Time Machine trustworthy?
 

for years I have been using CCC -

decided I would try Timemachine for daily works in progress - and then go CCC for the done and dusted archive it.

thought I would test time machine tho - and took USB backup disk to laptop and try to work - ie catastrophe has happened!

and lucky me I found that it hasnt backed up every file

for instance I have a reason song I use on a daily basis - and it has ommited it

I found that if I duplicated the reason song in finder,,

then run time machine back up - yes it backed up the duplicate not the but the original..



this reason song wasnt made on this config.. it was made on the original platter drives.. - but they showed a SMART status alert. so Cloned the drives... and swopped em out for 2 SSD's

now wondering if I can trust timemachine? and how many other files it has skipped?

Re: Time Machine trustworthy?
 

I would never trust Time Machine. I use CCC for all my backups and clones. I set up several processes in CCC that I can chose from to do the work.

Re: Time Machine trustworthy?
 

A long time ago, Avid recommended SuperDuper.

On PC I used to recommend Acronis. Not since their 2015 version. Now I find Macrium Reflect is great. And there's a free version.

Cheers,

Re: Time Machine trustworthy?
 

Many years with Super Duper. Always a great piece of software - never disappointed me:)

Re: Time Machine trustworthy?
 

ha I remember trying superduper.. great name - i tried it against CCC back when I was looking fpor backup solution not sure why now but went with CCC for years...

I just got a new mac laptop and spontaneously tried Time machine

but I did like the way it backed up the whole computer to one drive - luckily nothing lost!

got me thinking and I just linked together a few back up tasks and now doing that with CCC and its reassuring status reports!

Re: Time Machine trustworthy?
 

Keep in mind Time Machine doesn't allow you to restore your OS back from an update or anything similar. CCC and SuperDuper do. They're not so much a daily versioning tool, though. Crashplan may be worth considering. You could also consider Dropbox Pro, which includes both versioning and cloud backup. Gobbler was really a great idea and almost there before they killed it and released Gobbler 2. I couldn't even figure out what Gobbler 2 was for a while and still have no idea what or whether it backs up.

I'd like to be to see other options too.

Re: Time Machine trustworthy?
 

For OS backup duties I use Timemachine and Backblaze (cloud based). So far I haven't had any issues. For session archival I use Forklift's sync feature, as that can compare the folders, you can see what needs to be updated.

Re: Time Machine trustworthy?
 

Time machine doesn't allow OS restoration.

Re: Time Machine trustworthy?
 

Who says?
I have restored my Lion main system disk at least two times from TM backup. The only trouble was with Mail downloading several years of mail the first time it was run. Other than that, no problem. I always have disk images too, just in case. Disk images are the very safest way to backup/restore boot disks with their byte-for-byte cloning.

I don't know why TM gets so much bad press around here on the DUC. I never had any trouble with it. I just don't like it running in the background all the time so I got a little utility called TimeMachineEditor and set it to run just one time every day. (I can of course trigger it manually at any time with a click.)

Also I don't see what's so special about CCC or Superduper. I always used Apples own Disk Utility to make disk images and restore disks. Very problem-free.

So I can't say what happened to the OP when he said that TM had omitted files from the backup, only thing I can say is that in my experience, yes, Time Machine is trustworthy.

On my Snow Leopard Pro Tools 10 boot partition, though, I never had TM running, as part of PT optimization.

Re: Time Machine trustworthy?
 

I think it does allow, even from a target disk. I did it multiple times, never failed.