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fragmedetoday at 3:11 PM2 repliesview on HN

Wireless Time Machine backup works until one day, Time Machine decides to shit the bed. Do not trust it. Invest in a different backup solution if your data is at all important to you. Something like Arq or Backblaze or tarsnap.


Replies

js2today at 5:28 PM

I hear this sentiment a lot, but I've not had a problem with Time Machine in years across multiple MacBooks in my household. Backing up to TrueNAS. Unifi networking. It Just Works.

I just checked any my oldest TM backup for the MacBook from which I'm typing is 2023-09-14. This MacBook has a 2 TB SSD and I have the TM volume quota set to 3 TB. TM culls old backups as needed.

The TM GUI is still terrible, but you can use `tmutil listbackups` to easily access backups from the command line.

I also use Arq to B2.

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tristortoday at 3:15 PM

I use the 3-2-1 strategy for backups. I keep one copy off-site by using cloud backups, currently I primarily use Backblaze for that purpose but am considering alternatives for several reasons. I keep a second copy on an external SSD via Time Machine, and I keep one copy on-device. I'd like to use network Time Machine to get rid of the inconvenience of having a bunch of USB external SSDs floating around, especially since none of them are large enough to backup my entire drive if I get close to filling it.

I appreciate the perspective, I definitely take backups seriously for my photography.

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