Backing up files

what is difference between time machine saving and the cloud vs hard drive t1 backup?

You should definitely look at CrashPlan.com. They have been given extremely high ratings all over the place. You have complete and simple control over what does (not) get backed up, and they offer four methods, three of which are free. Their most powerful method stores your data in the cloud, and costs slightly less than Carbonite.

The free methods store your data on (1) another computer of yours, (2) a folder, presumably on an external drive, or (3) on a friend's computer. I happen to be providing backup on my system for a friend, using about 50GB on my hard drive.

When you visit their site, you will notice an inordinate occurrence of the number "42". This is due to the fact that somebody over there is fond of the book "A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy".

witnwisdom7 said:

what is difference between time machine saving and the cloud vs hard drive t1 backup?

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Cloud based backups are essentially an off site backup. Let suppose you are backing up data using Time Machine and an external drive or Time Capsule in your house. In the event of a disaster (fire, theft, etc), both the original data and backup could be lost because they are in the same location. Online/cloud based backups are less prone to this since they are stored in a different physical location.

There are some things you should keep in mind about online/cloud-based backups:

1. If you have to replace all your data from an aniline backup this could put a serious dent in any usage caps your ISP has in place.
2. The speed of your download connection is going to affect how long it takes to download files you need.
3. Your upload speed is going to affect how long it takes to complete a backup. A full backup may take quite some time. Many of the online services have a program which runs in the background while you perform other tasks but any net activity you're doing slows the backup.
4. Not all online services properly back up Mac system files. Don't expect, for example, to re-install the base OS then restore the system to its latest release. If your cloud backup service does not handle system files this won't work.

I use time machine and two drives. I keep one drive at work, and one in a dock next to the computer.

I swap the drives at least every two weeks, sometimes one week. This way I can maintain an offsite backup.

For me, USB3 is fast enough for doing a backup.

That's not a bad approach. I think I've even read instances of users who keep a drive in their safe deposit box. Depending upon the type of account involved some banks offer the boxes either at no charge or for a small fee.

I personally recommend Super Duper, having only ever used that and not used CCC, I can say however that it has always been flawless and efficient. The difference between the free trial version and the paid for one is not speed per se as has been alluded to earlier, but rather it is that the free version does not allow 'smart updates' which means that after the initial clone, subsequent clones only update anything that has changed, so it is faster to complete for that reason alone, which by the way can make updating the clone with smart update a hundred times faster depending on how big the drive is and how much has changed.

I used to have an external dock that took internal 3.5" drives which I bought originally for my iMac but I'm phasing that out now because it's not a good idea due to bulk and speed. The Seagate caviar 3.5" drives connected to my macbook via USB 3 write at about 55mb/sec, a separate self contained USB 2 Seagate writes about about 39mb/sec, but my current suggested option is something like a portable 2TB MyPassport Ultra II which writes at over 90mb/sec and does not need a wall wart.

I back up my macbook to a 512 partition on the 2TB portable drive and use the rest for my music collection, also have a separate Media Library plus a clone of that.

I am using a WD external HDD (2 TB for Time Machine, but then got a good deal on a 4 TB Seagate external HDD. I was able to enable both for use in Time Machine, as well as back up my documents and photos on the Seagate. I also use Mozy online backup for all my docs and photos. I don't trust thumb drives (how do you know which is which?) or SD cards. Besides, my data bases are too large. My iMac is perfectly happy with these drives now, and I feel better about having this much backup.

Something to keep in mind when considering Cloud based backup ( any vendor ) is the real-life definition of a cloud.

A cloud = Using the Internet to store my data on your hard discs in an unknown country.

There is no legal framework around a cloud and no service level agreements, meaning that when you need your data stored in the cloud, it may or may not be available/reachable.
Secondly, you have no control over who can see/use your data in the cloud.

As long as you keep the above in mind and accept it, then you're good to go.

Cheers ... McBie

McBie said:

There is no legal framework around a cloud and no service level agreements, meaning that when you need your data stored in the cloud, it may or may not be available/reachable.
Secondly, you have no control over who can see/use your data in the cloud.

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This is very important if privacy is a concern. At the end of the day, internet based services are built around someone else managing and keeping your data. Your information could be halfway around the world on a server run by a company that could do anything (within some legal limits which may not be legal limits that you're comfortable with).

Off site storage

A few years ago, our house burned down. All of our photos and slides were lost. All of our digital copies were on the computers we had with us. We changed our behavior to this:
1. Every physical photo, important document, or receipt has a digital copy.
2. All digital copies are backed up using Time Machine. Plenty of comments on how to do that above.
3. We have a portable USB drive that we backup all computers in the house to, using Carbon Copy Cloner (but I'm thinking of using Time Machine for that as well). This backup occurs every Thursday.
4. The external backup drive comes with us when we leave the house.

Probably a dumb question, but as I understand it the primary advantage of cloning your HDl on an iMac is that when the hard drive fails you can boot back up on your cloned external drive. It works by the way, I've done it using Carbon Copy Clone. But from what I hear, on a new iMac changing out a hard drive is difficult, certainly not an option for me or probably many of us. I don't know the cost for Apple to switch it out, but obviously if you don't replace your hard drive, then the clone doesn't appear to have any advantage (for the new iMac.) unless you plan on running your iMac on an external drive.

Am I missing something here? What's the problem with backing up via time machine using either UBS 3.0 or Thunderbolt?

Thanks for any info....I have a new iMac, very please with it by the way.

James

I don't know the cost for Apple to switch it out, but obviously if you don't replace your hard drive, then the clone doesn't appear to have any advantage (for the new iMac.) unless you plan on running your iMac on an external drive.

Am I missing something here? What's the problem with backing up via time machine using either UBS 3.0 or Thunderbolt?

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The cost to swap out a hard drive in a 21.5" iMac will run about $275 - $300 depending on your location and the size of the drive. The same swap out for the 27" machine will likely be more.

There is certainly no problem with backing up using Time Machine. As a matter of fact we highly recommend that you do just that on a regular basis. Having a clone of your internal hard drive is convenient if it should fail. I have had this happen to me and by having the clone I was able to boot and continue my work. Otherwise, I would have missed a cut off date or resorted to finishing my work on an iPad. If you've ever tried to edit a long document or put together a briefing on an iPad, it's quite a challenge - especially for a dinosaur like myself.

Even with the newer machines I think a clone is a good idea. Even though the drive on some of the newer machines isn't user replaceable the clone is still useful. It's possible to boot from a clone and run that way until the drive can be repaired / replaced.

I''ve run that way for several days at a time and there's no real reason it couldn't be done indefinitely. It's slower than the internal drive but that's about the only drawback for desktop Macs.

Here is my system FWIW;
have a 2 bay SOHO tank and a 3rd off site HD. After SuperDuper bakUp swap over with Off Site HD fortnightly. Theft and fire covered and minimum down time with HD failures, in fact a week after the HD on 24 iMac failed the HD on MBP failed so was inop for 15 hours.

Have daily Time Machine back up to Time Caps for both wifes iMac and my iMac which has helped a couple of times chasing down a historic version of an overwritten file.

All that on Fire Wire 800 so regular backups to SOHO tank takes about 10 - 14 mins.

Dogbreath said:

I recommend using TM and a bootable backup software as these gentlemen have discussed. A bootable backup will allow you to continue to use your computer in case of hdd failure. CCC was a life-saver for me when my internal hdd died.

I also recommend burning all photo, video, and music files to flash drives...or DVD if you have an optical drive of some sort. Considering the convenience, storage capacity and cost, flash drives are a good deal.

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CCC is what does it for me

I have:

• Weekly TM backups to a TC;
• Daily CCC clone of both 960GB SSDs to two 1TB external drives;
• Separate weekly clone of iTunes library to another external drive;
• grsync backup of all documents to a couple of 128GB USB sticks - about 3 times a week;
• grsync weekly backup of Mail to 64GB USB stick;
• daily CCC image clones of both SSDs to an offsite 3TB HDD (took a very long time to do the first sparseimage, but quite manageable now - about 10-15min)
• Also grsync does weekly Digital Photographs folder sync between MBP17 and MBA11 and backs up to an offsite drive.

Separate arrangements for when I travel - portable CCC clones etc ...

MBA11, which is mostly used by my wife, gets weekly TM backups and weekly CCC clone, which I suspect is overkill, but I'm sure those videos of piano playing cats are important

Haven't used DVD or BluRay for about three years now as a backup medium.

MBA11, which is mostly used by my wife, gets weekly TM backups and weekly CCC clone, which I suspect is overkill, but I'm sure those videos of piano playing cats are important

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Believe me, it's not overkill. I make a CCC cloned backup every other day and Time Machine once a week - or more often if needed. And in your situation if you can keep the wife happy - that means you'll be happy.

MBP17•David said:

I have:

• Weekly TM backups to a TC;
• Daily CCC clone of both 960GB SSDs to two 1TB external drives;
• Separate weekly clone of iTunes library to another external drive;
• grsync backup of all documents to a couple of 128GB USB sticks - about 3 times a week;
• grsync weekly backup of Mail to 64GB USB stick;
• daily CCC image clones of both SSDs to an offsite 3TB HDD (took a very long time to do the first sparseimage, but quite manageable now - about 10-15min)
• Also grsync does weekly Digital Photographs folder sync between MBP17 and MBA11 and backs up to an offsite drive.

Separate arrangements for when I travel - portable CCC clones etc ...

MBA11, which is mostly used by my wife, gets weekly TM backups and weekly CCC clone, which I suspect is overkill, but I'm sure those videos of piano playing cats are important

Haven't used DVD or BluRay for about three years now as a backup medium.

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That would be a little overkill for me, but to each their own. Don't get me wrong, I condone whatever method you feel is safe enough to secure your data.

I have a related question. I use CCC to back up my rather large collection of photographs on a daily basis.
I believe that somewhere in this thread, someone recommended that this back up drive should be bootable. I did not think of this when I set up CCC several years ago. How can I tell whether my back-up disk is bootable and if it is not can I now make it so without having to re-save all my data?

DougStocks said:

I have a related question. I use CCC to back up my rather large collection of photographs on a daily basis.
I believe that somewhere in this thread, someone recommended that this back up drive should be bootable. I did not think of this when I set up CCC several years ago. How can I tell whether my back-up disk is bootable and if it is not can I now make it so without having to re-save all my data?

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I use SuperDuper, but you could certainly check if it's bootable by going to system prefs and selecting Startup Disk, if it's bootable it will show up there. My guess is it won't be bootable and you won't be able to make it bootable without redoing it.