Is Time Machine just a false sense of security?

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Is Time Machine just a false sense of security?

Yesterday I installed a "driver" for an external soundcard from Roland to use with Logic Pro X. After installation I was asked to reboot which I did. That is when this nightmare unfolded:

macOS High Sierra didn't boot up properly. Instead it just sat there at about 90% of the progress bar forever. No kernel panic and by Apple standards no error messages whatsoever (that part drives me absolutely nuts). I booted into single user mode and checked installed KEXT but could not find any giveaway in regards to the Roland soundcard. I realize now that I didn't check logs so that was stupid of me. However I proceeded to try to restore from a Time Machine server I have hosted on a Mac Mini running High Sierra as well:

Three times I was unsuccessful with this. After a few hours of restoring I get the fantastic error message:

"An error occured while restoring from the backup"

with the options to choose a startup disk, install macos or to choose other backup. All in all I tried three different restore points with the same result. I'm doing this over a wired network btw. All devices and protocols are Apple.

First off all, the error messages are in a league of it's own stupidity. I understand that Apple wants to keep things tidy and "easy to understand" but for an advanced user this is just frustrating. I was now forced to reinstall macOS and transfer what I could using Migration Assistant. A very time consuming task.

Through the years Time Machine has been unstable in a lot of different ways. Sometimes it would forget that it was configured and just stop backing up. Sometimes it had to do completely new backups deleting all history. Sometimes it just broke and everything had to be setup manually again.

What is the point of Time Machine if it works this poorly? It just gives users a sense of security but when **** hits the fan it is not up to the task. I'm hugely disappointed in this. Has anyone else had these issues recently and/or has any tips on how to not get screwed by the false sense of security and comfort that Time Machine currently delivers?

Posted on Feb 27, 2018 5:30 AM

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Answer 1

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macjack

Level 10

111,168 points

Feb 27, 2018 5:55 AM in response to sebrock

I use Time Machine but I've never been a big fan of it, so I also backup my system with clones.

You can use a cloning software like SuperDuper! or CarbonCopy Cloner.

The advantage of the clone is that you can boot into and use the system. So, if your hard drive fails you can just boot from the backup and keep on working until you have the time to repair or replace the internal drive. You can also drag and drop files with the clone because it is the identical file structure on your primary drive.

The advantage of TM is that it creates recursive backups, so you can restore a file or the entire drive from a certain point in time.

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Answer 2

sebrock Author

Level 1

18 points

Feb 27, 2018 5:59 AM in response to macjack

Yeah, this time around I've really hit the point where I need to look into options. TM has worked for well for single files and as far as I can remember I think in the first versions I made a complete system restore successfully. Recently though it has just fallen apart, and that in a "maintenance" release.

I'm currently restoring using the Migration Assistant. I hope it will work. But most of all I would like for Time Machine to start working, especially after investing so much in the Apple ecosystem.

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Is Time Machine just a false sense of security?

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