Overall Sound Backup Strategy for Macs

General Backup Strategy Comments

Your overall backup strategy should include, as a minimum, the first two items in the list below. The last two items would be considered optional and only deemed necessary if your data is both critical and you want and you would want additional means to retrieve it.

The advantage of incremental backups is it allows you a means to quickly recover individual files or folders that have been deleted. They can also be used to recover your Mac in case of a complete system drive failure.

The disadvantage of incremental backups is the recovery process itself; It would require that you first replace the failed drive before you can restore the system. This would introduce a significant delay between the time of the disk failure to the time you can be "back up and running" again.

The advantage of cloned backups is that it overcomes the disadvantage of incremental ones. That is, with a bootable clone of your system drive, you can boot up your Mac from the clone and use your Mac almost immediately. You can also use the clone to restore your Mac when you finally have the opportunity to replace the failed drive.

1. Incremental backups

   Using Time Machine.

   • To a network drive.
     • Time Capsule
   • NAS (ex.SynologyDS916+)
   • Mac Server
   • A HFS+ formatted USB drive attached to a 802.11ac AirPort Extreme base station.
2. To locally attached HFS+ formatted Thunderbolt, FireWire, or USB drives:
   • Semi-portable (ex.WD My Book Pro)
• Portable (ex.WD My Passport)
• Using a third-party application, likeCarbon Copy Cloner(CCC).

  To a network drive.

  • Time Capsule
• NAS
3. To locally attached semi-portable or portable drives.
4. Cloned backups to an external drive.

   Using the built-in macOS Disk Utility to clone the Mac's system drive to a locally attached semi-portable or portable drive, OR

   Using a third-party app, like CCC or SuperDuper!, to clone the Mac's system drive to a locally attached semi-portable or portable drive.

5. Cloud-based backups
   • Incremental backups to the cloud would require, as a minimum, two things:
     • An Internet connection.
     • A cloud-based backup service.
   • Ex.Backblaze,IDrive,CloudBerry Backup,SpiderOak ONE, orCarbonite
6. Off-site storage

   Rotate portable backup drives to a single or multiple off-site storage locations. (ex. Bank safe deposit box.)