The Practical Guide To Mac Security: Part 13, Alternative Backups

Check out the rest of the videos in this special course: The Practical Guide To Mac Security.

In addition to a Time Machine backup, you may want to consider a second backup that is also Time Machine, or a clone of your drive, or an online backup.

Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Here's Part 13 of my course The Practical Guide to Mac Security brought to you thanks to my great Patreon supporters. Go here to find out more.
So a backup is a must have for any computer user. But what if you want to go beyond that. Well, there are three steps you can take to go just beyond the basic backup. The first is simply to have a second Time Machine backup. This is actually extremely easy. You just add another hard drive to your Mac. Set is up as a Time Machine backup just like the first one and it will backup to both places. As a matter of fact it will backup to whatever is available. So, for instance, if you have a MacBook that you move between home and work you can have one Time Machine backup in one location and one in another. Then when you put it on the desk at either location you plugin that backup drive and Time Machine will automatically backup to that drive. So you can go back and forth between two locations and have two backups. Or simply have two backups sitting at one location. Have one plugged in for a period of time. Unplug it and plug the other one in and the one that isn't plugged in could be at another location. Maybe you store that at a family member's house and you swap it out every week. It's so easy to do. There's really nothing to show. You just have both backups and plug in whichever one or both at a time and have it backup and it just works. 
Now another type of backup you may want to do is using another piece of software. These are usually called Clone Backups or Cloning your drive because typically they take your drive and make an exact copy of it. But not necessarily. Sometimes the software can do more advanced things like including incremental updates so it's only updating what's new and maybe then keeping multiple versions around. Two pieces of software that have been around, literally, for decades for Mac are Carbon Copy Cloner and SuperDuper! Both of these basically compete against each other. I have used them both in the past. They both work really well. If you wanted to have a second backup that wasn't Time Machine but was doing something else these two pieces of software you can get and set them up so that they do backups to another drive. 
Another way to backup is doing an online backup. The problem with a backup that's local is sometimes the disaster that befalls your Mac can also befall your other equipment. For instance, somebody steals your Mac they may also steal other equipment around including your backup. If there's a disaster, like a fire or flood or something, both your Mac and your backup could get destroyed. But an online backup will store your backup somewhere else. Now in order to use an online backup, of course, you have to have a fast internet connection because it's going to be backing up all of your data. So as long as you have a modern, fast internet connection you should be fine. Of course the first backup you do to backup all of your stuff that may take a long time. Days, or maybe even more than a week, to basically back everything up. But then from that point on, hopefully, it only has to send little bits of information as you update files, add new files, and things like that. The one service that I use and I can recommend is Backblaze. It's a fairly popular service. It's not the only one out there but it's the one I use. 
So my personal backup solution is to have a Time Machine drive sitting near my Mac. It is backing everything up. Then in addition to that I pay for a subscription to Backblaze. I have that installed on my Mac. You simply install their software and that runs automatically. This then backs up over the internet and all my files are backed up elsewhere. So if I were to lose my Time Machine drive and my computer's hard drive at the same time I could get a new Mac and I could go to the Backblaze service and I can either download everything I wanted to or they even have a service where they will ship you a drive as an emergency to get all your data back.

Comments: 10 Responses to “The Practical Guide To Mac Security: Part 13, Alternative Backups”

Massimo Terrizzano

3 years ago

My family has several Macs and we are currently using Time Machine with an old Airport Time Capsule that backs up all our Mas over wi-fi. All the solutions suggested in your videos are connected by wire (apart from the online service by Backblaze). Can you suggest a wireless alternative to Time Capsule (that unfortunately Apple has discontinued)?

Gary Rosenzweig

Massimo: You'll need to either get a new Wi-Fi system that allows you to connect an external USB drive and use that, or get a Wi-Fi system without that ability and buy and configure a network storage system (NAS) and use that. I haven't used any of these systems so I can't really recommend one in particular, sorry.

Jasper

Massimo-I have a TP-Link Archer VR900 modem router, connected to a drive with all my ripped DVDs on it. It backs up over wifi, so I’m pretty sure that you could use a similar set up with a NAS for Time Machine. If you’ve got USB ports on you modem/router you could test it—maybe yours is already networkable? PS Chronosync is a good, cheaper alternative to Carbon Copy Cloner.

Umesh

My experience with Time machine backup is that while it works, it works really well. But for some unknown reasons, every few months (say 6-7 months), Mac fails to recognise the external drive and it gets invisible even to disk utility. I have to buy the another Seagate and start backup process again! Frustrating.

Ramon

I’ve tried Time Machine but it hasn’t worked well for me and I find it confusing, although retrieving various versions of a file is interesting. I do bootable incremental backups with ChronoSync, check it out, it’s excellent. All superseded files go to a separate folder and it’s similar to Time Machine in that, but has the added bonus of being bootable, something TM I’m not sure does. I recently bought a Mac with M1 chip and am looking into the new issues with bootable backups.

Ramon: Ask yourself, though, why do you need a bootable backup? The old case for this is if you did something important (like a nuclear missile silo controller) and needed to immediately swap the drive and boot to keep working. But if your Mac's internal drive failed would you really boot to the backup and use it? Why wouldn't you replace the drive (or Mac) and restore from the backup?

Dan O

Why use BackBlaze when you can use DropBox or Box to back up your files? Why not use iCloud?

Dan: iCloud is storage, not a backup. If you delete from iCloud Drive, it deletes the file. A backup would save you from that. See https://macmost.com/icloud-is-not-a-substitute-for-a-time-machine-backup-with-your-mac.html

Lucas Hutton

I have two local Time Machine backups. I also use an online backup service: Carbonite. If I use File Vault, does my online backup service store those files in their encrypted state? Say I travel and need to retrieve a file from my online backup. Let's say I log into my service from a public computer—a Windows machine. Will I be able to access my file? And, if I can, what's to stop anyone else from accessing that file? What if someone hacks into the online service—are my files safe?

Lucas: You'd have to check with Carbonite about whether they encrypt the backups. FileVault wouldn't be a factor there. They probably do. As for someone logging into your account, your strong password (and 2-factor authentication?) would prevent that.

Comments Closed.

The Practical Guide To Mac Security: Part 13, Alternative Backups

Comments: 10 Responses to “The Practical Guide To Mac Security: Part 13, Alternative Backups”

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