Do You Use It? What’s Your Backup Strategy

I also gave up on bootable clones a few years ago. I don’t have a need to be up and running immediately after a failure. With CCC, TM, and BackBlaze backups I feel sufficiently protected.

I use Time Machine as my primary backup. I also have a full backup on BackBlaze of absolutely everything except my TM volume (and the handful of directories that they categorically block from backups). I have my previous MBP available in case of need for an alternate machine. Finally, I have my important financial and medical documents on an encrypted disk image in my Dropbox (including my 1Password recovery key). It’s encrypted not so much for security on my own machine (I have it automount at login) but rather to keep its contents unviewable by anyone at Dropbox or any hacker that might get access to Dropbox-stored materials.

One more option - disk-clones created manually (vs. scheduled).

I have used Arq since 2017. I use it now to do backup to a NAS and Google Cloud. Before that I used rsync over internet to two disks at work and locally to a Mac mini with two USB-disks.

I have never used clone backup since I am comfortable reinstalling the OS if needed.

The choices do not quite match my usage.

• Once-daily TM backups–but only of user files, not the whole disk.
• Weekly SuperDuper! full, bootable clone/backup.
• On-demand versioned backups using CCC of selected directories.

I was testing remote login via SSH from work. It worked. When I got home, I checked the logs and found out that someone else had accessed the system and dropped a malware payload into the /Users/Shared directory. The files were not Mac-compatible. Nonetheless, I wiped the drive and restored from a SuperDuper! backup.

I also turned off remote login and Guest account.

I bought a base model M4 Mac mini when they were $500 on Amazon, thinking I would pair it with a big external SSD and use it as a network Time Machine server for the Macs in the house. That way, I could just back up that Mac mini (and its external SSD with everyone’s Time Machine backups) to Backblaze rather than having each Mac need to do its own local Time Machine backup (to an attached SSD) and its own Backblaze backup. If I could cut the Backblaze bill in half, the Mac mini would pay for itself in no time! ;)

I ended up returning the Mac mini and SSD unused, once I remembered that networked Time Machine uses encrypted disk images. That feels too brittle, especially if that’s what I would then upload to Backblaze as the second backup for all the other Macs.

So I’m still doing a local Time Machine backup plus a Backblaze backup. I was hoping to move some of the “backup load” off the Macs that have hands on keyboards and onto a Mac mini in a closet, but my stomach couldn’t handle it.

I clicked on the first five options, but “Nightly Duplicate” is actually a weekly duplicate in my case.

A very long time ago…

I was leaving the office where I was working in order to have lunch. My computer bag had fabric handles in a clamshell configuration, one of which was badly frayed. “I need to replace this bag pretty soon!” said I to myself.

As I was walking quickly across the parking lot, the frayed handle broke. The shock of that handle breaking caused the second handle to fail (as I watched in slow motion). My laptop bag with its 16" MacBook fell half a meter to the pavement. The screen was cracked and it wouldn’t even light up.

There was an Apple store 2-3 miles away. I drove there and asked for a laptop. What they had in stock was one of the 13" black plastic MacBooks. They were out of stock otherwise as new models had just been announced that morning. They gave me a huge discount on the new (but now obsolete) MacBook. I returned to the office, plugged in my bootable backup (likely a SuperDuper clone), and was back to work. I even had time to wolf down a quick snack that a co-worker offered me.

Not one single appointment had to be canceled. Had I needed to restore from a backup with Migration Assistant (or the equivalent at that time) and/or install a new system, I would have had to cancel the entire afternoon’s roster of patients. Aside from being horrible for the patients, it would have cost the clinic thousands in revenue.

I stubbornly refuse to move on from bootable clone backups. |:

Boot from weekly clone (SuperDuper!), then update it manually from versioned backup (Time Machine).

If the machine is not functional, then I would use my secondary computer until it is fixed.

If a disaster wipes out my home, and my offsite backups, but somehow spares me, then I’d restore from the cloud backup (Arq to Wasabi).

Ah, good point. I can’t change the poll text without wiping out all the votes, so people should consider this a “Regularly updated duplicate” (though I still recommend nightly because you don’t want to have to think about or interact with it in any way, and weekly or monthly approaches are more likely to require manual intervention).

Not to mention that network Time Machine backups are unreliable in my experience despite being a Mac guy since 1988 or so. Set them up identically on 2 laptops and sometimes they work and sometimes they don’t. Switched to CCC using the Remote Mac destination option about 2 years back and those are absolutely bulletproof in addition to being Finder readable and the SafetyNet feature provides versioning if one wants it. Then the Remote Mac can get sent to BackBlaze although I don’t choose to do that since all the important stuff is in DropBox or the server volume that is mounted all the time on the laptops anyway and that volume does go to BB.

When I migrated from my 27" Retina iMac to an M2 Mac mini a couple of years ago I chose to build the new machine manually. That is I copied data from an external backup drive (maintained with an Automator script running rsync on every directory I need), downloaded apps from vendors, the App Store, etc., and retrieved photos, music, mail, and messages from iCloud.

Nevertheless, I run two Time Machines (one directly attached, one on the home network), Backblaze, and two weekly copies on different external drives. In the event of a disaster today I would start with TM.

I don’t have a bootable recovery method and am not sure I need one.

I use Time Machine backing up alternately to two different disks, Carbonite, Acrobat, Numbers and Pages documents backed up to ICloud. Images are backed up additionally to external discs. I am retired, so I nave no need for bootable images to get back up immediately.

I have a M2 Mini with several external hard drives that functions purely as a backup server. From three user laptops (personal, work, wife’s), I back up hourly to the Mini with TimeMachine. Two of the machines (personal, wife’s) back up nightly to the Mini using CarbonCopy Cloner. One of the machines (personal) backs up to BackBlaze. It all runs invisibly in the background, so it doesn’t matter that the hard drives are slow compared to SSDs (some people make a big deal out of this, and I don’t understand why). I gave up on bootable backups years ago and don’t miss it. If worst came to worst, say a house fire, I would drive two miles to the Apple Store, buy a new machine, and get a drive overnighted from BackBlaze. Works for me.

Well, I am currently in the midst of a fail and working from various backup tools. My new MacBook Air (end of November) had enough issues that I returned it two days ago and ordered another: it had all the earmarks of a lemon and because it was a “holiday purchase” I was within the full-return window. (Yes, a few tech support calls and a trip to the nearest Apple store, an hour away, preceded this.)

I have an 8-year-old Intel Mac. (I traded my M1 for credit on a new machine.) I have a 2.5-year-old iPad. These are the current hardware.

I am not fully functional for specific reasons that I’ll explain in a moment, but I can maintain the baseline until the replacement computer arrives. Necessary specs were/are not in stock at an Apple store (24 GB RAM, 2 TB storage).

I have:

• 2 full, current-before-breakdown Time Machine backups, one (either) of which I will use to re-establish myself on the new computer—one of these updates hourly and one I update when I remember
• Dropbox has most of my key files, with some on Google Drive
• Backblaze

Why am I working at partial capacity while awaiting the replacement? It is a true hassle to get some of the programs authorized on a new computer and I just went through that on the dud. This includes Adobe Creative Suite (for which I am, of course, paying $ignificantly even though I can’t use it) and a knitting charting program for which reauthorization is easy to obtain but it’s just one more thing.

My current goal is to stay out of any work that will make my Time Machine backups less than perfect for restoration. Yay Dropbox and Google Drive.

Fortunately I’m between deadlines on the tasks that require the Adobe programs.

I run Time Machine on two Macs and Retrospect to backup those two plus a Linux box. For Retrospect, I rotate three drives, one of which is always offsite. In the event of a complete loss of all the computers and backup drives in the house, I could lose a couple of weeks of data going back to the offsite drive for all three machines.

My most memorable use of a backup was when I tried to update Linux on that machine and accidentally erased the entire drive. Fortunately, it was pretty easy to get the machine back up and restoring from the Retrospect backup worked perfectly.

Time Machine 2 drives rotated monthly with one off site at relatives house and we swap each others extra drive

Backblaze

iCloud Drive for critical files manually

If disaster buy a new Mac. Use Time Machine to get online and order disk from backblaze

I was sad to hear that bootable clones didn’t work any more, but I still use Carbon Copy Cloner. And I also have Time Machine (which was convenient for migrating from my old MBP to my current MBP a few years ago). And I also have a BackBlaze backup. And an iCloud backup of everything.

I should be good, right?

I use Time Machine (set to back up twice a day only), Carbon Copy Cloner nightly, and Backblaze overnight. Ran into issues a while ago, so I like my redundancy now…

Harking back to my days with a couple Beige G3s, pre-OSX, while running a very remote off-grid cattle ranch (and photography side-business), I still always always keep all files/documents and photos on external drives. Now, in addition, I Time Machine and SuperDuper daily, internal and external drives. The only thing on my internal drives is system stuff. “Documents” folder holds only whatever certain apps install on their own. I do use iCloud and basic, minimal Dropbox but download/backup all those files to my external backup drives. And try to keep those files available offline anyway, so they also are included in Time Machine and SuperDuper backups. Currently running Intel MB Air (Mojave) and iMac (Ventura), both at max OS. The externals all have at least one redundant backup. Still in the boonies (different state), with internet beamed from radio/RF towers, so not as zippy as most of you folks, but better than dialup. Tried CrashPlan a few years ago but slow uploads and got expensive.

While iMac was still under warranty, it went completely dead. Had to drive hours to Apple store which kept it for 10 days and apparently replaced mother board as it returned with a different serial number. I didn’t suffer a minute of downtime, since all my working files were on external drives, not dependent on or meshed with any particular system. Just plugged the external into a friend’s mac. It also makes migrating to new Macs easy.

I second this option. As well as off-site backups (although I suppose Internet Backups are basically the same).

I remember when a customer of mine used Retrospect to backup their data to DLT tape. Every night one of the employees put the full backup of the company in her handbag and went home with it. It saved her company when the building were they had their offices, one night burned down. Since then we always had offsite backups. At one time we mailed backups to our selves every day.
A lot has happened since then, but the problem persists.

My data files are stored on an external SSD. This is backed up to TM for versioning reasons (hourly), to another external SSD (daily) using SuperDuper, and to BackBlaze (constantly). I store as few data files as possible on my mac mini, which means I can be functional even if the mac mini has a crash, needs repairs, etc.

In addition I have a large holding of image and video files and these are stored on a dedicated external SSD with RAID settings and gives flexibility in volume, project and file management and record keeping. This is backed up to another external SSD (hourly) using SuperDuper and to BackBlaze (constantly).

I sync my iPhone and iPad to my mac mini and which means they are backed up. I use DropBox to automatically upload photo and video files taken with iPhone and iPad. I do not use iCloud as I don’t trust iCloud for backups.

I have a weekly Calendar reminder to physically check all backup devices and services and to test the operational functionality of my storage devices.

I have used BackBlaze and external backup SSDs to restore and recover files. I have had to use TM to recover from an issue with my mac mini. Fairly straightforward, but I learnt to keep a physical checklist of settings and customisations.

Many years ago - I attended a talk by a representative from Dantz Software - makers of Retrospect.
She opened by stating - ‘We do not make Backup Software - we make Recovery Software’
Life Lesson here. Whatever system you use - practice a recovery to determine if there is a flaw in your process.
I use Time Machine to local disks and to targets Macs in a different building - Control-click on a folder in the ‘Sharing’ System Settings to set a target Time Machine location
I also use ChronoSync (Outstanding support I might add) to ‘pull’ data from one system to another but again, in different buildings.
Other smaller date needs are covered by iCloud
Hope this helps
Brian

I have multiple Macs with data on multiple external drives and a raid array. I do rely on iCloud and Dropbox for my ‘working files’, my College’s OneDrive for ‘teaching files’ and my project work and archives are backed up daily from the external drives using Chronosync to my big Raid array and Backblaze.

All of my files are not Mac specific. They’re on various clouds or external drives.

The issue I guess is how quickly I can get a Mac back up and running. To be honest I would just switch to a different Mac and be up and running. My last disaster was recent, had to wipe the drive and reinstall Sequoia on my Intel iMac. It was an opportunity in the end to freshen it up, only install what I needed. Even though I have a Chronosync clone I didn’t bother use it.

I currently use Time Machine backup to an 8TB external hard disk plus iCloud Drive synching of my documents. I’ve used online backup via Backblaze in the past, and might consider it again.

I’ve been a firm believer in backups ever since I suffered my first hard disk failure in 2003, and that has saved me many times since then, through several PCs, two iMacs and now a MacBook Air. Not just from hardware failure, but occasionally my own stupidity!

At some point, I’d like to get an external SSD for Time Machine backups, as that would be easier to grab in the event of a fire or other structural calamity befalling the house.

I don’t have the funds to afford a second computer right now, so I’d have to wait a while to get back up and running. I actually opted to do a clean install when I got my MacBook Air, then transfer my documents and other data via iCloud or AirDrop and decide which apps I needed.

It doesn’t happen often, but bootable backups have saved my bacon twice (roughly every 10 years, due to a drive failure and a lost MacBook).

I would not normally comment, but the trees are getting in the way of the forest here.

1. Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle. Stop backing up stuff you do not need; we are digital hoarders!
2. Do not use software that will not run on current hardware and supported operating systems. If you do, your world is already broken, and you cannot see it.
3. If your backup is not automatic, you do not have a backup, and your risk level is elevated. It also goes for testing restores that NOBODY does; I’m just saying!
4. How many times do we have to repeat: SYNC is NOT BACKUP!
5. Understand what risks you are trying to mitigate before you develop a strategy.
6. Do not use a shotgun when you only need a fly swatter. AKA scale your tools to your risk.
7. Do not create digital records that add risk to your world
8. Do Not Panic!

By the way, this shit is a lot more complex than most of us think. We do not know how to estimate or evaluate risk, let alone mitigate it. These words are not needed past me finishing this post. The nice people at TidBits will do what they do with them on their servers and in their time. Done Finished, Move On. If I felt my words here were of long-term importance, I would not be typing them into this terrible forum software posting system. I would write locally using a plain text editing tool on my computer. So there is no risk of having the internet crash, my house burn down, or me dumping my drink on the keyboard. This text is ephemeral!

If I wanted this text safe, I would type it into IA Writer, which saves the file locally. The IA writer will then sync that file for my use on other devices. Time Machine will back this Mac in the next hour, and sometime today, Pcloud will take the data and store it in an offshore data center (I bet you did not see that risk coming.)

Saving a file in plain text mitigates the risk of custom software going away. If I have the file, I can view or edit it on almost any computer in the past 30 years. If that file was saved in some custom format, then I am at the mercy of the software vendor.

When I take a picture of something on my iPhone, the software saves that image to the “hard drive” on my phone. Then Apple Photos syncs that photo to iCloud. As a risk management strategy, I have Google Photos automatically send that same image to their service. Apple then syncs that photo to my Mac, Time Machine, and Pcloud to back that up. Can you count the failure points? Have I mitigated the risk of losing that photo well enough? I feel pretty good about it. But wait… What was that photo? Is there a risk of having that photo around?

Simple example. I take a picture of my driver’s license on my iPhone to put it in a “secure” place in my digital filing system for an upcoming trip. How can I remove that sensitive document from all the places it has traveled to? Unintended consequences!

I could go on, but I have made my point about data risks.

In closing, pay for services that protect your most important data with reasonable care. iCloud backup and sync are pretty darn good. A Chromebook and Google Services are also pretty good.

Bob

PS I copied this into IA Writer!

I was burned a few times many years ago by hardware failures (floppy disks, hard drives, etc.) leading to data loss, and I am determined to not let that happen again. My backup strategy might be overkill, but I’d rather be extra safe than sorry.

First, I try to think through the various risks to my data. These include:

• Accidentally deleting/saving over files - something I’ve done many times over the years
• Malware/Ransomware or other malicious corruption/deletion by a hacker
• Natural disaster
• Burglary
• Software failure/data corruption
• Hardware failure (including failure of backup drives or could storage services)
• Something happening to me – such as me forgetting important passwords, me getting dementia or a brain injury, or my death (inevitable at some point)

It’s important to keep in mind that e-mail hosted by Gmail or any other cloud provider, iMessage data stored in iCloud, and any other data stored in the cloud should be included in one’s backup strategy. Gmail could experience a failure/corruption or a hacker could gain access to a cloud account and delete data (and any such corruption or deletion would be synced to local devices).

I separately maintain a set of critical recovery credentials (passwords, recovery codes, MFA tokens/Yubikey) and instructions in such a way that either I or my family could gain access to my data if something were to happen to me.

Second, when considering backups, I mentally group my data into a few buckets:

• 1. Primary Data (Documents folder and a few other folders – stuff that is used, updated, added to regularly)
• 2. Critical Primary Data (a subset of #1 that is my most important data in terms of needing to maintain all versions and always have a very current backup)
     My general approach is to maintain frequent backups (with extensive retained versions) of my Primary Data locally, offsite, and in the cloud (with more frequent backups to more locations for my Critical Primary Data).
• 3. Media and Other Data (music, photos, videos, setup files, ISO files, etc. – this data is supplemented regularly, but almost never changed after being saved)*
     My general approach for Media and Other Data is to maintain backups (with limited retained versions) locally, offsite, and in the cloud.
• 4. System Data (apps, configurations, etc.)*
     My general approach has been to just maintain local backups of my System Data (i.e., the full Data volume on my Mac Studio). But reading this article makes me think that I should, perhaps, consider adding periodic offsite and/or cloud backups of my System Data.
• 5. Other Backups
     This includes things like backups of my iPhone using iMazing, Google Takeout backups, Thunderbird and eM Client data, etc. I consider my iMessage conversation history to be very important, so I maintain both backups using iMazing and periodically export iMessage conversations to both PDF and Excel with separately saved attachments. Some of this data is mixed in with #1 and #4, and some is just separately backed up.

I use iCloud+ and store my Documents and Desktop folders in iCloud Drive, so that data is always synced to iCloud and between my Mac Studio M2 Max and my MacBook Air M2. I don’t consider iCloud a true backup, but if my house burned down or if my MacBook was stolen/destroyed while working away from home, I would presumably be able to recover files in my Documents folder. Similarly, I use iTunes Match to sync my local music collection to iCloud and make it available on my iPhone and my MacBook Air. That isn’t a true backup, but presumably I could remover my music collection from iTunes Match if I somehow lost my local copy and my backups.

Other than my Documents and Desktop folders and System Data, I store most of my data on an external NVME in a Thunderbolt enclosure.

My backup strategy for my Mac Studio (my primary computer) is currently:

Automatic Backups

• Time Machine: hourly backup of entire Data volume to an external NVME drive
• Carbon Copy Cloner: daily backup of entire Data volume to a 2nd external NVME
• Carbon Copy Cloner: hourly backup of #1 (Primary Data) to a 3rd external NVME (with Snapshot Thinning currently set to retain hourly snapshots for 2184 hours (91 days), daily snapshots for 180 days, and weekly snapshots indefinitely)
• Duplicacy: hourly backups of my #1 (Primary Data and a few other things) to a 4th external SSD, which is then synced in real time to Tresorit (encrypted cloud storage located in Switzerland)
• ChronoSync: hourly synchronizations of #3 (Media and Other Data) to my local NAS (a QNAP device running TrueNAS), with ChronoSync set to retain archives of deleted/replaced files.
• Arq: every 6 hours backup all of my data, except System Data, to MinIO S3 on my NAS.
• Arq: daily backup of Primary Data to Backblaze B2 (EU Central) with Object Lock enabled with rolling 1-year data locks to protect against ransomware. I prefer using Arq with Backblaze B2 rather than Backblaze’s own backup software because Arq preserves all extended attributes, Finder tags, etc., and because I feel safer using a separate tool to encrypt my backups rather than relying on the cloud storage provider to both encrypt and store my backups (even though I know Backblaze’s backup software supports local encryption with a private encryption key).
• Arq: hourly backups (spaced every 15 min.) of #2 (Critical Primary Data) to Backblaze B2 (US West), Backblaze B2 (US East), Backblaze B2 (CA East), and iDrive e2 (Singapore). So every 15 min., a copy of Critical Primary Data is backed up to a different, geographically diverse cloud location. – Pro Tip: You can get 10GB free storage from Backblaze in each of their regions. I pay for storage in the EU Central region, where I store backups of all my Primary Data, but I stay under the 10GB free limit for my Critical Primary Data backups to the other regions.
• (PLANNED) Syncthing: Real-time (one-way) sync (with file versioning enabled) of my #1 Primary Data, the subfolder for the current and pervious year media (e.g., my Photos/2024 and Photos/2025 folders), and a few other data sets to an external drive connected to an old personal laptop at my office.

Manual Backups

• ChronoSync: periodic manual backup of all data, except System Data (but maybe I should add that too), to (1) an external hard drive that I keep in my fire safe, and (2) a second external hard drive that I transport between my house and an offsite location to copy the backup data to a third external hard drive that stays in an offsite location.
• (PLANNED) Blu-Ray M-DISCS: I bought an external LG M-DISC drive and a bunch of Blu-Ray M-DISCS. I plan to burn annual archives of my Primary Data and my Media (photos, music, videos, etc.). The Media backups would just need to include new stuff, so after I burn an M-DISC archive of my 2024 (and prior year) photos, next year I would just need to burn an M-DISC archive of my 2025 photos. I’ll probably store one set of my M-DISC archives at home and one set at a friend’s or relative’s house who lives far from me.
• (PLANNED) Google Cloud Archive (or other cold storage) Backup of Media (photos, music, videos, etc.) to a cloud cold archive storage, probably Google Cloud Archive, which is currently $0.0012 per GB/mo. This would be a write-once, read/restore only in the event of an epic disaster backup.

MacBook Air
I don’t store anything critical exclusively on my MacBook Air. I store my Documents and Desktop folders in iCloud Drive (synced to my Mac Studio and backed up various ways from there) and I use ChronoSync to automatically sync my Downloads folder between my MacBook Air and my Mac Studio. I use Time Machine to backup my MacBook Air to an external NVME that I keep at home whenever I charge the MacBook Air. I also plan to include my MacBook Air in the Syncthing group described above to one-way sync data to an offsite personal laptop I keep in my office. I may start using Carbon Copy Cloner to make periodic full System Data backups of my MBA to my fire safe + offsite copy hard drives.

UpNote-d! Thanks for the detailed response.

Waiting to reinstall SuperDuper! until the problems are sorted out. I’ve been using Filen.io as a periodic encrypted cloud backup that isn’t connected to anything else. I run it when I want to make a backup. Other than that, iCloud sync for convenience and Time Machine. 1Password for critical private data, which Apple Passwords can’t do.

My strategy currently involves:

1. All my essential files are stored on Dropbox (most files) or OneDrive (work files that, due to my university’s privacy policy, cannot be stored on Dropbox).

2. Time Machine to an SSD attached to a headless M1 Mac Mini that’s connected by Ethernet to my WiFi router. That runs while I’m at home.

3. Nightly Arq backups, originally to Amazon Glacier but now to Arq Cloud Storage. I run this while traveling, unless I’m somewhere that doesn’t have a fast Internet connection.

4. Occasional clones of my Data volume to an external SSD using Carbon Copy Cloner.

I also have at least one additional Mac available to use in an emergency; I have a personal laptop, and my university provides me with a new laptop every 4-5 years, most recently an M3 13-inch MacBook Air. I don’t keep personal data on the latter, but if my personal Mac failed, I could use the work machine in a pinch while waiting to set up a new personal laptop, and vice-versa if my work machine were to fail.

I’ve never had a catastrophic failure of my primary computer(s) that required a full restoration from a backup, but I have many times used a CCC clone and Migration Assistant to move from an old computer to a new one. And on several occasions I’ve used one of my backups to restore files that I inadvertently deleted or that I discovered had been corrupted.

While cleaning out a closet last month, I did come across a Retrospect backup set from 2003, comprising over 30 CD-Rs! Back then, before Time Machine, my main backup was a nightly Retrospect backup to a FireWire drive; I must have made the CD-R set to store offsite.

I use TimeShare to a local disc and to a NAS in another part of the house, CrashPlan to local discs and the Internet, and CCC to removable discs for specific types of files (music, photos, etc) to removable discs store securely. I also occasionally use CCC for a copy of my internal storage.

I use Time Machine set to back up hourly to an external SSD drive that I carry with me when I’m not at home, and alternating to a dedicated SMB TimeMachine volume on my Synology NAS (though this solution is not for the faint of heart), and in turn I back the entire NAS up weekly to an external USB hard drive that I store in a fireproof safe buried under my house when it’s not in use. I also use iCloud Drive/Desktop and Documents. That’s a lot of redundancy - or at least, enough for me.
The usurious cost of cloud-based backup solutions, combined with the amount of time I previously spent unsuccessfully attempting to keep them up and running, (I’m looking at you Backblaze!), has permanently soured me to those options. No one asked, but I wish Apple would just make an iCloud-premium variation of TimeMachine and include it in one of their premium plans. (While I’m wishing, it would also be nice of them to efficiently optimize this so my Desktop and Documents folder data is deduplicated from, let’s call it “iCloud TimeMachine”, and if they offered and charged less for archival cold storage in iCloud.) I would love to get rid of the NAS, but I have a lot of archived old data (6 TB) from decades of media production and design practice which would cost a lot to keep in the cloud at current prices.

I second this. iCloud+ should include some sort of Time Machine backup solution that is de-duplicated with any other data stored in iCloud.

Adam neglected to leave another viable, proven choice: making weekly bootable SuperDuper! (SD) backups, which is the strategy I use for both of my Macs.

First of all, I am not having any issues using SD with V15.2 of Sequoia for those bootable backups to 2 external Samsung SSDs. It works flawlessly, is reliable, and safe.

Secondly, I am constantly keeping my Macs “lean, mean, and clean”. And when I say constantly, it is just that. Most of the time, it is permanently removing deleted EMails, but I also make sure to keep all my software up to date (I use only third party, reliable software on my Macs). Typically after upgrading, I will remove the prior stored version, and store the new one (for a couple of very vital programs, I always keep 2 versions of each: the current one, and the prior one).

Third, prior to doing the weekly SD backups every Saturday, I first run Onyx to “check things out”, along with some more possible cleaning. Then I launch Disk Utility to make sure all is well. Such a practice is what I also follow for doing cleanup/maintenance of both of our cars, our appliances, etc. Most folks are just too lazy to do that, but I have found it definitely has its benefits. Besides keeping things running smoothly (and costing very little), I get to learn something. Nothing wrong with that. But in this crazy “lazy” world, most folks neglect to do that.

Finally, I will never trust my information to be stored on an outside “service”, area, etc. Just too much risk. Plus, I insist on controlling it completely on my own. Might be old fashioned, but it is a proven way of keeping things safe.

Would like to hear if anyone is having success using SD with V15.2 of Sequoia, and what their backup strategy is.

Backup strategy:

Running a Mac M4 Mini, I also gave up on bootable backups. (Restore and migration assistance, works for me)

3. Three backups
4. On two different media
5. One offsite

Test random restore every three months.

CCC, local external SSD, on desk.
CCC, Network server. (NextCloud run on community server)
Backblaze offsite

Last used: Had to evacuate do to wildfire, threw local potable SSD with CCC backup into go bag. House did not burn. But while I was out I used migration assistance on rental machine.

Twenty+ years ago backups were a vital thing. I’m not so sure any more.

First, most of our data is in the cloud these days. It’s already backed up. Whether or not that’s enough or is secure is another question, but it definitely takes some of the impetus away from more traditional backup methods. I just don’t feel the urgency any more.

Second, as the thread on the death of bootable backups says, those are going away or are already gone. That makes the “whole system” backup less feasible. Now, instead of backing up “everything,” we end up with a strategy where we back up different things in different places in different ways. That’s a lot more complicated and tedious.

Third, installing apps these days isn’t as complicated as the old days. In the ancient past installing a suite like Adobe’s Creative Cloud took many discs and a whole day of work, finding misplaced serial numbers, etc. These days with the Mac App Store and downloadable software, even an entire system rebuild from scratch could be done in half a day. Definitely not as fast as a bootable backup, but that situation is so rare I’m not sure it’s a problem.

While I do need to sit down and some analysis of some of my backup strategies, my current method is this:

• All active work is stored on Dropbox/Cloud servers.
• Multiple Macs, and since my work is in the cloud, I can immediately get to work on an alternate Mac if there’s a problem with primary Mac. I do periodically test this by working on different machines some days. It works just fine, though my workflow is simple enough (most text-based writing) and it supports this. Someone in a data-heavy field such as video editing would need a completely different setup.
• Backblaze backs up several Macs to the internet.
• One Mac that I kind of use as a server or hub uses Super Duper to clone its drives to external hard drives every night. It used to have Time Machine active, but the TM drive died and I never bothered replacing it. In the past decade I don’t think I ever used Time Machine for any purpose.
• periodically (once a year) I back up most vital info onto optical discs and store off-site (safety deposit box at bank). This is mostly “useless” archive info (old issues of the magazine I publish), but I wouldn’t want to lose it for historical reasons.

To me this seems like a pretty decent system:

• I can work on any of my Macs or even an iPad/iPhone (in a pinch).
• Dropbox is versioned so if I corrupt a file I can go back in time to get a pre-corrupt version of the file.
• BackBlaze gives me an off-site backup of everything. Not exactly fast to restore an entire system, but the house burned down and I lost everything, I’d have much bigger problems than waiting a whole week to recover data. (And the most vital data is small and could be restored in hours, not days.)
• off-site backup of archival data

I have had to use my backups on a few occasions. Usually this was just a particular file or project, and it worked fine. Time Machine always seem hit or miss for this (half the time the file I wanted wouldn’t be there or wasn’t accessible for unknown reasons).

The weak spots:

• I really should export all my photos from iCloud and have my own backup of them. That’s a project for the new year.
• Same with things like Audible audiobooks (which Amazon stores for me). I do backup my Kindle books myself (they are tiny).
• Corrupted file(s) can end up being backed up leaving you with no uncorrupted version.
• Different versions of the OS or data files can cause problems across multiple systems. Not all my Macs are running the same OS, so if I open a Pages file on my Sequoia Mac and save it, I might not be able to read that file on an older Mac that is running an older version of Pages. The same applies to any application, such as Adobe InDesign. This is one of the reasons I prefer plain text formats for data.
• One of my old Macs is incapable of running Dropbox (or Maestral) any more, which really sucks. I need to upgrade the OS, but that may break some things, so I need to do that with careful research and planning. My big task for the new year.

Versioned – Time Machine on a Samsung T7
Data Volume – Daily with CCC on another Samsung T7

Swap backup disks weekly

I use SuperDuper and used to backup all documents with DropBox. Then DropBox was filled up… Did some research and found Filen as an alternative encrypted cloud storage: Pricing – Filen – Next Generation End-To-End Encrypted Cloud Storage Check out the ‘Starter’ rates. Up to 50Gb free and during November the special offer included 200Gb lifetime for 30 Euros - half price, so I bought that. So filen replaces DropBox for all docs and now all my music and photos too.

I use Time Machine and Backblaze for ongoing backups. Backblaze also backs up the external hard drives that are always connected to my computer. I have one hard drive for work archives and another for ALL my personal archives, photos, etc. (The oldest stuff started on floppy discs, was copied to Iomega Zip Discs, then to CDs/DVDs, and now is consolidated onto one of those external hard drives.) That covers Versioned and Internet Backups.

Some of my work is on Dropbox, so that’s also on the Cloud.

Then I make two copies of everything (computer and external hard drives) using SuperDuper. I checked “nightly duplicate” but I don’t make duplicates nightly, more like monthly-ish or before I travel.

In 1978 I became the first third-party developer hired by Apple Computer. Been using Apple products for the past 46 years, but retired from development in 2011. Now I do a lot of photo and video work, and my setup is a Mac Studio with 3 external 8TB nVME drives - one for active working, and one for holding files. (The other is mostly empty, but used for an hourly work backup.) I have an even larger number of spinners to back up my entire 5TB of apps and data.

I use TM to backup my Studio drive (about 500 GB) to a spinner, and Carbon Copy Cloner with scheduled tasks to back up the work and data drives. Work is backed up hourly to a volume on the third 8TB nVME (so it’s very quick), as well as every two hours to a spinner.

At night I have scheduled a full backup all 5TB to various spinning drives so that I have at least two copies of everything.

Finally, I keep a 8TB spinner with all 5TB of my setup in a fireproof container stored on the floor beneath a steel shelf.

The only true disaster I had was 40 years ago when I lost everything due to a drive crash (as I recall). I became a devotee of backups from that moment on.

I’m cautious and in the past four decades have only had to deal with a few restores, mostly caused by corrupted preference files. I also have literally dozens of disconnected spinners with various backups, from data to photos, videos, writings and so on.

One can accumulate a LOT of stuff over 46 years, eh?

Regards

Tracy Valleau
www.ItsThePrint.com

Just to add to the excellent post by @bob.fairbairn , I have read plenty of people who have had online cloud service accounts (especially iCloud) canceled with very few options for account recovery. So in that case, things stored in iCloud Drive, iCloud Photos, iCloud mail accounts, were lost forever.

I always make sure that sync service items are downloaded to at least one computer and that they are backed up well, with restores tested at least once per year.

But to counter one thing that Bob said,

I can’t tell you how many times I have thought I wouldn’t need something anymore, deleted it, and then ended up restoring it months or years later. So I always think it’s always best to back it up just in case.

That said: I was just the other day going through my iCloud Drive and saw some files and folders I know I will never need again, so I did a quick pruning then and will spend some time soon looking more closely to see if there are more items I can prune.

This was at least 25 years ago, maybe as much as 30 years ago. I was working for a small company that had a Netware file server running on an HP server with a five disk hot-swappable RAID5 array. We always kept a spare drive around, and two or three different times we had a drive failure in the array. Because it was hot-swappable, we were able to remove the bad drive, put in the new one, and let the RAID rebuild itself.

One day we had a failure. Because server performance was poor while the array was rebuilding, we decided to risk waiting until the end of the day to swap the drive. Official office hours were 8:00 until 4:30, and though of course plenty of people stayed after 4:30, it was a much smaller set of people. So at 4:30 I did an incremental backup of the server and, when the backup completed, I swapped the drive.

The wrong drive.

As careful as I was to make sure that I knew which drive to swap; despite triple-checking to make sure I was pulling the right one, I pulled the wrong one. The server immediately made me very aware that it was not happy. I tried reinstalling the drive I had just pulled, but it was too late - the RAID was corrupted and could not be rebuilt, because one drive had failed and one drive was missing.

So I had to replace the correct drive, wipe the array, reinstall Netware, and start the restore from our DLT tape drive (thankfully with a robotic tape changer.) I stayed until the restore was complete and I could verify that everything was working right, including the Groupwise mail system. The restore finished at 8:15 am the following morning and I let everyone back on at 8:45.

That was one long night.

Yes, this I why I mentioned creating my own backups of Photos, kindle and audible content, etc.

One thing I like about Dropbox (and hate about the new tendency of “file provider apps” to not automatically download things to drives) is that my files are all duplicated locally (I use Maestral instead of the Dropbox app so everything is always on my local drives). This means I have a copy in the cloud, plus copies on each computer, plus a backup of those files via BackBlaze.

Not sure what a “manual backup using the Finder” implies. I backup to an external SSD using SuperDuper (or CarbonCopy in the past) weekly. That’s manual. I should add that I am doing this with Catalina.

A few times, fortunately, none recently. I have been a fan of tape backup for a long time and I’ve had tape drives until drives of sufficient capacity became too expensive. That having been said, there were two times I needed them to recover a system.

Once was back in the 90’s when I was running OS/2. Something glitched and made my system unbootable. I booted a recovery floppy (minimal installation of OS/2, including the device drivers for my SCSI DAT drive). From there, I reformatted the hard drive and restored my backup (an OS/2 port of the Unix tar utility). I was back up and running in a few hours.

The second time was in 2004. I was using a PowerMac G4 (Quicksilver-2002) with two hard drives. My primary boot volume became corrupted due to a bad interaction between Tech Tool Pro and a flaky USB 2.0 card, even though I was booted from an internal IDE drive. I booted from an “emergency recovery” partition I had previously created on my second hard drive. From there, I wiped the primary hard drive and used Retrospect to restore it from my tape backup (an Exabyte VXA-1 drive). It took several hours (and a tape swap), but after that, everything was working correctly again.

That second incident actually won me a prize. Several months later, Exabyte ran an ad campaign asking for people to send in their stories about how their VXA drive saved the day. I sent them my story and they apparently liked it, because I won an iPod Mini for it.

Over the years, I have used several different kinds of tape drives:

• QIC 150 (150 MB)
• Exabyte 8mm (2.5 GB)
• Travan TR4 (4 GB)
• DAT/DDS2 (4 GB)
• VXA-1 (33 GB)

Sadly, when my storage requirements grew too large for two VXA tapes, I was forced to switch to other media, because high capacity tape drives just cost too much.

Today, the smallest tape drive capable of storing 2TB without compression (e.g. for backing up my current Mac) would be an LTO-6 drive. The smallest LTO drive you can buy today, however is LTO-7 (6 TB uncompressed capacity) and those drives cost thousands of dollars, and most have SAS interfaces, which are not Mac compatible (but I was able to find a few with Thunderbolt interfaces, e.g., the Symply PRO LTO-7. But far far too expensive for personal use.

So I’ve been forced to make my backups using external hard drives for the last 20 years or so, which doesn’t make me happy, but is the only cost-effective option.

Since this topic has received a lot of input, and I’ve seen comments like “so and so hasn’t posted in the past xx months,” I felt it was important to join the conversation!

Honestly, I don’t see a reason for incremental backups for anything I do. Most long-term document storage is in iCloud, and some random synaptic misfires are kept in Notion. I’ve long moved away from the mindset of capturing and storing things just to look at them in the future.
I never have.

I have found solace in emptying my thoughts into Amplenote. Whether I need something in the future is irrelevant. It simply feels good to use this as my personal pensieve.

Wow. You have some serious PTSD from that floppy disk that was left on the radiator overnight.

Great write-up!

I recently switched back to a Mac after 20 years on Windows for my personal computing. My backup routine is a mashup of what I used to do on Windows and the “Apple way.”

• I store key documents in my OneDrive folder — especially ones I might need to access remotely on mobile devices. (I get 1TB of storage with my Microsoft subscription.)
• I use Time Machine with two solid-state drives (one always hooked up; one connected weekly).
• I use FreeFileSync to backup (technically an “update” sync) key folders (e.g. Documents, Pictures, BusyCal) daily to a different SSD. Monthly, I run a “mirror” sync to delete orphaned files on the backup drive.
• I use EaseUS Todo Backup to create image backups of my Documents folder (weekly), Family Photos (monthly/ad-hoc), and Home Movies (ad-hoc). I save these on the external SSD and then manually upload the backup image files to OneDrive on the web (these are not synced with my Mac’s OneDrive folder). I used Arq Backup at one point for cloud backup on Windows but didn’t like how it worked.

My last file restore was only 5 days ago: I was using a new-to-me Mac app to tile, for printing, a PDF map I had downloaded months ago. Unfortunately, it overwrote the original with the multiple page tiles unexpectedly under File > Save ( I thought I was saving tile settings).

This was all on my iCloud volume. Browse Time Machine Backups took a minute or so to bring up the earlier versions, but they were there, and I restored easily.

I like to imagine a long row of ancient IBM tape drives winding back to locate my files :-)

I don’t currently make nightly duplicates, but I pretty frequently use Super Duper!. But I don’t make bootable backups, I always use it to backup to a disk image instead of a drive. Last time I made one was a few weeks ago when I got my new M4 mac mini and wanted to clone my old Mac before sending to my brother. I had my time machine backups and my backblaze backups, but i wanted something close with EVERYTHING unencrypted on it (my time machine backups are encrypted). just in case.

Typically I use an external SSD drive I have formatted ExFAT then create a disk image on it in APFS and have Super Duper backup to that.

I have owned 4 desktop Macs and 4 laptops. Every one of the desktops has suffered a hardware failure…

• Power Macintosh 8500: died as unbootable. I thought I was safe, because I regularly backed up to DDS tapes with Retrospect: 3 tapes in rotation, one offsite, every month took one tape out of rotation and added another. But, the DDS drive used SCSI. Guess what port was missing from a 2008 iMac? Fortunately after a lot of struggle*, I got it to boot one last time and transferred the data.
• 24" iMac 3.06 Ghz: Died of graphics system failure. I think I manually transferred data from a clone to the new computer.
• iMac (27-inch, Late 2019): Video started going wacky, so I bought a new iMac. As I was attempting to use the Migration Assistant to transfer the data from that iMac to a new iMac, it wouldn’t boot. The SSD in the Fusion Drive died! So I migrated from a Time Machine backup. My mistake was I didn’t run a Time Machine backup right before starting the migration, so I wasn’t completely up to date. Which brings us to…

iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, 2017), which I’ve had to use backups three times, at least:

• After upgrading to Catalina, the SSD component of the Fusion Drive started showing a SMART test failure. I thought that it was a false alert, but it had the effect of blocking an upgrade to Big Sur. So the work around was to boot to an external bootable clone and then apply Big Sur there. I was going to then clone back to the internal drive, but ran into a problem with asr. So I just kept running using the external drive, which was faster than the internal anyway.
• After the SSD drive was repaired, I couldn’t just clone back for the same reason. So the work-around was to do a clean install of Big Sur on the internal Fusion Drive, then re-cloned the Data volume from the backup drive (which I was booted from) to the internal drive.
• In October the HD component of the Fusion Drive suddenly crashed, hard. It is completely non-functional. Fix was to boot from the external bootable clone, and then bring it up to date by restoring some recent updates from Time Machine. And in a few cases, I had to pull files down from the cloud using Arq. I’m still running from that clone, and plan to until I get a new computer.

Now that I think about it, I think I had to take a MacBook Pro in for in-warranty repair. Apple of course wiped the hard drive and installed a different version of OS X. When I got the computer back I restored by cloning from a backup. I can’t remember if I booted from the backup, or cloned by connecting the MBP to my iMac in Target Disk Mode.

So I’ve used the full complement of backups: bootable and non-bootable clones, in quite a few ways. Time Machine. Migration Assistant. Cloud backups. I also recover from mistakes – Oops! I shouldn’t have deleted that! – by restoring files from Time Machine.

* I finally got it to boot by removing the CPU cache!

Wow this is a massive thread with lots of good points!
Been computing since the 80’s, today with a MBP that can use bootable backups so that one gets CCC bootables to HDD and SSD drives, and TM to alternating HDDs.
A newish MBA also in use gets TM to repurposed HDD and CCC data only to an SSD.
What I didn’t notice in a quick read of the thread, is what to do when operating from a bootable backup. That is, now there are changes on that volume that maybe should be backed up.
Way back, maybe in the 90s, I had HDDs on Macs die and paid royally for retrieval to CD/DVD. Then followed TidBITS advice with SD/CCC and TM backups and only needed to use them when Apple repaired MPBs in a way that left them unusable without the bootable backups.
Most memorably and perhaps worthy of others’ consideration, my widely traveling, self employed wife’s MPB SSD died while traveling in a remote location (well away from an Apple Store or commonly served by delivery services)! I was able to upload some files from home for her project, and some she had just started so didn’t lose too much time recreating on a PC loaned by the client. Project files she saved to a USB chip.
Back at base she used the chip files and a colleague’s PC to work for some weeks til a scheduled trip home. Got her MPB repaired, set it up from an oldish bootable backup, added the fresh files from the chip and backed it all up the usual way.
Now she is saving some critical files on Dropbox, for access from any OS, and with a new MPB data only CCCs to SSD while on the road and that plus TM and data only CCCs when here at base. So if the new MPB dies-stolen etc, Dropbox is there, iPhone is there with all her pinging apps, she can keep on truckin’ til nearer an Apple obtaining location. Still, I am not sure she’d be able to do the migration but I could probably guide via Facetime or similar. Then maybe by Screen Sharing set up her Settings and answer questions about how newer OS affects her usual work method, (getting a bit ranty here; skip if needed) as the new MBP would be on a newer OS with all its snooping and other rubbish settings in place. It would not be easy or fun but at least she could keep working.
This is one of the dilemmas of data only backup, one would be forced into latest OS, losing use of paid, valid and comfortable old software and forced to learn new things and forced into subscription software.
The loss of bootables means guaranteed disruption. Maybe fine for flexible young people but for those with established work methods trying to finish up careers, a real time eater and frustration.
On the bright side, hardware has become pretty reliable! on the downside, theft and damage are still there… sigh.

Just to set the record straight, Discourse autosaves everything you write in your account until you press the Reply button, so you can close the browser window and return later to your draft or even switch to another device.

Using the Finder to drag a file to an external drive to make a copy.

That’s an excellent point. In the past, you could recopy the bootable backup back to the internal storage (a new drive or a new Mac), but I would be very hesitant to do that on a M-series Mac. There I’d use Migration Assistant pointed at that bootable backup during setup.

Realistically, I was always uncomfortable with restoring a bootable backup to a new Mac because I was never entirely certain that Apple wouldn’t customized the macOS install in some way for the specific Mac.

This was the standard for 68K, PPC and Intel Macs before Big Sur.

It’s my understanding, however, that this is not reliable for modern versions of macOS and won’t work at all on Apple Silicon.

For a modern Mac, the “solution” is to use Configurator or Recovery to clean-install macOS, then use Migration Assistant from your bootable backup.

Could you clone the backed-up Data volume over the newly-installed Data volume? I think it should work, especially if the two systems have the same version of macOS, but I’d be concerned about possibly breaking the firmlinks that tie the System and Data volumes together.

Agreed. In the days of Classic Mac OS, installations would be customized for the hardware. Restoring to a different hardware model may not work reliably.

However, the Mac OS installers did provide the option to “Install for all Macintoshes” (vs. “Install for this Macintosh”) which would make a system bootable on everything supported by that version of Mac OS.

Of course, back then, the differences were pretty much limited to the set of system extensions, “enablers” control panels and apps installed, so a mismatched system would still work, but with some features possibly missing or not working.

I think (but I’m not sure) that all installations of Mac OS X (on PPC and Intel) were universal, so a system installed on one Mac would boot on anything else.

But with the introduction of Apple Silicon, Apple went back. As I understand it, installations are for only one CPU architecture (Intel or Apple Silicon), although they might be compatible with all supported devices within that architecture.

I have and older version of SuperDuper and I still use CCC, although its utility is questionable, given it can no longer make bootable backups. I use ChronoSync to synchronize my wife’s and my high-res music and movie files, effectively using both as backups. We also share 2TB of iCloud storage, which synchronizes data across our Macs, iPhones and iPads. I have TimeMachine and Backblaze internet incremental backups on both our Macs, both of which have saved our asses in the past.

Yes, I have several backup strategies in use. I’m paranoid, thanks to a major data loss when I was a graduate student, in which I lost 2 weeks worth of work. It could have been worse, but at least I had a backup.

The loss of having a bootable backup was brought home a few months ago when a failed update bricked my M1 Mac Studio. It was a minor update, I think from Sequoia 1.1 to 1.1.0.1 or the like. The update hung up and when it failed to make progress after giving it all day, I reluctantly forced a shutdown. After that, the Mac wouldn’t boot up - not even into recovery mode. Nothing at all would display on attempting to boot. The best advice I could obtain from Apple’s online support was to schedule a Genius Bar appointment and bring it in. Thankfully, a fellow user replied to my post and sent me a link to the appropriate article.

I was able to recover my Mac and finish the update by hooking it up to my wife’s M3 iMac via a Thunderbolt cable, but not until I updated my wife’s computer to the newest version of Sequoia. Without the second M-Series Mac, I would have had no choice but to take my Mac to the nearest Apple Store. Had I had a bootable backup, I would have been back up and running in a matter of hours. I understand the security concerns, but Apple could facilitate a secure, bootable backup procedure if they wanted to. That said, this was the first catastrophic failure I’ve experienced in 3½ decades of experience with Macs.

For as long as I can remember, I have been making daily Time Machine backups manually. I have never felt the need to make hourly backups. In addition, I used to make daily SuperDuper backups; but nowadays, I clone my startup disk with SuperDuper every few days, or whenever I have done any work that needs to be protected. My contacts and calendars—as well as my Notes, where I do all of my writing—are also on my iPhone and iPad Pro, which are also backed up regularly. Nowadays, most of my creative work is done on my iPad, but all of that work is also copied to my Mac whenever anything new is finished. In summary, I would say that I backup my data much more conscientiously than some people, but not as redundantly as others. This works for me. I haven’t had to erase and restore my data due to a computer meltdown for many years.

I should also mention that I have kept the lion’s share of my music, photos and videos on external drives for many years; and I keep two backups (for a total of three copies) of every file that I wish to protect against loss. This strategy saves me the expense of ordering large, expensive internal SSDs for my computers. It also makes my computer backups fast and easy, and the backups occupy a relatively modest amount of external storage space.

I’m in the process of switching all my external drives from HDDs to SSDs, except the drives I use for offsite backups. I run a default Time Machine backup for my boot drive, and now that the TM drive is in APFS, it’s easy to check the archives in the Finder rather than the TM interface.

However, my primary system for potential restoration is a 3 a.m. scheduled backup via CCC of my boot drive, which triggers a CCC backup of my media drive. Now that everything is on USB-C-connected SSDs, everything completes in a few minutes at most.

This morning, an email notification indicated an error in the boot drive backup. In the past, these messages had been caused by a write-ahead log for an internal SQL-lite database disappearing between the time CCC created a snapshot and attempted to copy the file to the backup. These were of no consequence. However, this morning’s error indicated an issue with some attributes for a library file. I ran the backup (which is easy to do when it takes a minute or so) and got the same error. When I excluded the file from the backup, a similar error appeared for a different file. So, I suspected disk corruption. I then rebooted the computer in Recovery mode and ran Disk First Aid from Disk Utility on the data portion of the boot drive. DFA showed numerous warnings and errors before cleaning things up. I successfully rebooted and reran CCC with no errors.

So, CCC proved helpful in alerting me to a drive issue before it caused problems with hard data.

I have TimeMachine on the laptop, AND I use Carbon Copy Cloner to copy (every day) my home directory over to another machine (on an external RAID array drive.) That machine also has TimeMachine enabled. As I see it, this gives me 3 layers of protection, using 2 different mechanisms. (I think ‘2 mechanisms’ is important, if for no other reason, I once lost significant data with a backup system that I mis-configured.)

I use Time Machine on a large external drive, nightly backups via SuperDuper to another external drive. I also use SuperDuper to do weekly offsite (detached garage) backups.

My friends’ old iMac failed. When an attempted First Aid failed, we reinstalled a clean macOS then went to restore from one of the two backup drives I helped them set up years ago. But Time Machine wanted a password for the encrypted drive. Uh-oh. My friend tried everything he could think of, and we starting to think decades of photos were gone… Then he remembered that he had stored the password at the rear of the top shelf of his closet. That is to say “back up” in the closet. Gotta say that was a huge relief, both for him and for me because although I had him doing off-site backup rotation, I hadn’t pushed for a broader backup strategy.

P.S. the iMac failed again shortly after so I helped them buy an iMac M4 and restore it from the backup.

My most memorable need for a backup was with a Powerbook G3 Bronze Keyboard. It had drive bays that allowed a backup drive to be inserted. I had ordered a replacement as it was acting a bit flaky. Imagine my surprise when I came into the room and saw smoke coming out of the computer. The replacement G4 did not have the bays but a friend had a G3 so I loaded the backup drive into his computer, copied that to an external and set up the new computer from the external drive. Needles to say, I was even more a confirmed fan of backups.

My backup strategy. I have a 2 disk RAID that I use as a TM that backs up daily. I have a second TM that I plug in weekly and let run. I have a Studio, Side disk of 4 TB (The Studio storage was expensive and this was the best way to supplement) and a Large 4 disk SoftRAID drive that are backup up to BackBlaze. I have some SSD’s that I plug in weekly than run a CCC to back up the main Studio and another to back up the Side drive. I have external drives that store backups of iTunes folder, and another for movies (Some Blu-Ray and some DVD).

Then I have an “Archive” drive that it things that I want to save but do not need accessible. I place things there is different categories and a clone of that is in my safety deposit box and is cloned from the main one (which I keep in a firebox at home) every few months. That is also backed up to Backblaze (which reminds me every 2 weeks to plug it in so it stays up to date).

Most of my drives are cataloged with NeoFinder. That folder is backup up to DropBox. My biggest problem is too much redundancy, but the cost of Hard Drives being what they are, is not that much of a concern.

The other concern is that I am the only computer literate person in my house, so I am writing down in a physical book all the information so that my wife or child can find it when/if they need to.

I think that is all, but probably not.

Time Machine to Synology NAS every day
BackBlaze constantly
SuperDuper to Crucial SSD every day
Google, Amazon and Apple Photos when snapped
Google Workspace for business

I use Time Machine for the internal system disk and Back Blaze for the external RAID arrays.

I use many of those methods, but have given up on Time Machine. The backups are often difficult to browse and delete the data I want anyway. I rely on migration assistant when transitioning to a new Mac, and recover individual files or folders if needed.

I use Backblaze and iCloud as my two offline backups solutions.

I used to feel that way about the Time Machine in HFS+ format, but APFS Time Machine is now organized by snapshots. So you can open the Time Machine disk in the Finder, find the Snapshot corresponding to the date and time you are curious about, and search through it as you would any finder directory.

Huh? Time Machine on HFS was also by snapshots, and you could open one and search through it as you would any Finder directory. What is different?

I agree.

I’d say the actual difference is that on HFS+ TM you could mess with the backups which you can no longer do in snapshot-based APFS TM.

This becomes relevant when you realize you have backed up a very large file that you don’t actually want to back up. Think a large VM that you use for testing something — it changes a little bit every time you use it so it gets backed up every time TM runs, but it doesn’t need to be backed up. In the HFS+ TM world, you could just get rid of that file from the TM backup (there was even a right-click option to remove it from all TM backups) to be followed by adding that one file (or its parent folder) to the exclusion list. That no longer works in the the APFS TM world. Since it’s based on snapshots, there’s no way to remove just that one file from the backup. It’s there as long as the snapshot exists and gets backed up. Exclusion has also changed. Since TM is based on snapshots that are made on disk ahead of time, you cannot have TM remove just this one file or its parent folder from the snapshots and hence the backup. That file actually needs to live in another APFS volume for which no TM backups are made if you want to make sure it never becomes part of a TM snapshot (which BTW lives on your internal disk [and thus uses up space there] until the next TM backup is performed).

Not quite. HFS+ doesn’t support snapshots. Instead, Time Machine creates a separate folder for each backup.

In order to avoid massive duplication of data, Time Machine creates large amounts of hard links so files and directories that are identical in two or more backups all reference the same physical file.

The problem is that this system of hard links has shown itself to be fragile over time, causing many people to lose data. And the backed-up files are not immutable - they can be deleted and edited. And editing a file with multiple links to it will cause it to change in all the backups that share that link. vs. snapshots, which are read-only and can’t be changed under any circumstance.

But I agree that there should be no problem opening a particular backup’s folder and walk through its contents looking for file.

My point is that the Finder presents the backups similarly: a set of time-stamped folders. In fact, it was easier to scan across snapshots with the HFS Time Machine, because it was also the same structure from the Terminal command prompt and to other applications. The APFS version has to mount each snapshot separately.

I’m guessing not. If the Mac wouldn’t even boot into recovery mode, it wouldn’t have allowed booting from an external drive.

The main reason I let Time Machine do its thing hourly is that then I don’t have to think about it or potentially forget to make a backup—there’s no real difference in the amount of data stored because of how it prunes. Some people say they’ve noticed it working, but particularly with a modern Mac and an SSD, I’ve never noticed any performance issues related to Time Machine running in the background. Same with Backblaze, which backs up constantly.

FWIW, I know when TM is running, but that’s because I’m backing up to a hard drive, and head motion is noisy (especially on the Toshiba NAS drives I’m using). But system performance has never suffered, so the impact is just a little noise.

In fact, that was one of the big reasons I switched to SSD for Time Machine and SuperDuper—I don’t like the hard drive noise.

This is a very good reason to just let Time Machine do its thing every hour. For me, not having to keep my TM disk connected all day is an added benefit of making manual backups once a day. Fortunately, I very rarely forget to make a TM backup before putting my computer to sleep for the day.

My basic strategy is I make 4 kinds of backups:

1. My primary backup is Time Machine, running hourly. It is the most current local backup.

   Currently I’m running Time Machine to a partition on a 4 TB SSD. Unfortunately it isn’t large enough to include my VMware Fusion VMs, which are huge.

2. My backup for restoring or recovering from a catastrophic machine failure is a SuperDuper! bootable clone. This is a weekly scheduled clone of all files on the drive, to an another partition on the 4 TB drive. Yeah, I know: I’m putting two backups on the same drive. More about this later.

3. But what if my house burned down? I used to use CrashPlan, but when it ended for personal use I switched to Arq, backing up to space in Wasabi. Arq is running hourly, with Time Machine style retention: hourly for a day, daily for a month, weekly for a year, monthly then on. I currently have it set to keep the data for 5 years.

   The advantage of Arq over other cloud backups is that it is Bring Your Own Cloud space. Since I’m paying for my cloud space, Arq doesn’t care what I backup. I can include anything I want. Applications? No problem. 5 years of virtual machine VMDKs? It doesn’t care. Arq has no incentive to try to keep you from using up space.

4. But seriously, what if my house burned down? It would be impractical to pull back terabytes of data from the cloud. So I use SuperDuper! to create a pair of data-only clones, one of which is kept offsite. I update the one at home monthly, and then swap it offsite. (I’m backing up to multi-terabyte bare drives, using a drive dock.)

OK, now to the issue about having multiple backups on the same drive, which is a no-no. The solution is that I actually have more than one bootable clone and more than one Time Machine. I update the other bootable clone monthly. Normally I’d only connect the 2nd Time Machine once a month, but for reasons one of my Time Machine’s is on the same drive I’m booted from, so I have both Time Machines connected all the time. It switches between them on each backup.

Using more than two different full backups of my machines.
As for methods on physical disks: Carbon Copy Cloner, Time Machine
Secure online storage (zero-knowledge): Tresorit
The physical disks are at least two that get physically rotated off-site.

Would like to move to ZFS-based storage for its protection against bit rot. Have been hit in the past by hardware failure that resulted in erroneous data being written to disk.
See https://openzfsonosx.org/ also https://openzfs.org/

I just moved from an Intel iMac 27" to an M4 MacMini. I had an OWC 2TB HD for TimeMachine but thinking I wanted to get up and going fast on that new spiffy new machine, I updated the sorta-monthly CCC data backup on a recent 1TB LaCie SSD. So using Migration Assistant on the LaCie I migrated. Goodness that was fast! What fun!

But then . . . I realized I had a large image archive in a separate volume on the OWC drive that I really should dump directly into the MacMini (large for me—100GB or so). So I happily connected the OWC drive, fired it up, and . . . dead as a doornail as in really dead, as in behold my new doorstop. Yikes! But then I remembered I backed-up that archive to an old firewire G-drive once a month or so. But then when I plugged the G-Drive into the Mini (via multiple adapters that worked fine on the iMac) nada. No mount, Disk Utility didn’t even see it. So, lift the old iMac from the floor, connect the G-Drive, plug in the SSD and copy everything over, then dump it into the Mini. So simple, right? Be still my heart.

The moral(s) of the story are: One, that multiple backups are good even if they are not absolutely up-to-date; Two, that exceptionally sturdy drive is older than you think and maybe you should think about tossing all those old drives that surely will work when you start them up again after 5 years; Three, multiple backups are good.

My current backup regime is simple. TimeMachine to a Samsung T9, CCC to a LaCie SSD every few weeks, Backblaze continuous, iCloud for iThings.

I’ll probably get another SSD for Data backup on occasion just on general principles.

I would like to point out that restoration from BackBlaze backups is not trivial (Get a USB drive from them for small $, then spend hours picking out mail & messages & prefs & documents & god knows what else to rebuild a client’s laptop). Migration Assistant it is not. Thank heavens we used it but. . . .

Dave

Fantastic discussions! I need to update my earlier post about my strategy. I actually ran into a “quirk” with my SuperDuper! bootable backups on both of my Macs (an M1 MacMini, and an M3 MacBook Air). I am currently using V15.2 of Sequoia (that was part of the issue in Adam’s initial article about all this).

As I mentioned previously, I use SuperDuper! (SD) to back up each of my Macs to 2 separate Samsung 1 TB SSDs. The other day, I tried to boot my Mac Mini from one of its SD backups, but kept getting errors. It just would not boot up! For the other one, it was fine! (The Samsung SSDs are the exact same mode: T7 1 TB Shield, purchased a couple of years ago close to the same time). Same issue with my MacBook Air, although I only tried one of them. Kept driving me crazy! Contacted David Nanian of Shirt Pocket Software, and he was as perplexed as me. He offered some ideas, and one actually worked: re-install OS 15.2 on the backup. That worked, but seemed like a “half ass” way of doing things.

This morning I tried again. This time, I used specific USB-C ports. On my Mini, there are 2 of them on the back: one right next to the Ethernet port, and the other next to that (ie, one port away from the Ethernet port). On the MacBook Air, it also has 2 USB-C ports: one next to the Power “port”, and the other next to that one (again, one port away from the Power “port”). I went ahead and connected each of my Samsung SSDs to the USB-C port on the mini one port away from the Ethernet port. Did an SD complete backup, and it worked! That is, I was able to subsequently boot the MIni from each such SD bootable backup. Similarly for the MacBook Air, I connected each SSD to the USB-C port one port away from the Power “port”. Again, success! That is, did an SD backup to each SSD, and was able to subsequently boot the Air from that just completed SD backup.

So, it seems there is a port “dependency” going on here. Of course I do not know whether it is Mac model dependent, Mac OS dependent, or Samsung SSD dependent (or possibly a combination of two, or all three). In discussions with David, he indicated that neither Apple nor himself are aware of anyone else having success like me, and specifically with OS 15.2 (again, that was part of the “gist” of the original article posted by Adam last month on the Tidbits site).

Obviously I am pleased, but sure was not easy detective work. I asked for this before, so I’ll try again. I’m sure David and Adam would like to know also. Would like to hear from other users of SuperDuper!, and especially ones running OS 15.2.

That’s the option I was looking for in Adam’s survey: manually created clones.

Overall, our current set-up looks like this for both of our personal Macs:

• Internet versioned: Continous via Backblaze
• Local data-only clones: Manually to SSD via ChronoSync once a month (drive is disconnected between back-ups)
• Off-site data-only clones: Manually to GOPD¹⁾ via ChronoSync once a month, rotating three drives (so the back-ups are no older than 3, 2, and 1 month(s), respectively)
• Cloud: Photos and Music libraries on iCloud (yup, not fool-proof for the former, but that’s well-covered by the other three options)

Planned future changes:

• Local data-only clones: Move to scheduled ChronoSync, with having the app un-/mount the always-connect drive as needed
• Off-site data-only clones: Switch from GOPD to SSD to speed things up “a bit”

¹⁾ Good Old Platter Drive

Except for routine testing, I haven’t needed to use a backup in years. In 2016 the GPU in my 2012 MBP died. We had just bought my wife a new iMac so I used my bootable CCC clone to get up and running on her old iMac. One other time I had an OS upgrade fail and used the backup to get going.

If my M1 iMac died I have an old MacBook Air that’s synced via iCloud so I can be going in a short time.

Back to the subject of testing - my philosophy is that an untested backup does not exist. If you haven’t tested it recently, you cannot depend on it. I test both my local and BackBlaze backups. A lot of this comes from my involvement in corporate disaster recovery. We had time windows when critical systems had to be up and running. In some scenarios certain people were designated as unavailable for the recovery.

While having an automatic backup run from CCC is a good idea, I just ran into a problem that redundant backups can cause. On my Archive disk, I keep files I do not need immediate access to, and store a clone of the disk in my safe deposit box. I was running Neofinder on my disk and it kept giving me a memory overflow with requests to close other programs. I thought the problem was with NF, but looking at logs showed a lot of files that were corrupted or otherwise could not be opened. This never showed up on my copying and I do not think there is a fix. It may be that the disk is old or the directory is corrupted. Who knows. It is beyond my skill set to figure out what it happening.

One lesson is to check these kinds of backups regularly (though this disk contains so many files, I don’t know how I would catch this earlier). Also don’t assume just because you are backing up that the files can be recovered when you need them.

If I run a recover program on this, will I be able to recover the files?

(Also, would formatting the disk in APFS give my directory any more resilience that if I format the drive in HFS? This will be a 14 TB hard drive.)

CCC has an option in its ‘Advanced Settings’>Performance & Analysis tab to check for corrupted files periodically. I’ve set that to once a month. Note: if large HDDs are involved, the time to run that backup is enormous compared to a typical run (say 10 hours vs 30 minutes).

Excellent point about testing backups — and kudos to Adam for evangelizing Friday 13ths as backup testing days!

We have a recurring task to test all of our backup destinations — off-site HDs, local SSDs, and BackBlaze — every three months. IMHO, that’s often enough, especially since, ChronoSync, our current backup software of choice, has great logging and very clearly points out any issues it encounters during a run.

We do the testing manually by restoring a dozen, or so, randomly selected files. That doesn’t sound comprehensive, but it does ensure that the medium is generally accessible and its data not corrupted beyond rescue.

I would assume that this would take as long as a full (that is, not incremental) backup, since it needs to read every file on both the source and destination in order to compute and compare the checksums.

See also CCC: How to verify a backup.

I almost forgot that I have a rather, umh, dramatic story to tell about backups. That experience inspired a five-minute Ignite talk I gave some ten years ago.

Talking to audience members afterwards, I was stumped by how many of them did not have any backups at all.

Compared to that, I see that most of us TidBITS Talkers are well into paranoid-about-my-data territory. And that’s a very good thing!

I once had a mission-critical server (Linux) backed up daily to Amazon Simple Storage Service using duplicity. I would periodically restore a few files just to make sure everything was working.

One day the server’s disk became corrupted (thanks, systemd!) and it wouldn’t boot. Because I had a full backup that was less than a day old, I decided the most expedient course was to just restore the entire server.

I started the restore. I knew it would be slow: the files were stored online at AWS. When I did test restores, it took a while (maybe 1-2 minutes per file restored) but I figured that was overhead searching for the files through hundreds of incremental backups – overhead that wouldn’t apply to every. single. file. on a full restore.

I was wrong.

After 24 hours, the restore was less than 1% complete. Thinking that internet delays were the culprit, I downloaded the entire backup set which required only a few hours. I then ran the restore locally. It didn’t speed up. It turns out that duplicity really doesn’t like having hundreds of incremental backups accumulated, and I was rotating the backups (starting a new full backup) only once a year.

One minute per file doesn’t seem that bad, but for a server with right around a million files on it, I think that makes the restore time in the neighborhood of two years.

Two morals:

1. Limited testing is a good thing, but there needs to be at least some full testing. Which I did, but only a month or so after starting using duplicity and I didn’t repeat it after the number of incrementals had built up. It is difficult, time-consuming, and expensive to do full disaster recovery drills regularly, but without doing so you risk being bitten by bugs that won’t show up with limited testing.

2. Those of you who have backup strategies that use completely different tools to make multiple backup sets (Time Machine + CCC, for example) are doing a Very Good Thing™.

I had a bootable clone of the server that was only a few weeks out of date. I used that, and updated the likely places where data loss might occur using the duplicity backups. All was well except that it aged me a bit.

Thanks for sharing that story, Ron! It made me wonder if there isn’t a way to automate that backup check.

Turns out, that ChronoSync has a “Validate” function (emphasis mine):

The validator function compares the selected file or folder pair and verifies that the file data, resource forks and metadata match between the two. This includes verifying the data via bit-for-bit compare or checksum, depending upon the target connections.

Sounds like that approach is much more thorough, more trustworthy, and less tedious than any randomized manual testing could ever be.

So there’s my weekend project…

P.S.: TidBITS Talk still rocks. Of course.

Could you please elaborate a little, especially about Mail?

I agree with Ron; my SuperDuper! bootable back ups are a huge comfort for just such situations as he describes. As is being able to find things using the Finder, instead of delving into Apple library voodoo or a bucket full of unidentifiable files. I am furious about this development.

Depending on the amount of work I am doing I will go for a bootable clone of everything (3TB) every few days. Plus, drawings for projects I am working on get uploaded as a version copy to iCloud, so I can keep the gaps between drawing copies smaller. My strategy also includes a “save as” each day or each significant change or variation. It is a system which has been tested several times over the years, it works well and now it is broken. Midst all the over-engineering of 21st century Apple these adjustments seem petty and unnecessary. Some you can work round. Some you can’t. Which is why I have five Apple computers of different ages in my office, all running different OSs, dedicated to different functions.

Drew and Roger,

Please elaborate which version of Sequoia you are running. As I previously mentioned, 1) one of the reasons Adam began all this was due to OS 15.2 “issues” with bootable backups, 2) SuperDuper! “supposedly” not providing bootable backups under 15.2, and 3) my most recent post about my (final!) success with SD and the port dependency.

Is the working port on each machine the DFU port? Not the DFU port? Or DFU port on one but not the other machine?

See Apple’s article on How to identify the DFU port on Mac.

I’m not much help in this as I am still running Sonoma on an Intel 2020 iMac 5k, trying to stay out of trouble. I was quite keen to get a newer machine before Christmas but not yet.

I don’t like using email as a filing system. It’s rare that someone needs the actual email in the future. I save them as a PDF and then file the PDFs in my filing system. Much better backup granularity. Before retirement my wife worked as an Exchange administrator and has horror stories of her users having massive email stores (PST & OST) and having them get corrupted.

Neither of them are the DFU ports. On the Mini, it would be the port closest to the Ethernet Port. On the Air, it is the port closest to the hinge. I have the SSD drives plugged into the other ports on each Mac, ie, the non-DFU ports.

I keep incremental backups of my major data storage volumes, including my internal startup volume. However, I just went through a great deal of difficulty ensuring that I could still boot from an external volume that incorporated a copy of my internal data volume. Like others, I discovered with the upgrade to Sequoia 15.2 that the legacy system cloning option was no longer viable, but I finally got pretty much the same result by installing Sequoia 15.2 to the external volume, then booting into that volume, setting up a temporary admin user, then performing the migration to the data volume using Migration Assistant. The difficulty appears to be that my internal drive had some corrupted data, because after several failures, the problems went away when I reinstalled 15.2 to my internal volume as an in-place installation with the goal of repairing whatever was broken. It surprised me that only this function appeared to be affected by whatever was corrected by the in-place installation.

Laine,

If you read my posts above, you’ll see where I run Onyx and Disk Utility’s First Aid on each of my Mac’s internal SSDs before doing the SuperDuper! backups. I also keep my Macs “lean, mean, and clean”. Then of course there is the issue of “port dependency” with the backup process, which I finally resolved the other day (see my latest post above about that). Basically not use the DFU port. This link has information on the location of the DFU port on each Mac model:

First, BackBlaze does not back up your entire Mac. You are not going to reconstitute a failed machine with a BackBlaze backup with ease. Here’s what they say:

What We Don’t Backup

Backblaze does not want to waste your bandwidth or Backblaze data center disk space. Thus, we do not backup your operating system, application folder, or temporary internet files that are transient and would not be useful in the future. Backblaze also excludes podcasts in iTunes.

Certain Filetypes

You can see these exclusions by clicking on “Settings…” in the Backblaze Control Panel and selecting the Exclusions tab. These exclusions can be removed! Some of these excluded files are:

• ISO (Disk Images)
• DMG (Mac Disk Image)
• VMC VHD VMSN (Virtual Drives)
• SYS (System Configuration & Drivers)
• EXE (Application Files)

Other Backup Programs

Backblaze also doesn’t backup backups like Time Machine and Retrospect RDB.

So, let’s say you have an unfortunate event involving a hamster, a large glass of just-mixed epoxy, and your laptop. After a week or two, the laptop comes back from Apple with the default system for that model & year (). You received your USB drive from BackBlaze and now what? You can’t use migration assistant [update: I’ve never tried this, it might work but it seems unlikely to work and a query to Backblaze support showed they’ve never tried this]: the BackBlaze backup is simple. You have to create your new user account and then copy over your user files. Documents folder, Movies, Music, etc.

But, and this is the crux of your Mail question, what do you do with your User Library where all your preferences and mail data and application support files are kept? Unless you are absolutely certain that the OS is exactly the same one you were using when the hamster careened into that glass, copying the entire User Library and replacing the vanilla one on your new system is a very, very big question mark. I’ve never had the courage to try this and unless you’re truly expert, don’t.

If you want to restore your Mail settings and archive hold down the Option key and click on the Go menu in the Finder, your User Library will appear in the list. Open it. Then, making sure Mail isn’t running first, copy the Mail folder from the backup to your new Mail folder replacing it. You should do the same for the Application Support folder and the Preferences folder. Then, immediately restart while crossing your fingers (and your eyes, too, while you’re at it). As for the rest of the zillion folders in the Library, you’re on your own. . . .

If other people have had experience with restoring from BackBlaze I’d encourage them to post here. My own feeling was when I had to use it that “You’re lucky you have anything at all so just get the basics and don’t try to be fancy.”

Dave

In addition to Jochen comments (thank you), CCC does a similar process if one selects “Find and replace corrupted files” in the advanced settings for a task. To quote from CCC’s web site:

“CCC normally uses file size and modification date to determine whether a file should be copied. With this option, CCC will calculate an MD5 checksum of every file on the source and every corresponding file on the destination. If the checksums differ, CCC will recopy the file.”

On a HFS disk it takes hours but on a SSD it’s much quicker.

I decided to revise my b/u strategy after learning that my Carbon Copy Backup was not bootable. I decided to experiment for now with Time Machine and Backblaze. I’ve used CCB for many years, but everything changes, and it seems time to look at a different solution for protecting my data from loss.

A question for all the people who make bootable backups on a weekly schedule, which includes @david_blanchard, @aldus_vet, @mschmitt, and @akent35. What’s your plan for recovery?

The benefit of a bootable backup is that you can get up and running very quickly in the event of a disaster. If you make your bootable backup every night, the worst-case scenario is that you could be a single workday out of date. However, with a weekly bootable backup, you could be seven days out of date. If we assume that the bootable backup is important because you cannot waste extra time restoring files from Time Machine or the like, how do you deal with the fact that a weekly bootable backup is almost guaranteed to lack multiple days of file change and additions?

The best answer to this question that I can think of is that you keep all your working files in cloud storage. In that case, you boot from your bootable backup, after which Dropbox/iCloud Drive/Google Drive makes the latest versions of all your files instantly available.

If you have to employ another restoration step, such as bringing files back from Time Machine, I’m not seeing the benefit of the weekly schedule. You’d have to put effort into manually identifying which files were out of date and restoring just them, which is slow and error-prone. It’s hard to see that being a big win over just reinstalling macOS and restoring everything using Migration Assistant.

I’m also curious. With these weekly bootable backups, do you have to connect the backup drive manually each week? One of the reasons I recommend nightly duplicates is that the drive can remain attached all the time such that it’s less likely that you could forget.

I do realize that I’m operating from the bias of a desktop Mac here. I’ve never used a laptop Mac as my primary machine, but I could imagine that it would make backups significantly less reliable because you always have to remember to plug in the drive. In general with backups, I always aim for systems that require no attention from me.

If you use a MacBook at a desk, chances are you’ll also be connecting it to an external screen or peripherals, or even just power. If you do that you can make sure to include that backup disk in your device chain (either through extra ports or through a dock). Then you’re still plugging in just one cable, but you get your backup connected for free.

I don’t quite understand how the end of bootable clones pushes people away from SD or CCC as some posters here appear to indicate. SD and CCC will continue to back up every single thing you need that is personal. The thing that changes is having to use installer and MA to recover, but just because SD and CCC no longer default create bootable clones, does not mean they don’t work just fine as a backup strategy against complete loss.

The clone is on the same drive as one of my Time Machine’s, so it is always connected, but not mounted. I don’t have to do anything for the automatic weekly clone.

I could change to a daily clone – the source and destinations are both SSDs – but there’s a trade off here. One reason for a bootable backup is if something bad happens at a software level. If the bad thing happens and then you clone it, now you can’t use the backup to roll back.

I do refresh the backup when doing major updates though. And since I’m now restoring the icon positions in the Finder Applications and Utilities windows by copying.DS_Store files from this backup, I definitely refresh it immediately before applying a macOS update.

But anyway, the answer to your question is I grab recently updated files from Time Machine, and if not there, from the cloud (Arq). There’s not that many files, since my most important frequently updated files are in my Dropbox, such as my Quicken database.

I don’t think this takes longer than a migration restore. Case in point is that I just had to go through this a few months ago, as I’ve written before…

1. My iMac froze and kernel panicked.
2. I tried to reboot it, without success.
3. I booted it in verbose mode, and saw mention in the tiny tiny text that there were I/O errors. From this I concluded that the iMac’s internal drive was toast. Which it was – the hard drive component of the Fusion drive is dead.
4. I rebooted from the bootable backup, which was 1 day old (it backed up Thursday night, crash was on Friday evening.)
5. It took me less than an hour to restore the other files.

Total time to get back up and running: let’s say an hour after I decided that there was no booting this drive.

Now let’s think about what I would have had to do if I didn’t have a bootable backup. Since the internal drive was dead, I’d need to find an external drive that was not in use. This is a serious point: do people who do not do bootable backups keep a spare external drive of sufficient size sitting around waiting for a disaster? I bet few people do.

Then I’d need to boot up the iMac in Recovery mode and install macOS on the external drive. I have had mixed success with this in the past. But for the purposes of discussion, let’s assume that I can do that part.

Then boot up on that drive, and do a migration from Time Machine. My experience in the past is that the Migration Assistant does an above average job, but it doesn’t set up everything the same way as before. So it takes a few days to get everything reconfigured again, software licensed, etc.

And, unfortunately, my Time Machine doesn’t have enough space to backup everything. (This is a decision; I know that what’s not on the Time Machine is on the other clones.) So I’d still have to find and restore the file not on the Time Machine. And even if the files are on the Time Machine, were they changed since the last Time Machine backup? Maybe the Arq version is newer. (I ran into a variation of this problem; Time Machine’s regular backups pushed the only hourly backup that had some files out of retention, so I had to get them from Arq.)

So, to me, all things considered, getting things going again from the bootable backup is absolutely faster, both in time from disaster until complete restoration, but also because the bootable backup gets you back up and running a lot faster.

I’m on Ventura on the iMac (can’t upgrade it) and Sonoma on my M2 MacBook Pro. I’m hoping that whatever’s broken in asr will be fixed by the time I upgrade to Sequoia, which won’t be for months.

I think this scenario may be disappearing into history. With an Apple silicon Mac, the internal storage must be functional to boot from an external drive, so you cannot find yourself in a situation where your internal drive is dead and the only way you can use the Mac is to boot from an external drive. If the internal drive is dead, the Mac is dead and must go back to Apple.

Of course, the other side of this is that solid-state storage is far less likely to fail than hard drives, so this kind of failure should be happening much less often than in the spinning disk days.

Given that I use my machine primarily for personal reasons, weekly SuperDuper! backups work well for me. if there is ever a need for recovery, the only things that would be out of sync somewhat are 1) my transaction history that I maintain with Quicken on both of my Macs for only one of our accounts, and 2) applications that were updated between my weekly backups.

I already stated my reasons why I store everything locally, and not on any kind of “cloud” service. To me, it is risky, and also I have little, if any, control over that storage.

Finally, given that I always do the backups on Saturday (when I am also doing other tasks (non-computer, ie, multi tasking)), no need to keep the SSDs plugged in all the time. It’s easy to remember to plug them in for the backups.

All of the above is what I follow for both of my Macs: a M1 Mac mini, and an M3 MacBook Air. Works very, very well for me.

Additionally, the site is no longer allowing me to post anything to that discussion. I actually have no need to become a member of Tidbits, but one would think someone like me can provide input/information, etc. that could be valuable. Case in point: my success in successfully making bootable SuperDuper! backups for each of my Macs by not using the DFU port for the backup. I can boot from those backups, though, using any port (including the DFU one). Can I be allowed to join/re-join the discussions?

Arthur Kent

Even in the scenario of needing to send a machine in for repair, I would still probably prefer a bootable backup – especially if this is a case where the machine was functional before the repair, so I can make a backup right before unplugging it.

My reasons are:

• When you clone back from a bootable backup, you know exactly what version of macOS you’re getting. In my experience, getting back a machine from repair never had the macOS I want, and trying to get it from Recovery isn’t easy. Either you can’t get that version of macOS at all, or if you can, you don’t know which magic combination of startup keys it takes until you’ve tried the wrong ones twice.
• When you clone back from a clone, you’re getting exactly the same data as was before. It is is the same machine. With migration, it is more like you have a new machine but now it is importing data into it. My experience is that the data clone works better.
• I’ve had a lot of distrust of Time Machine in the past, in fact I’ve worked with Apple on reproduceable cases where the Time Machine backup was incorrect. I think Time Machine has gotten a lot befter, but I still have that element of uncertainty… I know a data clone is exactly as the machine was when the clone started, but with Time Machine I’m not sure it will work.
• Time Machine has built-in exclusions, that suppress backup of more files than are on the clone.
• I have my own exclusions in Time Machine to keep the size under control. For example, I don’t backup the Outlook mail, because that can be re-synched from the server (like IMAP, but different). But, unfortunately, you can’t suppress Outlook mail without also suppressing other Outlook files; it doesn’t have the cache in a different folder than configuration and settings. So if I restore from Time Machine, I have more work to do to reconfigure. This is the same for other applications that I’m excluding. People who let Time Machine backup everything may not have this issue.

I would not use a clone to restore a new machine though. There I would use the migration assistant, but may use the data clone as the source.

I use a TM for archives and a non-bootable daily backup for recovery and migration. I also try to keep current with system updates (no more than one or two minor releases behind), and my Mac can obviously handle the current production OS. I also live within 5 miles of 2 Apple stores.

So, what’s my recovery plan if the startup drive in my Mac fails? I will use a Mac from a nearby Apple store as a loaner while I plot the exact Mac I wish to order. You can return equipment in good condition up to 14 days after purchase. Indeed, when I have brought Apple products in for repair, store employees have encouraged me to ‘purchase’ a replacement and return it when my repair was completed.

You need to read my post above about the success I am having on both of my Macs running OS 15.2 of Sequoia and SuperDuper! (do not know about CCC). To re-iterate, as long as one does NOT use the DFU port, one can successfully make bootable SuperDuper! backups to an external device. One can subsequently boot from the backup from any port, including the DFU one.

I hope that is (finally) clear. Would still like to hear from folks that are having success like me, and specifically with OS 15.2. Of course, OS 15.3 will be arriving soon, so not sure if this “DFU dependency” will be resolved.

Adam,

Please ignore the issue I state in the bottom of my prior EMail. I was able to just make a post within that discussion.

Two things I wish folks would do: 1) pay attention to posts make by others, and 2) those that are having success with SuperDuper! and OS 15.2 (like myself) to relay those experiences. Remember, the issue with OS 15,2 is one of the primary reasons why you began all this. For me, it has been educational. Also, David Nanian would appreciate such input from other “SuperDuper!” folks.

Arthur Kent

This would be better stated as “I can successfully make bootable SuperDuper! backups to an external device.” As we’ve discussed with Dave Nanian, it’s entirely unclear why this works for you but not for him, me, or many other people. You appear to be the exception, not the rule.

Regardless, I believe Apple will fix the bug soon enough and the entire issue will go away.

Ok, but have you tried testing backing up to a blank SSD, to see if it will be bootable? Or is the drive’s ability to boot (after manually installing MacOS to it, as you described) merely unaffected by SuperDuper’s inability to create a bootable backup from scratch?

Okay, now I’m really confused about this whole discussion.

I have an M2 Pro Mini with 1TB internal storage, updated to OS 15.2.

As for my backup strategy I have:

• a 1 TB Samsung T5 for a scheduled SuperDuper! clone, plugged in to a port I’m assuming is not the DFU port because I believe that’s the one farthest to the left as you face the back of the Mini, and
• an older USB A 4TB HD with a 1TB partition used for a scheduled SD! clone and a 3TB partition for daily Time Machine backups.
• an even older USB A 1TB HD used for daily Time Machine backups, and finally,
• I use Arq to backup my critical data folders to Arq Cloud storage offsite.

For many, many years I used an SD! schedule to clone my sequence of Intel Macs to the T5 and HD and, of course, was able to boot from either backup, as well as the built in HD. I needed to resort to recovering using an SD! clone maybe once in decades, but I used it to upgrade machines by recloning the clone to the new machine. When I originally moved to the M2 Mini from an Intel iMac I used Migration Assistant and then had SD! clone the new machine to both the T5 and the HD on the same schedule, which it did and I could boot from them.

Over the last year or so I have not reinstalled/updated the OS on the T5 (and I can’t on the HD because it doesn’t appear as a startup disk), but SD! was happy to backup my data volume from the Mini to both the T5 and HD. According to System Settings > General > Startup Disk, the Mac OS on the T5 is Ventura 13.7.2. Curiously, the HD partition no longer appears in the list of startup disks, but it should have the same OS as the T5. When this discussion started I thought I’d see if the T5 would still boot the Mini. When I selected the T5 as the boot volume and tried to boot from it I was taken to a screen telling me I needed to reinstall the OS on the T5. I tried following the on screen recovery instructions to do this but the installation failed multiple times. I gave up trying, assuming this was somehow a symptom of the ‘end of bootable backups’ issue and I resigned myself to having scheduled non-bootable SD! backups of my data volume to the two drives.

Now @akent35 says he is able to boot from an SD! clone on Macs running 15.2 which is contrary to all the discussion and information I’ve seen from Shirt Pocket/SuperDuper!

Can anybody make sense of all this for me?

I don’t do bootable backups anymore…but I can pretty easily move the photo drive and Lightroom catalog to my laptop. And if it’s the laptop that died…I can easily use its Data backup to move OP’s to my Studio until I replace/fix whatever died.

Over the years I determined that once-daily TM backups and once-weekly SuperDuper! clones were sufficient for my needs. The worst case scenario is I lose one days work. That’s not a big loss for me–and one I am willing to accept.

The backup drive is connected and always powered on. SuperDuper! mounts it prior to cloning and dismounts it when finished.

I schedule my MacPro5,1 to wake up every night just prior to the daily TM backup. Once weekly, the SD clone runs shortly after TM is finished. It’s a hand-off operation.

You did not understand my posts. I can successfully run SuoerDuper! to make a bootable backup to a Samsung external 1 TB SSD for each of my Macs. In actuality, I let SuperDuper! first erase that portion of the SSD, then let it perform the backup. However, assuming the issue Adam raised last month is due to OS 15.2., I MUST use a non-DFU port on each machine in order for this to work. When completed, I can then boot he respective machine from the respective SuperDuper! backup from ANY port, including the DFU one. And I do not need to install OS 15.2 on the backup. SuperDuper! copies/replicates it just fine, along of course with all the other data/information.

Is that clear enough?

1. Yes, that is the correct location for the DFU port (same as my M1 Mac Mini). For the new M4 Mac Minis, it is the middle one of the 3 Thunderbolt ports located on the back.

2. It seems I am the exception to the “rule”. And David Nanian of Shirt Pocket Software is baffled also. He actually tried to use a non-DFU port on his M4 Mac Mini to do the SuperDuper! backup, but not able to then subsequently boot up from it. I of course have no clue why it works for me. For other folks, and in my case for using the DFU port, cannot say whether it’s an issue with OS 15.2, ?any? port, or the Samsung SSDs. Possibly one of them, or a combination of all 3.

I actually was thinking of “trading in” the M1 Mini at the Apple Store for an M4 Mini (can get a good amount for the M1 Mini), but with David not able to be successful with his M4 Mini, will hold off until a fix from Apple comes.

Of course my success is the same with my M3 MacBook Air. So who knows?

I can then boot the respective machine from the respective SuperDuper! backup

One question: Can you use a superduper backup to boot a machine other than the one from which it was made?

I have often wondered that myself. But there could be “items” on the backup that could cause issues when running the backup on another machine.

If you have a chance to test it sometime, I would be interested in the results. My main use of bootable clones in the past was to easily have the exact same system on two desktops in different locations.

Perhaps you did not understand my question. Can you create a bootable backup on an Apple Silicon machine running 15.2 to a blank disk (not a disk erased by SD!) using SuperDuper!, or have you not tested that scenario?

As I understand it, macOS installations are architecture-dependent, but are universal within an architecture.

So you should be able to boot a clone of an Intel Mac on any Intel Mac (assuming the hardware is compatible with the version of macOS). And you should be able to boot a clone of an Apple Silicon Mac on any Apple Silicon Mac.

But there’s a big difference between should and reality. More specifically, there is firmware beyond macOS (installed in the T2 on Intel Macs or in special APFS containers on an Apple Silicon Mac’s internal SSD). If the installed firmware is older than the version expected by macOS, you might encounter problems.

If the firmware is newer than the version provided with the macOS release, it should work, because firmware images are supposed to be fully backward-compatible. But again, reality may be different. I don’t know how much backward-compatibility testing Apple actually does.

In other words, if you think you want to do this, test it out before you have an emergency that would force you to depend on the behavior.

And you should just use the clone long enough to get your failed Mac replaced/repaired. Then perform a clean install of macOS on the hardware and use Migration Assistant to restore your contents. DO NOT try to clone your external boot device to a modern Mac’s internal storage.

Before I even attempt it, I want to know if there are any risks and/or issues doing that… I do not want to have issues on my end.

Also, if anyone can chime in here and answer Tom’s question about using a bootable clone to start up another Mac, that would be good.

And finally I’ll ask for the third time: is there anyone else who uses SuperDuper! with OS 15.2 that has had success making a bootable clone like myself? Can’t seem to get anything definitive out of anyone.

Yes I did, but to one of my Samsung SSDs. It worked as expected. Not sure though why that would make a difference, ie, doing the backup to a blank SSD versus first allowing SupeDuper! to erase that backup partition, and then do the backup.

I think I did this long ago: my desktop was down for repair or replacement, so I booted a MacBook Pro using a clone of the desktop.

But…

• I don’t know if this works with Apple Silicon (and T2 chips?), which brings in the question of ownership. Where is that stored? Is in in the clone or somewhere else?
• Even if it did, I don’t know that I’d want to do this on an Internet connected machine.

The problem is that these days, the machine is synching to online resources, such as iCloud. What happens when a different machine is trying to sync using data from the cloned machine? Does it get confused? Does it create a bunch of conflicts? Does it corrupt the data?

It isn’t so much that the different machine is an iMac vs. a MacBook or something like that. It is different because it has a different serial number, and that’s used as a key identifier.

Thanks Michael. I suspected there could be issues, and I certainly do not want to risk it.

Interesting! For a number of years I have booted my two Intel iMacs from an external ssd, and just took the ssd along when I traveled between them, so I always had the same system. I updated the ssd rather than the internal drives when new MacOS versions came out, and never had any problems with email or other icloud syncing. So I was wondering whether that might still work with Silicon iMacs. Will have to test I think.

Because on macOS there isn’t really a single partition - there are volumes - including one with “-data” appended to the name of your internal volume (traditionally “Macintosh”) that holds all writable files, and I’m wondering if SuperDuper was simply erasing only the “Macintosh-Data” or the whole volume. If it’s what I think, that would explain your success - you manually installed MacOS to the external and if that read-only volume was retained then it would explain why the disk remains bootable.

See How do APFS volume roles work? – The Eclectic Light Company for more detail.

A question for all the people who make bootable backups on a weekly schedule, which includes @david_blanchard, @aldus_vet, @mschmitt, and @akent35. What’s your plan for recovery?

I never said I make bootable backups! The question only mentioned “backup methods.” I stopped making bootable backups when CCC started having trouble with them. My primary machine (a MacBook Pro for the past couple of years, a Mac Mini before that) gets backed up to Time Machine on an NAS, to the cloud via Backblaze, and to a backup disk using CCC. I also have a MacBook Air that has so few unique user files on disk that it gets backed up to Time Machine only. If something happened to my primary machine, the Air could keep me going until the primary machine was repaired or replaced. (This happened to me once when the graphics systems on my eight-year-old 2010 MacBook Pro failed suddenly.)

If you have to employ another restoration step, such as bringing files back from Time Machine, I’m not seeing the benefit of the weekly schedule. You’d have to put effort into manually identifying which files were out of date and restoring just them, which is slow and error-prone. It’s hard to see that being a big win over just reinstalling macOS and restoring everything using Migration Assistant.

I don’t depend on my computers for my work; I’m retired, and even when I was working for others, I used their systems. My backup strategy is arguably overkill for me — though I doubt I’d switch to daily physical backups if I were working intensively on a daily basis. The physical backup is basically protection in case the Time Machine backup and the Backblaze backup both become unavailable. It’s not a likely scenario.

With these weekly backups, do you have to connect the backup drive manually each week? One of the reasons I recommend nightly duplicates is that the drive can remain attached all the time such that it’s less likely that you could forget.

I do plug it in every Sunday, yeah. I suppose I could keep it attached to the Kensington dock that everything else (monitor, speakers, doc scanner, Ethernet) is connected to, but I’d rather leave the port free. When I forget to attach it, CCC reminds me that its backup couldn’t complete. It’s no biggie.

Doug Miller wrote “Because on macOS there isn’t really a single partition - there are volumes - including one with “-data” appended to the name of your internal volume (traditionally “Macintosh”) that holds all writable files, and I’m wondering if SuperDuper was simply erasing only the “Macintosh-Data” or the whole volume. If it’s what I think, that would explain your success - you manually installed MacOS to the external and if that read-only volume was retained then it would explain why the disk remains bootable.”

No, I NEVER said I installed Mac OS FIRST on that external partition. And I of course understand the structure on my internal APFS-formatted SSDs. I’ll explain my situation again.

For each of the Samsung SSDs I use for backing up each of my Macs, there are 2 partitions. One is entitled “MacMini Backup”, and the other :MacBook Air Backup". Then of course within each of those partitions there are the Volumes for the Macintosh “System/OS” and the “Data” one. When I connect the SSD to the appropriate non-DFU port and start up SuperDuper! (SD) for making the bootable backups, I let SD erase and format the volumes within the appropriate partition. It then proceeds to do the backup, first of course for the OS/System Volume from my internal SSD, and then the Data volume from that same internal SSD. That is way I have always used SuperDuper!, even in the non-APFS days.

So, is that now all clear? Again, I do not manually install the OS (OS 15.2 currently) onto either of those partitions, nor have I ever done that (except recently to test out a suggestion from David Nanian). But even after that test, I erased and formatted that entire SSD, then partitioned it.

It should work. But (as far as I know) you won’t be able to have a single SSD that will boot on both Intel and Apple Silicon. But I agree you will have to test it to be sure.

Also note that if you have an Intel Mac, you will need to configure it (using the Startup Security utility) to permit booting from external media.

And (according to Howard Oakley), every time you boot your SSD from a different Mac, you’ll need to go through 2FA authentication as it tries to connect to iCloud and other things tied to your Apple account.

See also:

• Install macOS on an external storage device and use it as a startup disk - Apple Support
• About Startup Security Utility on a Mac with the Apple T2 Security Chip - Apple Support
• Create an external bootable disk for Apple silicon and Intel Macs – The Eclectic Light Company

It doesn’t for me…CCC has been my main backup system of choice for a long time. I do run TM on my Studio.as well…but thee are a dozen tasks on it in CCC for various things and I use CCC and the remote Mac destination as a TM substitute on the laptops because TM to a network destination (a) results in a dmg file and (b) is horrendously unreliable.

Ok, folks, David Nanian of Shirt Pocket Software sent this to me earlier today:

“The replicator works in 15.3.”

I assume he tested SD with the Beta 2 of OS 15.3 that was released earlier today, Also, he included the link Install macOS on an external storage device and use it as a startup disk - Apple Support. It talks about the DFU port and bootable backups, etc.

So, for me, I am a happy camper, as SD works as expected wih OS 15.3. Apple finally got off its butt and fixed their ASR software. And I am glad we still have developers liek David who refuse to give up!

Any thoughts on using a cheap-o (Amazon = $70) or pro - as in forensics, law enforcement, … = high-speed and expensive (Amazon = as much as $1K) disk duplicator that does not require you to pull the drive (if you even can)?

Just adding to the information about bootable backups:

I followed the directions in the linked article to download the 15.2 installer from the Mac App Store. I was then able to install 15.2 on my two SuperDuper! ‘clone’ drives and have been able to boot directly from both of them. (Wow, USB pre C spinning iron is really slow!)

Jack,

While that is a way to do it, prior to the release of OS 15.2, SuperDuper! was able to successfully copy/replicate the System Volume (along with the Data Volume), and when done, one could boot from that backup. Well, if you look at the post I made above, partially due to David Nanian’s persistence, Apple fixed their replicator in the most recent beta version of the OS, Beta 2 of OS 15.2. So once OS 15,3 is released (shoulkd be soon), SuperDuper! will work as it should.

A forensinc-analysis duplicator should make sure the files are all accessible, but I wouldn’t make any assumptions about that clone being bootable.

And I’d assume that your Mac can’t be booted and running while its internal storage device is being duplicated.

Seems like overkill if all you need it for is your backup solution.

I backup using Time Machine to a Synology NAS. Time Machine makes several backups every day when activity on my Mac is low. I also make monthly ‘carbon copies’ of my Mac to a separate ‘removeable’ drive that I store in a fireproof box in my basement.

Time Machine
Backblaze
Finder to a USB Drive for media (including photos), Documents
Several USB thumb drives, SSD cards for current projects
iCloud for iOS & iPadOS

While I personally agree with Adam (mostly) that the time for bootable backups is gone…I still keep one SSD that I install the latest major version of macOS on…then clone the Data drive before creating any accounts and tell System Prefs to use the existing homedirs so the permissions get fixed. Cloning Data periodically provides a mostly up to date option to get back online quickly if necessary.

As I mentioned above, it looks like SuperDuper! will, once again, be able to provide bootable backups, once OS 15.3 is released. I have already stated my reasons for not using any kind of “external” service for backing up my information. Also, if I need to, I want to be back up and running as quick as possible. Bootable backups provide that for me.

So, Adam’s premise will soon be invalid. Bootable backups are here to stay (as long as David Nanian is around!).

The breakage and repair of breakage is entirely due to Apple.

Apple is the only company capable of creating a bootable macOS system. Either via an installer or via the “ASR” utility (which Apple uses to install the initial image on newly-manufactured Macs).

CCC and SD! broke because of a bug in ASR. And they started working again when that bug was fixed.

I know all that. But here is what I posted a few days ago (look up):

" Ok, folks, David Nanian of Shirt Pocket Software sent this to me earlier today:

“The replicator works in 15.3.”

I assume he tested SD with the Beta 2 of OS 15.3 that was released earlier today, Also, he included the link Install macOS on an external storage device and use it as a startup disk - Apple Support . It talks about the DFU port and bootable backups, etc.

So, for me, I am a happy camper, as SD works as expected wih OS 15.3. Apple finally got off its butt and fixed their ASR software. And I am glad we still have developers like David who refuse to give up!"

So, to be clear, Apple has fixed the replicator (their ASR software) in the latest beta of OS 15.3. Once it is released (should be soon), bootable backups, via SuperDuper!, will be working again.

I already posted the EMail I received the other day, about the replicator working in the latest beta of OS 15.3. Once OS 15.3 is released (should be soon), bootable backups via SuperDuper! will be working again.

Maybe…both he and Mike Bombich say that the current version of ASR and making it work is kinda of a kludge…and it isn’t supported by Apple. If one really wants a bootable clone…clone the Data drive and then install macOS over the top of it…then periodically recline the Data partition.

I know we used to be able to easily clone macOS…but the signed, sealed, and read only system volume is what we have now and Apple has decent reasons for doing it that way…so trying to work around their security model seems unwise…but the process above will give one sort of a quick back up and running work around. But an AS machine won’t boot at all with a dead internal SSD…and since the boot partition is signed, locked, and read only it is unlikely to be hosed unless the whole SSD is hosed…and you’re screwed then anyway.

Neil,

Not sure who you mean by “he”, but all I know is (as a long time SuperDuper! user), David has always pushed ahead to keep having SD make bootable backups. And in the past (prior to the ASR fix in OS 15.3 Beta 2), SD has never had a problem with copying/replicating the System Volume. It was with the release of OS 15,2 that Apple created the problem. But I suspect David “complained loudly enough” to Apple about the issue, and Apple finally got off its butt and fixed it.

I of course do not know how “easy” it was/is to clone the System Volume, but I am sure glad there are developers like David who refuse to give up. And I also see nothing wrong with programming around such an issue. That’s the way things are done sometimes, and usually by innovative folks. Heck, plenty has always been made of how innovative Apple was/is. What’s wrong with developers who follow the same path?

Yes, obviously a dead internal SSD is just that: dead. And a bootable clone (and I suspect most other recovery methods) are useless. One can, if they work at it enough, keep their system “lean, mean, and clean”, and that will go along way to keep internal SSDs functioning fine. (Of course nothing can be done with a manufacturing defect).

So, your statement about a “kludge” is not accurate. One can, as you suggest, clone the Data drive and then install macOS on top of it. But to me, that is not as convenient (nor productive) as having software like SuperDuper! work as it should. That will be the case (again) once OS 15,3 is released. And that makes me pleased.

You’re entitled to your opinion…but Bombich used to work for Apple and is on par with Dave’s knowledge of the disk format issues. I’m sure that both wupill try and work around the issues…but I own SuperDuper as well…and frankly CCC is a much more capable program if you want to do more than just clone a disk…you may disagree with that and that’s fine. The fact remains is that Apple has decided that the benefits of a bootable backup don’t outweigh the benefits and we users just have to accept that.

That said…cloning the Data partition and installing macOS over the top of it and then re-cloning the Data portion as desired provides a viable and approved by Apple way of accomplishing the same task. Given the locked, signed, and read only characteristics of a current system volume…cloning the read only partition doesn’t make a whole bunch of sense because that volume is (absent an SSD failure) is pretty immune to problems. Dave…frankly isn’t interested at all in improving the capabilities of SD…he says it is a complete disk cloning app. We have emailed about it and he isn’t interested for whatever reasons in adding capabilities. CCC is IMO a more useful utility. I’m sure that both Dave and Mike will keep trying to work around the ASR issues…but the handwriting is on the wall as they say. The best alternative is to just accept that and move on to new ways of rapid restoration. As I noted…installing over a clone of the Data partition does essentially the same thing…and assuming an AS machine the resulting clone will boot on any same series or less AS hardware and maybe on newer series as well.

Apple has made their decision here and we just need to accept that an easy and reliable boot partition clone is on the way out…but then as I said…install over a Data clone and fundamentally you have the same thing without breaking the Apple rules.

YMMV of course…but this whole discussion of bootable clones is venturing into territory Apple no longer supports and while workarounds might work for awhile in the long term it’s time to move on.

You are still not understanding what I posted previously. Apple made the decision to fix the replicator in the Beta 3 (my mistake previously when I said Beta 2) of OS 15.3, plain and simple. And that is not a matter of my opinion. It is a fact.

As for CCC versus SD, CCC has not been able to create a clone for about a year. But SD can still do it (except for the recent hiccup in OS 15.2). For me, SD is just what I need, especially given that it can create a bootable clone. So, no matter how many additional features CCC supposedly has, it cannot beat that simple fact that SD can create a bootable clone. And David never gave up continuing to provide that functionality. But Bob Bombich did, plain and simple.

So, your repetitious statements about Apple making the decision, venturing into territory Apple no longer supports, etc, are flat out wrong. And again I am just so thankful that we have developers like David Nanian who refuse to give up, and continue to innovate. Yes, the method you state about cloning the Data partition and installing macOS on top of it and then re-cloning the Data partition accomplishes the same thing, but SD can do it all at once, ie, not a kludge. For my money, I would much rather have SD continue to be able to make bootable backups/clones, even if David needs to work around Apple. Again, nothing wrong with being innovative. And again, supposedly Apple was (and still is?) an innovative company, and I’ll bet they needed to design some software to get around issues.

So one more time, to be clear: Apple fixed the replicator in Beta 3 of OS 15.3. That was their decision, and it’s a fact.

Alright, let’s shut this discussion down—the posts are becoming repetitive.