Time Machine. . . or CCC?

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CCC and Time Machine are two completely different solutions.

Time Machine makes automatic, scheduled backups of any changed files (so each 'backup' consumes about as much space as the data that's changed since the last backup).

CCC clones an entire drive, so each backup consumes as much space as your entire disk, regardless of how much data has changed.

There are pros and cons to each approach. With CCC you could essentially reboot your entire system to the point-in-time the backup was taken. However, you need far more disk space to do so (at least if you want to keep more than a handful of snapshots.

With Time Machine you can restore individual files from any snapshot going back as far as Time Machine has history for, but you need a working OS to restore to (so it's not as handy if your entire OS drive fails)

Is there anyway to specify which drives or which files on which drive TM backs up on

Sure. The Time Machine preferences lets you choose which disk to backup to.

TM is currently telling me there's not enough space on my Terabyte drive and rather than delete how far the backup go I can only stop backing up Library and Apps folders, which are pretty crucial.

How big is your Time Machine drive? How big is your source drive, and how far back do your TM backups go?

Personally I have over a year of TM backups on a 1TB drive (with plenty of space for more). Of course, each person's backup will be different depending on the rate of change of files on their system, but your post implies that you don't have a long Time Machine history (unless I'm mis-reading your post).

Should I just use CCC for everything and TM is not actually backing up my backup from CCC.

Use whatever you like and are most comfortable with. For some people, TM is the best thing since sliced bread. For others CCC is the right option. For others, neither option fits their needs.

CCC also does incremental backups.

🙂

I think part of what makes Time Machine such a success is how candy-coated it all is. Backup software has been around for more than a decade, yet the vast majority of people just don't back up their data. I've been guilty of it too, and have seen data loss happen more times than I care to count.

It's important to point out that you can control what Time Machine backs up. In the options, you can specify folders (and even volumes) that are not backed up. That's important, especially if you've ripped a bunch of your DVD's to your hard drive (if you ever lose something you can just rip it again), or have ripped a bunch of your CD's (again, just re-encode whatever was lost).

Time Machine's normal process does not allow for the changing of the schedule. But it's worth noting that Time Machine isn't just backing everything up all the time. Once that first backup is made, it is only backing up the data that changes. And then from there, it only keeps data on a graduated basis. It keeps the hourly backups for the last 24 hours. Then it only keeps a daily backup for the last month. And then after a month, it just keeps weekly backups. Behind the scenes, without you having to work out any complex configurations or do anything, it just manages all that. Dumps the stuff no longer needed, organizes the stuff it's been storing and keeps it at the beck and call of the color-coated end-user application.

If you still don't like hourly backups, there are third-party mods/tweaks to the OS you can use that will let you adjust that schedule. I've toyed with them, but ultimately opted to just let Time Machine do its thing.

If you're concerned that Time Machine will eat up all the available space on an external drive, then I recommend you partition that drive (using Disk Utility), which would let you specify exactly how much space you want to let Time Machine use. I highly recommend that if the external drive you're using is large.

I won't knock on CCC, I think the app has a lot of strong points, and it certainly works well for a lot of people. But my choice for backup solution is to go with Time Machine, for simplicity and elegance.