Since Time Machine has become such a bummer, can anyone suggest an app which does the same thing - over WiFi would be best, but to a local external drive, not to the cloud.
ARQ, which has been mentioned a lot in this mailing list, allows for backups on selected folders of āattached disksā.
āe.
If you are willing to play around with the shell and write a brief script, rsync can be made to replace TM and of course itās free and included with every macOS. A bit geeky, but solid and free. Itās what Iāve used on one of my Linux boxes at work to āemulateā TM.
I love Chronosync, thereās a TidBITS discount too - TidBITS Member Benefits - TidBITS
Itās extremely customisable, utterly reliable and steadily updated, a great app. I use it to keep several sets of drives identical. Of course the ability of Time Machine to haul through older versions of your document is not part of that, but I have a pretty rigorous naming and file management system which means that significant versions always live on.
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I use CarbonCopyCloner backing up to the RAID on my iMac file server and to my Mac mini media serverā¦every 24 hours for each but offset by 12 hoursā¦although you can set whatever intervals you like. If youāve got another Mac runningā¦CCc or SuperDuper will do the trick easilyā¦although if you want to back up less than the full drive SD is harder to configure and the author wasnāt interested when I suggested making it easier to back up just selected folders. I clone our laptop drives every couple of weeks and /Users every 12 hours now.
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How good is rsync (the special version included with macOS) these days about handling Apple-proprietary metadata? I remember trying it some years ago and, while it seemed okay for restoring the occasional lost file, system-level restores required a lot of manual post-restore tweaking which made it not very useful for me.
<ot> For Linux, have you looked into Cronopete or DĆØjĆ” Dup?</ot>
Thanks for the suggestions so far, and Iāll wait a bit before I decide, in case a few more come. Iāve looked into whatās been mentioned, and so far Arq seems to be what Iād be most comfortable with, though I might try QRecall, as well. Iām not comfortable playing with shell scripts, because I know thereās too much I donāt know. I make SuperDuper clones regularly, but itās looking into the past which sometimes comes in handy, but it has to be easy. I want to back up only to a local external drive. Though itās often advised to use the cloud, as well, I donāt like the idea of my data (patient-related, highly confidential) āup there somewhereā, possibly available to someone somehow sometimes.
To be honest I so far have never had to restore an entire Mac from an rsync backup (or TM for that matter). Itās always been either directly from a Mac or from a clone (used to use DiskUtility for that, these days usually SuperDuper).
I have however restored many files and folder of all sorts from rsync backups and never encountered any real trouble. The crucial flag on macOS appears to be -E. To āemulateā TM I usually end up using -aE.
According to the man page for rsync on my Mac (running 10.12 Sierra), there are two Apple-specific additions to the command:
$ man rsync
...
-E, --extended-attributes
Apple specific option to copy extended attributes, resource forks, and
ACLs. Requires at least Mac OS X 10.4 or suitably patched rsync.
--cache
Apple specific option to enable filesystem caching of rsync file i/o
Otherwise fcntl(F_NOCACHE) is used to limit memory growth.
I would expect the metadata to transfer properly as long as you use the -E option.
But I would only consider using rsync for backing up documents and such. Trying to make a bootable copy of a system disk is far more complicated than just transferring the files. Especially with recent versions of macOS like Catalina, where there is a lot of tricky APFS file system work going on in addition to the files themselves.
I personally think it is worth every penny to buy a program like Carbon Copy Cloner for this purpose. Leave the really ugly work to the experts who have already solved the problem and who are willing and able to do the work necessary to keep updating the procedures every time Apple changes something.
I would definitely recommend ChronoSync (also part of Setapp) or Arq.
You could even use Carbon Copy Cloner with the āSafety Netā feature enabled.
Yes, rsync is free. So is vi. But no one should have to be subjected to either of them in 2020.Ā¹
If youāre absolutely broke and cannot afford any of the apps that Iāve mentioned, then, yes, rsync is probably the tool to try. Just be aware that rsync makes it remarkably easy to delete files, and thereās no āundoā ā¦ so there are only two kinds of people in the world:
-
People who have accidentally deleted files with
rsync -
People who have never used
rsync
Ā¹ if you already know vi and rsync thatās great. But encouraging people to learn them in 2020 is like teaching people how to maintain a Model A ā itās of very limited usefulness and there are better options out there. Donāt be that guy.
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Is Time Machine a hassle with Catalina or something? I find it great for several Macs on Mojave. I particularly like the ability to have several backups running on different hard/SSD drives. Time Machine automatically alternates between them.
I do a Carbon Copy backup from time to time - particularly before an OS āupgradeā.
And following Tidbits advice I do try a restore of files from once in a while and so far have not encountered problems.
No, not in my experience.
I have been using a dual-drive Time Machine configuration on Catalina since Catalina left beta. I have restored from Time Machine many times to repair user errors. I recommend use of Time Machine as the minimum backup configuration for all my clients.
A dual-drive configuration has been used through several OS X and macOS versions. The major Catalina change is difficulty in gathering SMART data from USB-connected drives because of Appleās changes in kext loading.
I have little clear memory or hard data, but Iāve used TM since it was first introduced 13 years ago, with backups going to a 2TB Time Capsule since they came out, which backs up 2 Macs. I donāt need it often, but it sometimes came in handy. (My weekly SuperDuper clones are my most reliable backups, and theyāre never failed, so Iām protected against major catastrophe.) While never 100% reliable, it was reasonably so until about 2 years ago. Then, two or three times since (the last time was 2 months ago), it decided to rewrite its contents and begin anew (data corruption, probably. Before allowing it to go on and do it, I tried to repair it with TechTool Pro to no avail), so I lost 2 yearsā of backups the first time, less afterwards. I was unhappy, but tolerated it until I recently found that under Catalina (or maybe just coincidentally since Catalina) it no longer backs up mail, apparently because thatās backed up in iCloud - something I donāt understand the reason for and donāt like; I want it backed up locally, plus apparently getting it back from the cloud server isnāt too straightforward. So now Iāve decided to ditch it and switch.
I think the Time Capsule, and the fact that youāre backing up over the network, is a weak link for Time Machine. If network backup is key, Iād look at something like Retrospect that provides true client/server architecture (which Time Machine doesnāt).
Or just use Time Machine with an external hard drive thatās connected directly to the Mac in question.
The other question, if youāre really replacing Time Machine, is if the alternative in question provides versioning. Iām not sure if everything thatās been mentioned here does.
CCC does for sure, canāt recall about SD as I donāt use it much.
FYI - Arq does.
CCC does, if āSafety Netā is enabled and space allows.
SuperDuper does not.
I am also someone who uses Arq for this. For backing up hourly to a local drive, I connect to an external drive on an always-running Mac Mini in my basement using SFTP from a MacBook Air and an iMac (as well as backing up files to the cloud.) It works great for me.
I have simple needs. All I want from TM is a copy of a file I think I need today but may have thrown away some time in the past; plus my emails, present and past. Iāve never needed all the versions of a document, but I wouldnāt object. The TM doesnāt need to be bootable, nor do I need to be able to restore my Mac from it, because I believe I can do that from my clones. And TM via WiFi is pretty important, because I work in various rooms here, as does my wife, and we donāt want to think about plugging a drive in which resides somewhere.