Time Machine and OneDrive?

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Level 1

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Time Machine and OneDrive?

I have no idea if this has been brought up before, but I recently subscribed to Microsoft Office 365 Home (5 pack), which gives me and the other household computer-user 1 TB of Microsoft OneDrive cloud storage. I felt that I should explore what I can do with this OneDrive.

I want to make backup copies of all my data so that I have a permanent copy off-site. I want to make a complete backup of my iMac. I wanted to ask this: can I configure Time Machine to start the backup, and maintain it automatically? If not, why not? If Time Machine won't work for this, what will?

Also: my internet connection is Verizon DSL. Will it be able to handle an upload like that? My user folder is 327 GB.

In addition: I currently have an external hard drive on-site that I use for all Time Machine backups. Is there a way to maintain those backups, and also do a cloud-based backup as well?

iMac, OS X Yosemite (10.10.5), late-2013 Core i5 2.9 GHz, 8GB RAM, 1 TB HD

Posted on Dec 20, 2017 4:59 PM

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Answer 1

Best reply

Eric Root

Level 10

684,039 points

Dec 20, 2017 5:30 PM in response to Walt_Atwood

Time Machine was designed to work with external hard drives and not cloud based systems. I suggest you try using a clone backup instead of Time Machine. Clone backups can be configured to run automatically.

Clone - Carbon Copy Cloner (Often recommended as it has more features than some others)

Clone Software – 6 Applications Tested

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Answer 2

Jan 18, 2018 1:54 PM in response to Eric Root

Hi Walt,

I am wrestling with the exact same thing - I have 1TB for free and I want to use for off-site back-up. I want to ditch CrashPlan because of a recent disappointing experience. I only have about 60GB across 2 machine to back up.

I am experimenting with Carbon Copy Cloner. CCC wants to back up to a network drive. OneDrive can't be mounted and made to look like a network drive natively under OS X.

Here is some background:

macos - How can I mount Microsoft OneDrive as a network drive in OSX? - Ask Different

map one drive and share point drive as a network drive on a mac - Microsoft Community

Mapping a drive to a SharePoint library (Connect to Server) from Mac OSX Finder does not allow drag and drop of files in…

Expandrive or CloudMounter are able to mount OneDrive. I am experimenting with CloudMounter on a trial basis. It seems to work at first blush, but I want to go a few cycles with a small amount of data before I commit to it.

I have been chatting with Carbon Copy Cloner support, and they are skeptical of this approach:

"I've seen a few tools out there to mount cloud storage and I consistently see issues with performance. Between upload speed limitations and using a third party tool in the middle it just does not perform well."

So far I backed up a couple GB and it took 20 minutes, about 10-15Mbps transfer rate I think. Not terrible if you are backing up a differential each day.

I may simply switch to Arq when my CrashPlan subscription expires. It's $80 per user for lifetime upgrades and unlimited storage. Seems like a good solution. Then I will use a 2TB local drive with 2 partitions, 1 for CCC and the other for Time Machine.

Hope this helps.

Ian

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