from the installer on a second drive…that way you can boot the machine and get back online by updating the external to the up to date macOS and then use Migration Assistant to restore everything else…although TBH with most software being on the App Store just re-downloading it is a better idea anyway. I actually think that restoring either only user accounts and home directory from TM or with MA is a better idea…or else just copy the homes without the users, then recreate the users and tell it to use the existing home actually works just as well. And as I noted before…booting from external requires a trip to recovery to enable it and if the internal SSD on any Apple Silicon fails it won’t boot regardless. Their new locked signed read only macOS volume and associated Data volume makes things harder for those with plenty of tech savvy…but I guess in their view makes it more of an appliance and easier for non tech users. I just had to go through all of this with my Studio…one of the Ventura updates borked it and I had to end up doing an internet recovery…which gave me Monterey that it shipped with and after MA it never worked right until I updated it again to Ventura 13.2.1. I monkeyed around with trying to create another bootable external but did not have one I was willing to completely erase and installing Ventura on an existing APFS partition including nuking just that volume wouldn’t boot. I still need to get another external SSD and try that again…because having another bootable drive is a good idea from the consultant/sysadmin POV.

neillaubenthal

3 copies of your data on 2 different media and at least one offsite/cloud based.

For a desktop with drives always connected…TM works pretty well although occasionally one gets a message that something went wrong and it will have to start a new backup…with essentially no ability to recover anything from the old one…which makes something additional mandatory IMO. For laptops…the TM drive is not always attached…and TM lets you select a network location where it makes a .dmg backup instead of a regular Finder readable copy. The issues lie with these network TM backups…they’re simply not reliable. Wife and I have 2 laptops, both M1 based and both up to date macOS…making TM backups alternating between 2 different desktops as the destination…and they just randomly fail…and some google ing told me this wasn’t an uncommon situation. So…switched to poor man’s TM using CCC and ‘Remote Mac’ as the destination using the same 2 desktops and actually the same shares on them…works flawlessly no matter if laptops are awake or asleep…and TM has never done that. That said…I still have TM enabled on the laptops with destination on a drive that was only connected once to setup TM…this allows it to do local only TM backups that can recover the file you saved this morning and then made changes you need to reverse…but for actual backup on laptops TM is pretty worthless since connecting an external makes them essentially a non laptop.

As longtime sysadmin…backups need to be automated, bulletproof, and verified working periodically…and TM on a laptop fails both the first and second requirements since it doesn’t happen when the drive isn’t connected and fails to network destinations at random intervals…and fails the 3rd requirement with the ‘I have to start over’ message. It is my belief that the basic issue is that TM needs to be rewritten with APFS source and destination in mind and use the long proven Unix underpinnings of macOS for the copying like CCC and SD do rather than whatever they are using…but I’m not Apple and they don’t ask me for suggestions.

And while some problems with it are PEBKAC…it’s not all that…particularly with network volumes as destinations and with the cryptic ‘gotta start over’ issue. It’s good as part of your overall backup strategy…but it’s really more for getting yesterdays version of the file rather than for restoring from backup…and it is much better on desktops than laptops.