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
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).
