Mac backup.

[Sam Spoons]

Is there a 3rd party app that can backup a data disk or folders to a second disk on a regular basis? I would like to separate my system backups from my data so that Time Machine can take care of the system and I'll exclude the data disks and folders from that and just copy them to a second (and possibly third local HDD or maybe cloud storage) every couple of days. I'd like to automate this process if possible.

[Nazard]

I use Carbon Copy Cloner for something similar, backing up to external SSDs and you can automate backups. It's an easy to use, but powerful, application.

There is a 30 day free trial available.

https://bombich.com/

[IAA]

I use Time Machine for OS and my music projects, storing to an external drive
I also use Dropbox for off site storage of just my music projects which sum to less than 500Gb so it’s free. (For now)
I’ve also used Backup Guru for what I now use drop box for, worked well and dead simple - LE version was free IIRC. https://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/4641 ... ackup-guru
I also do a manual copy to another external disk once a week. But that’s a manual thing and relies on me remembering- thus fallible.

Ian.

[hz37]

If you don’t shy away from using the terminal, you can use the free rsync command. I use it daily to do backups of client projects to an external harddisk. It does know which files are new or changed, so it doesn’t take up more time than necessary.

rsync -a source destination

If you want to automate it, you can make it a cron job. All for free on your Mac, that is all set up for these kinds of jobs. For dumping projects to an off-site location, there is rclone. Again totally free, but external storage is of course not free. I dump client projects to Scaleway glacier storage, which is super affordable, using rclone.

Good luck!

Hens Zimmerman

[BigRedX]

Why don't you want to include your data in the TimeMachine backup?

[Sam Spoons]

Not sure really, is it possible to recover, say, a single folder without affecting the rest of the computer? If I have a total drive failure then Time Machine will restore the whole machine but can it give me back an accidentally deleted folder without affecting the rest of the machine? If I have a duplicate of my data folder I can easily extract a single file or folder and copy it back it to the main drive.

I'll have to experiment I guess. FWIW I have a 2TB main drive in the new Mac and have bought a 4TB SATA spinning rust drive for backup. There's room for another big SATA drive or two in there so plenty of storage. If I manage to get a NAS drive in the (detached) garage I should have all the bases covered.

[BigRedX]

Yes. You can recover as much or as little as you want.

I've only needed to use it a few times over the past 15 years, and the actual method changes slightly with each OS update.

I've just checked on my Mac Studio and selecting "Browse Time Machine Backups" brings up the currently selected Finder window with a time line on the right of the screen. You can navigate your backed up data in the usual way and then using the time line scale select the actual version you want to restore.

[ManFromGlass]

I don’t remember where I heard this and I hope it’s wrong but Time Machine will not restore everything on your boot drive. The only way to do so is from an identical clone. But Apple in their wisdom turned off this feature in current OSs.

Has anyone ever restored an entire boot drive, all plugins and programs authorized so you are ready to continue where you left off? I did clone restores on the intel machine years ago and they worked but I haven’t heard how comprehensive Time Machine is with silicon restore.

[BigRedX]

I think it depends on how strict the authorisations are. IIRC some are able to detect that they are on a new computer and/or disc and will fail because the hardware has changed. AFAIK there is no way around this. Also AFAIK there is no 3rd party solution to making an exact clone of your boot drive since Apple change the format to APFS.

[ConcertinaChap]

Has anyone ever restored an entire boot drive, all plugins and programs authorized so you are ready to continue where you left off? I did clone restores on the intel machine years ago and they worked but I haven’t heard how comprehensive Time Machine is with silicon restore.

It must be getting on for 10 years ago but yes, I did just that using Time Machine after installing Pro Tools had rendered my iMac completely unusable. It wasn't Apple silicon, of course, but I can't see why that would have less ability than the Intel version. I did a full restore and it worked, much to my relief. I've done something similar more recently using Superduper.

CC

[Sam Spoons]

My concern is that Apple Music doesn't allow backups of (legally) ripped CDs into iCloud, you can only backup your purchased music (in the sense that it copies the data relating to the purchase to allow T.M. to redownload it should the need arise. It's an over zealous DRM thing*. Hence wanting to backup the actual media folder (rather than iTunes content) without letting 'Music ™' to stick it's dodgy oar in**. I suspect all my Reaper files will be just fine.

* T.M. ™ doesn't back up the OS or any Apple apps either, just the settings for your system to keep the size of the backups down (which is perfectly reasonable as it can re-download the relevant version of Mac OS at any time).

** You may or may not remember my thread last year about Mrs S' dead iMac which took out it's SSD and lost a couple of months of content (admittedly due to my slightly lackadaisical backup regime) as well as screwing up her iTunes/Music library with several hundred duplicates and other nonsense.

[ConcertinaChap]

Ah well, I don't use Music (as it were) at all. All such stuff is stored in Dropbox and I exclude Dropbox from TM backups.

CC

[Sam Spoons]

It's taken years to get Mrs S to use a computer for this stuff anyway and Dropbox was a complete failure, she still maintains that it hates her... The beauty of iTunes and now Music is it, mostly, just looks after all the background stuff, as Mac OS/iOS is renowned for leaving her to just make playlists and stuff for class. Part of the problem is that she's been doing it since CDs were the standard for festival dance music (actually much longer, she and her mum used to take a reel to reel machine for the stuff that needed more than just a pianist, cutting music from vinyl using the pause button*) so a lot of her content is organised into custom CDs for a particular student's comp dances. Since CDs are no longer used she is embracing playlists but there is still lots of stuff saved the old way.

* After the reel to reel (and with the demise of the live pianist at dance comps) they started using cassettes and later minidiscs (which were brilliant for that job) and we still have shelves of both in case an old dance might suit a new kid...

[porthoss78]

Hi there,

I have a similar set up where I backup my system drive (including Apple Music data) and in progress audio projects onto a Time Machine drive (2 actually) and then have my sample libraries cloned using SuperDuper (smart update to disk images) as the data doesn't change very often. It also means I can just copy the disk images to other drives (or a NAS in my case) and still be able to update these new images using SuperDuper, which I think is very clever!

I've just checked my Time Machine backup (just browsed the drive like a normal attached drive without going into TM app itself) and it has the Logic app backed up so I'm not sure if I'm misunderstanding what you said about TM not backing up Apple apps?

I did use Arq backup for a bit, which was really good but it doesn't handle external drives very well. If you ask it just to exclude certain drives, it will do that but will unfortunately still backup any new drives you plug in, unless you then go in and update your exclusion list. Alternately, you can just set it to backup a specific set of drives (which is more sensible) but it will still spend ages scanning drives you haven't asked it to back up. So if you regularly plug in other drives you might find it takes much longer to back up than normal. The good thing is you can backup direct to something like a NAS without fear of it breaking like TM can sometimes do when you try the same over a network.

Hope that's of some use

[Sam Spoons]

Hi there,

I've just checked my Time Machine backup (just browsed the drive like a normal attached drive without going into TM app itself) and it has the Logic app backed up so I'm not sure if I'm misunderstanding what you said about TM not backing up Apple apps?

Hope that's of some use

Maybe I misunderstood what I read elsewhere on the 'net about it not backing up stuff like the OS which it can easily re-download to mean all Apple applications and not just OS bundled ones...

But thanks, that's helpful.

[porthoss78]

Ah, I see where you're coming from now, the actual apps that come with the OS rather than any Apple pro apps you buy - that's me misunderstanding what you said, apologies.

In that case, yes it hasn't backed up anything like the FaceTime or the Messages app that is part of the OS. Like you said, when you reinstall the OS and point it to your Time Machine backup it'll install those apps as part of the OS installation and use the data on the TM backup to include the missing apps you've installed yourself.

I have had good experiences with re-installing from TM, the only thing I needed to do was redo any 3rd party software authorisations, if I remember correctly.

I think the biggest issue I had was the album artwork on iTunes/Music was missing but a lot of people were saying that was down to the new OS I was installing at the time.

SuperDuper and Carbon Copy Cloner will both be able to image your system drive and I think SD can do it in the free versions but you can't update the image without paying for a license.

Thanks
J

[BigRedX]

SuperDuper and Carbon Copy Cloner will both be able to image your system drive and I think SD can do it in the free versions but you can't update the image without paying for a license.

Unless I am missing something CCC can no longer make a bootable image of your system drive. That has been the case since Apple changed to APFS format for its discs.

[porthoss78]

SuperDuper and Carbon Copy Cloner will both be able to image your system drive and I think SD can do it in the free versions but you can't update the image without paying for a license.

Unless I am missing something CCC can no longer make a bootable image of your system drive. That has been the case since Apple changed to APFS format for its discs.

Thanks for mentioning that BigRedX - I just read the CCC knowledge base articles and they also actually recommend NOT backing up to a sparse disk image now Apple are using APFS, which is news to me - that's exactly what I do with SuperDuper for my samples! I may have a rethink about how I back these up...

Thanks again