But when my drive died last year, I was able to download individual files from the backup immediately and have them ship me a USB hard drive of my enormous data set so that I could restore it. For the most part, Backblaze backs up my data silently, and I never notice it. After years of using CrashPlan, I switched to Backblaze a couple of years ago, and it’s gone well.
The solution to all this is to pay for an online backup service. Backblaze is backing up my entire server (8TB!) to the cloud. Also, depending on how big your backup drive is, your ability to retrieve older files may fade away quickly as Time Machine frees up space for new backups. The problem is that Time Machine backups are located in your house, which means that if something bad happens to not just your Mac but your whole house, you’re out of luck. They’re great for wiping a computer and starting fresh or for restoring a dead computer. Time Machine backups are great for retrieving a file you didn’t mean to delete or reverting an unfortunate app update you immediately regretted approving. Since my Mac mini server is on my network at all times, my iMac and my wife’s MacBook Air both back up over the network to the Mac mini server via Time Machine.
If you use a laptop, either you’ll need to get into the habit of plugging a backup drive in, attach the backup drive to another Mac on your network, or tape the backup drive to the back of your laptop. If you use a desktop, you can get a big SSD and tape it to the back of your display, where you’ll never have to look at it. Buy a drive that’s bigger than your Mac’s hard drive and attach it to your Mac regularly. Apple builds it into every Mac, and thanks to the arrival of APFS and changes in macOS Big Sur, it’s a lot less painful to use than it used to be. (It says automatic backups are off because I’m using TimeMachineEditor to schedule them.) Time Machine comes on every Mac, and all it needs is a big disk to back up to. It’s an important point that doesn’t get enough attention: you aren’t backing up enough. Similar to my Drobo crash of early 2020, Antony’s use of Time Machine and Backblaze allowed him to get up and running with a minimum of pain.
Fortunately, he was able to recover every one of his files thanks to various backup strategies. Last week my friend Antony lost nearly a week of productivity to a dead drive in his iMac. However much you’re backing up your Mac, you’re probably not backing it up enough. I’m looking out for your best interests here. And you’ll probably do it again this time, but I’ve got to try. I know you’ve heard it a million times before, so many times that you skim past it when you read it.
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