“A Macworld reader has concerns that continuous or frequently made automatic backups would impede performance on their computer,” Glenn Fleishman writes for Macworld. “They want to only initiate backups manually. I’d argue this is a bad idea.”
“Continuous backups that archive a file whenever changes are made or frequent backups, such as software that checks at a fast interval, like 15 or 60 minutes, ensure that you lose the least amount of work possible, and have a position to revert to in case of deletion or corruption,” Fleishman writes. “I use Dropbox plus Backblaze: Dropbox makes new versions of files, recording just the difference between the previous version, every time you save or the file is modified.”
Fleishman writes, “Backblaze defaults to continuous, though you can set it to daily or on demand.”
More info and links in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Backup, backup, backup!
Two things about backup disk.
1 if you are burning images for boot disks or something to do with disc utility, always disconnect your backup disk first, never perform a restore with the backup disk or other important disk attached to your mac, some times the name can show as “dsk dev 001” something like that and can be confuse, don’t trust your precious memories to your ability to judge the naming conventions even if it shows with the disk name.
2.- try to have an off line backup unit, an external disk that you make backup to every month or week and then you unplug and store. This is because if you have an online backup unit, or any disclosure that directly or via network is always connected to your computer, and for any reason you got attack by ransomware or any other encryption attack, you lose your computer contents and the backup at the same time.
Just my 2 cents..
Will TimeMachine backups be of any use when High Sierra is installed? Will the old (pre-High Sierra) files be readable on high sierra?
Any clue as to how Apple will solve this problem?
On a monthly basis I alternate between two drives which I do full backups on. These are kept in a fire safe. In the event of a total loss I can restore to a workable state without having to wait for downloads.
I then use backblaze as both a full backup, but also a current backup as it just runs all the time. In addition, backblaze allows me to backup external drives I have with various other data on them. I used to rotate my external backup drives to my office, but remembering to do it was a pain so the combination of them and BackBlaze is enough for me.
On top of that I use dropbox for a files outside of the Apple ecosystem along with iCloud for stuff within. These are then accessible from iOS devices so I basically have access to everything everywhere. iTunes library is also online via Apple Music etc.
I also have my previous mac which is a spare/guest machine which syncs all the iCloud and dropbox stuff and is also occasionally backed up to it’s own external drive, but I don’t keep all my data on that as well because having my 2TB iTunes library running on it seems redundant. Finally, I have Time Machine running on a NAS which as well as being a backup of sorts is primarily a versioning system.
It took a while to get it all set up, but now it’s running it takes basically no management other than plugging in the external drives once a month.
Continuous backups on any platform are always good. And so are online backups.
https://www.backblaze.com/cloud-backup.html#af9ppj