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Ok, so I guess I'll use Time Machine.

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Your Mac's Specs
3.4 Ghz i7 MacBook Pro (2015), iPad Pro (2014), iPhone Xs Max. Apple TV 4K
I just spent the last 24 hours getting my Quad up and running again. While I was able to get everything back with no loss of data or profile, it was just a PITA to copy the profile info back and forth, reformat the partition to get rid of some odd error (ever had an install of OSX tell you it FAILED?) copy the profile back to the new system folder and run Repair Permissions about 10 times to get everything right.

This would have been a lot easier if I had done a TM backup and simply just restored from it. So now TM is busily backing up my entire drive. When it does hourly/daily updates, does it just add the changes or does it create a whole new backup of the drive itself. I'm hoping for the former because with the latter it's going to eat drive space like mad. Looks like I'll need to get a new dedicated drive to slap into my 8 bay case just for backups. Ah well.
 
Joined
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White MacBook Intel C2D 2.2GHz, 2G, 250G, SD, Leopard.
When it does hourly/daily updates, does it just add the changes or does it create a whole new backup of the drive itself. I'm hoping for the former because with the latter it's going to eat drive space like mad. Looks like I'll need to get a new dedicated drive to slap into my 8 bay case just for backups. Ah well.
So sorry you had all that trouble.

TM simply adds the changes, but they're not tiny; some are in the 100MB range, and I know I'm not creating *that* much in between backups. The first time you use TM you get a full backup. Everything else is incremental. Of course it does delete some backups, so it may be doing some intelligent incrementals when it deletes backups.

My MacBook has a 250G drive in it. I have an external 500G USB drive (regular full size SATA drive in an external case). My first backup was on December 9. I have weeklies from December, and dailies from January and February. (I didn't have backups for every day in January as I was away for part of the month.) Here's how it looks to Disk Utility:

MacBook Drive: 232.6 GB
Available : 155.7 GB
Used : 76.9 GB

Backup Drive: 465.4 GB
Available : 382.3 GB
Used : 83.2 GB

I have a Ubuntu iso on the MacBook drive that I have not backed up. Everything else is subject to backup.

While I was concerned a 500G drive wouldn't last all that long, my guess is that I could probably go two years without worrying about having enough space.

I've had occasion to go back to TM to recover files - simple data files I had stored, and music files stored by iTunes. There were no problems recovering any of the files. A backup is no good if you can't recover files; TM has done fine for me.

Hope this helps!
 

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