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General Backup Strategy Comments
Jan 17, 2019 A thorough backup strategy will involve performing a number of backups using different methods, and possibly different apps. At a minimum, I recommend you keep a local backup of your files, a clone of your drive, and some sort of offsite backup, either online or by storing an external hard drive at a different address. A good approach is to start simply, learn the ropes of basic, local backups, then augment your strategy with new, expanded capabilities. The key is a layered, well-understood approach combined with.
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 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.
Incremental backups
- Using Time Machine.
- To a network drive:
- Time Capsule
- NAS (ex. Synology DS916+)
- Mac Server
- A HFS+ formatted USB drive attached to an 802.11ac AirPort Extreme base station.
- To a locally attached HFS+ formatted Thunderbolt, FireWire, or USB drives:
- Semi-portable (ex. WD My Book Pro)
- Portable (ex. WD My Passport)
- To a network drive:
- Using a third-party application, like Carbon Copy Cloner (CCC).
- To a network drive:
- Time Capsule
- NAS
- To locally attached semi-portable or portable drives.
- To a network drive:
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.
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, or Carbonite
Off-site storage
- Rotate portable backup drives to a single or multiple off-site storage locations. (ex. Bank safe deposit box.)
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Photos User Guide
Even if you use iCloud Photos, it’s important that you always back up your library locally using one of the following methods:
- Use Time Machine: After you set up Time Machine, it automatically backs up the files on your Mac. If you ever lose the files in your Photos library, you can restore them from the Time Machine backup. For more information about setting up Time Machine, see Back up your files with Time Machine.WARNING: If a Photos library is located on an external drive, don’t use Time Machine to store a backup on that external drive. The permissions for your Photos library may conflict with those for the Time Machine backup.
- Manually copy your library to an external storage device: Drag the Photos library (by default in the Pictures folder on your Mac) to your storage device to create a copy.
If you have more than one photo library, be sure to back them all up.
Important: If any of your image files are stored outside your photo library, those files (known as referenced files) aren’t backed up when you back up your library. Be sure to back up those files separately. To make it easier to back up all your image files at once, you can consolidate referenced files into your library. See Change where Photos stores your files.
See alsoCreate additional photo libraries in Photos on MacRepair your library in Photos on Mac