I’ve been reinstalling macOS after trying out Tahoe, and when I went to migrate from a Time Machine backup I got an error I’ve not see before:
Which reminded me of the importance of contingency, so thought it might be an idea to post this thread (that’s my tip, use Time Machine and with more than one drive!)
Curious what everyone else’s backup strategy is?
Btw if anyone’s curious I’m not sure why it was saying my Mac was formatted as case-sensitive as I’m pretty sure I had formatted the drive as APFS, I had another TM backup so just reformatted and started again with the other backup and that worked fine. It’s possible I had formatted it incorrectly the first time but it just reminded me of the importance of contingency, hence this thread.
My preferred way of transferring to a new machine (or just periodically after every second update of a major macOS version) is to do a clean install (manually copying of your files). Eg: Clean macOS install – the easy way – (via @AstonJ)
I use borg + rclone for years. The caveat is that I have to manually trigger my script but nothing prevents it from being scheduled, I just haven’t bothered. Motivation to tinker with macOS deteriorates by the week lately.
Having various backup tools like borg or restic (or rustic) gives you another layer of backups i.e. it’s a “repository” of backup snapshots which you can configure to have N past backups based on counts or time slots. And then that repository I disperse across multiple cloud services (and my own home server), compressed, deduplicated and encrypted.
I also test my backups once a month or two. Because if you don’t do that, they are pointless.
Have you ever had to make use of any of those backups Dimi?
Not sure where I read it now but IIRC there were issues in restoring Macs from cloned drives (maybe I am thinking of something else?)
Oh, I’m not talking about full Mac backups at all. I was just talking about allow-listed directories with deny lists to not bloat the backups. Maybe I have misunderstood the forum topic, sorry.
It’s all good - curious what everyone is doing so all strategies are valid 
So in the event of a system/HD failure you would just do a clean install and copy over your files? What about macOS-specific files that are usually in the library folder? (If you try to copy the library folder in full you are likely to run into permission issues - as the folder now also contains references to files stored in the cloud - which is super annoying!)
In that event I’ll leave Macs forever. 
But yes, I would do clean install.
When I migrate to Linux I plan to make full use of an “immutable” distro so I can snapshot my entire disk to external storage. I heard it’s trivial to just restore that to a new disk and reboot like nothing happened.
On Linux, I have my .bashrc, Vim config, other config files, documents, etc. backed up to various Git repos. All the essential stuff I wouldn’t want to lose.
I don’t make an effort to preserve my entire home directory, there’s just too much junk that accumulates over time.
Evey 5 years or so, I find some reason to reinstall Linux and start over, which is like a breath of fresh air.
I use restic to back up my dev machines and the database dumps of my SaaS (using a cron job). The restic S3 repository is “append-only” to mitigate ransomware attacks.
As much as I hate what Apple has become as a company, I highly recommend getting the cheapest Mac mini with a good external SSD to run macOS off - it’ll be a million times better than an old Intel Mac because they are just too sluggish/unusable now (at least mine was). If Apple offer a money back guarantee where you live maybe order it just to see what it’s like? (And if you do like it just send it back and order from Amazon in the sales.)
I feel this is a good way to punish Apple, and could be a good intermediate solution until they pull their socks back up and actually caring about users again.
I do the same with my Mac, a good spring clean. I encourage more Mac users to do it - it really can help breathe life into an older machine.
We could probably do with a version of this thread for production servers… feel free to start one if you’re curious what others are doing Andreh 
I don’t really backup anything. Everything that is important is in apple photos or git. I have a bunch of stuff on my icloud drive too but I could wipe my laptop right now and not miss anything except some time reinstalling my apps as and when I need them.
My servers I only backup the db for similar reasons(I have scripts in git that can setup everything again faster than a backup would restore) and I use pgbackrest for that.
First of all, my go-to answer for Time Machine conundrums is Howard Oakley’s Eclectic Light Company, and he had a post on APFS and indicates that Time Machine backups are always on case sensitive APFS volumes. In a comment on a Tidbits thread on this post, Matt Sephton explained that APFS user disks are case insensitive and APFS Time Machine disks are case sensitive, so if two files have the same name, both will be backed up.
As to my backup strategy, as others have said, a lot of critical stuff is in iCloud or GitHub. But having lived through a couple of disk crashes, one before I did any backups (a long time ago - the drive was a 10MB drive in a Mac SE - and required clean room disk recovery) and the other when I only used Time Machine (and the recovery was slooow), I settled on a multi-layer strategy. I use Time Machine (SSD attached to my iMac) for incremental backups to handle a deleted file, etc. I use Carbon Copy Cloner to make a full disk image of the data portion of the drive (I used to use it for bootable backups, but that no longer makes sense). If a computer isn’t functioning when I buy a new one, this backup is used to transfer data. Finally I use a third party, off-premise backup in case of a fire or other disaster destroying all the local backups.
It’s definitely an easy fire and forget and probably takes quite a lot of stress out of it - but what if Apple’s servers are hacked? Or they close your account? Or they start deleting things they (or your own govt) feels you should not have? I use iCloud for things like contacts and other things that I wouldn’t be too bothered about losing, but for everything else I prefer to have a physical copy.
If you are going to use iCloud though, be sure to look into turning on advanced data protection:
(It is off by default!! Settings > Your name/Apple ID > iCloud > Advanced Data Protection )
I have found this too - all of my the TM backups I have checked show up as case-sensitive in Disk Utility, so that message I was getting was odd. I didn’t actually check what the Mac was formatted but in hindsight I should have. I should probably also check some older TM backups too just to see what they’re formatted as.
Sounds like a good strategy 
I sometimes take a straight copy of my home folder on old drives (or part of if it the drive is too small) but have found TM to be pretty good in general. If I am doing a clean install then I will copy all my files over, as I prefer to transfer the directly (rather than via TM) when doing clean installs.
I might look into using Carbon Copy Cloner or something similar to keeping copies up to date too (though my worry with this is if it is routinely done, then it’s possible you might not notice until it’s too late - so the latest copy might be a corrupt or broken one).
If they are hacked then I assume my kept items would be very far down the interest list tbh if the hackers start deleting stuff I expect they’ll have backups to recover from.
Closing my account could happen I guess but that would have to coincide with my laptop losing all data for it to matter and I honestly don’t have much data these days that I would seriously miss if lost outside of photos which are already spread across multiple devices and the important ones are shared with family.
I’m not at all concerned about nation state issues as related to my data. I’m pretty boring lol by the point a nation state would be interested in my backups we’d probably already be living under a pretty scary government.
I’ve had physical drives with backups before and I still have 2 with very old backups from like >10 years ago before icloud was really a thing but I basically check them once a year to make sure they are still readable and if I lost them it wouldn’t be too big a deal since I haven’t needed anything from them in close to a decade. I just keep then for nostalgia at this point 
Thanks for the tip about ADP though.
I agree and I have explored this route; it’s pretty cheap indeed.
The problem however is that I am having an iMac Pro which is an all-in-one: computer and display in one body. I can get rid of the iMac Pro even if it is for peanuts (it has paid off for itself multiple times over so I don’t feel the need to role-play being a slick salesman and try to sell it more than e.g. 500-1000 EUR)… but then I’ll have to shop for a brand new quality display.
And I have explored that as well and discovered that I’d settle for nothing less than a 5K or 6K display (the ProArt series looks amazing) but then we’re looking anywhere from 1500 to 3000 EUR.
I don’t want to invest f.ex. 1500-2000 EUR on a partial solution (M1 or M2 mini + a stopgap display) only to then have to spend another 3000 in the future, and having to sell what I bought as well. It’s just bothersome.
So I concluded that I prefer one big leap when the time is right. I am well-supplied with machines, I got 4 laptops I can install Linux on and “main” one of them if I can’t tolerate my iMac Pro anymore (and that point in time is extremely close, absolutely everything on it is perceptibly slow and it’s tangibly removing my motivation to work and tinker). One of those laptops has 32GB RAM and 2TB NVMe SSD and is all-AMD (CPU + GPU) and is generally quiet. If push comes to shove, I am covered: I’ll use a laptop + my aging gaming screen (2560x1080, 35", 21:9 aspect ratio).
What is your backup strategy?
None. I mean it.
When I forget my gloves in the train I don’t check lost and found either.
I can redo whatever I could have lost in less time than I would waste doing all these backups and whatnot.
Really? None at all? No important documents or letters or photos etc?
2 posts were merged into an existing topic: What is your monitor/display setup and configuration? (Poll)
Really. Passwords only.
Important documents I have on paper. Photos are the past and I am doing my best to live the future.
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