Best Backup Software(s) for Mac

So having listened to many great MPU podcasts the software Backblaze was highly recommended multiple times. I installed this on my system but it does not seem to me to give me enough transparency.

Now I have/currently using IDrive and Dropbox for keeping all my data files.

This came into use last June Y2017 when my laptop and Ipad was stolen in LA.

I really did not miss a beat. I bought a new laptop and then downloaded all my purchased software from the App store, got all my files back in Dropbox and the rest of the items restored from iDrive

IDrive lets you look and restore to an individual file level.

Now I purchased a one-year subscription at $69.00 for 2T (That was an investment that paid for itself many times over) but their published pricing scheme seems a bit higher hence I was shopping for a possible better solution.

My few days experience with Backblaze leave me wanting. Wanting to see what is being backed up and the ability to individually restore.

On the Dropbox front, I had to switch over to Dropbox business that costs a minimum of $60.00 that allows a team of 4 members the minimum size, but one thing Dropbox does is saves many versions of files. This has saved my ass a number of times when for some reason some of my Excel files get corrupted and I was easily able to get on the Dropbox web access and get the previous version of the file.

I absolutely love Dropbox and they have added great functionality whereas say I am working on a Excel file and somebody else opens that file it lets me know who that is and what they are doing and I can send them a message stating that I am working on the file.

Now I use to use Sharepoint but it was such a PIA checking out/checking in. I heard from a colleague that Microsoft’s Teams allows concurrent editing of Office Suite files. Very cool, but everyone must be on the Office365 ecosystem. I think Microsoft sees the writing on the wall and at least are developing collaboration tools for the future.

It is becoming very difficult to buy software now a days and I think the future it will be impossible as the purchase business model is unsustainable whereas the pay for use model is. This is the future of software and we just need to get used to it.

But I digress…

I just wanted to put it out to the group what cloud-based backup service/software is being used?

and

State that I am very pleased with iDrive and have used it under fire it worked great.

Previously, I also had bad experiences with Time Machine so I got rid of that local backup software

1 Like

I use Backblaze. In my experience (and in apparent contrast to yours?), Backblaze does provide real-time view of what is being backed up, has a log of what is pending backup, and allows individual file restore.
Had been a crash plan subscriber for years but had some negative experiences around my renewal date about 18 months ago and decided to switch, shortly after which time CrashPlan discontinued its consumer plan.

My experience with backblaze has been very positive. If it means anything to anyone, it is also Wirecutter’s selection for cloud backup.

There are plenty of other great choice. Arq along with some cloud bucket (Amazon S3 or Backblaze B2) can be a very useful configuration if you are technically inclined.

I use various services like Dropbox, OneDrive, iCloud, Google Drive, but I do not consider these to be backups.

4 Likes

Backblaze user here. You can restore individual files through their web interface. When backing up it shows the number and size of files remaining to be backed up. What additional information are you looking for?

Like @Scottisloud I don’t generally consider standard cloud storage options to be backups, because of the way issues that start out on one device can propagate to others through syncing.

1 Like

Yes I agree on the comments whereas Dropbox is not a backup and issues or in my case either a renegade user or computer can cause issues as I had a computer for some reason still unknown start to delete files, but due to Dropbox feature that retains old versions or deleted files I was able to save them.

I still do not fully trust iCloud and had photos come up missing.

I have been using a Mac app iMazing to backup my IOS devices.

I am technically incline but would rather spend time using my skills on revenue generating projects and outsource a lot of functions to others that are much better skilled than myself.

Yes I saw the realtime backup info. I guess what I would like to see is my files on the Cloud-based drive such as iDrive shows in their scheme that duplicates the same directory/folder structure that is present on the computer that it is backing up
image

I will take a closer look on their web interface, but it just be more of a case of me looking for the next shiny object whereas I am very satisfied with iDrive. I will just reach out to them and see what their pricing structure is going forward.

I am in the middle of doing a full software audit whereas I have accumulated many software services that I may be spending up to $500.00 a month for…still tabulating. This includes a couple of businesses, a couple of websites, a Shopify store etc.

There does not seem to be a app that makes this easy (the only one I saw was “Bobby”) so I am just using an Excel spreadsheet for tracking

I personally don’t trust/use cloud services as a (sole) backup. They’re fine for restoring a file or a folder. They aren’t much use if, for example, you have to reformat and restore a drive or even a large part of a drive. This is even a bigger issue for those with bandwidth limits or slow connections.

You may already have other backups covered. But just in case your relied solely on cloud I wanted to offer up this thought.

I use BackBlaze but I have most active work in Dropbox and a Hazel script that copies many modified files elsewhere on HD to a duplicate folder tree on Dropbox.

In practice, I have used Dropbox to recover deleted files, older versions etc. much much more than BackBlaze. But I wouldn’t rely on it exclusively.

While I agree that you should have local backups in addition to Cloud services, I would like to push back on the idea that cloud backup is only for individual files or folders. Backblaze (and some other cloud backup providers) will ship you your data on a hard drive in the event you need to do a full restore.

Yes, I already have some local backup solutions using hard drives. But as all hard drives will, I have many failed. I am happy to see solid state drives coming down a lot in price and still moving in a downward direction. My MBP is 2T SS drive and I have a couple of external SS drives. They too can fail, but their reliability is a lot better than mechanical hard drives.

I live in Thailand the Global King of hard drive manufacturing and in the past visited WD’s hard drive factory. It was one of the most amazing manufacturing operations that I have ever saw and I saw quite a few. They produce 1M drives a day and they burn in and test them for one week solid. The amount of data testing and handling that goes into shipping 1M drives a day is unreal.

The robotics used looked like a science fiction movie.

Having talked to some of the executives at WD & Seagate a while back and I think they underestimated the speed and impact of the SSD’s and now I see that they are broadening their product lines to encompass SSD’s

I have had a very positive experience with Backblaze for a couple of years, although I have not had needed to do any restores. I was originally interested in Crashplan, but begged off after seeing it required a (memory-hogging, potentially insecure) Java app to constantly run in the background. (Crashplan made vague noises about transitioning the consumer backups to an an app for Macs like the one it already used in its Business plans, but they never did, and then of course they dropped the consumer plans entirely.)

Heck if iDrive works for you, stick with it! Whatever works! I was, by no means trying to convert you back to Backblaze, just sharing my experience and clarifying some of the Backblaze features for others who stumble across this post.

I use Backblaze, in the web interface you have to click restore and then you will see your file structure and can drill down to the individual files to see what is backed up there. I have a locally attached Drobo NAS drive, and that is also backed to Backblaze.

Locally I have an external Time Machine drive and clone drive created with Carbon Copy Cloner. Time Machine gives me file versioning and the clone drive is always handy if I need to boot from it.

I use Dropbox to hold files I want available in real time in multiple places (Desktop, laptop, work PC, and phone) or sync between devices through some common apps.

1 Like

Don’t know who you spoke to at those corporations, or when, but Seagate and Western Digital were for years keenly aware of the maturity of the HD market, which led to a dramatic consolidation of the industry by 2015 (to their benefit), as well as the (slow) rise of (expensive) flash-based storage - whereupon WD bought Sandisk and started to partner with Toshiba, and Seagate partnered with Micron Technology (AKA Crucial) and bought a stake in Toshiba (which sold part of its semiconductor business to WD!), for their flash-based tech. Back in 2000 you had companies like BitMICRO and Silicon Storage Technology sold SSDs as replacements for IDE and SCSI drives. and WD and Seagate were fully aware, and also aware of the high prices from technology hurdles, low yields, and concomitant high prices.

They both waited until the inflection point of affordable SSDs before making their moves. Indeed, Seagate started sampling its first SSDs to OEMs in 2008, then bought LSI’s flash business in 2014, a point at which they were already selling hybrid HD/SSD drives. And two years ago they previewed a 60Tb SSD, though it wasn’t exactly affordable. :wink:

By 2015 the big HD companies were Seagate, WD and Toshiba. In SSDs it’s not too different. In 2016 Toshiba was #4 in SSD sales by market share, and despite a preexisting business agreement with WD was able to sell itself to a consortium invested in by Apple, Dell, Hynix, Amazon(?) and Bain Capital, IIRC.

Right now both Seagate and WD are among the top 10 SSD manufacturers in the world, and the top ones for mass-market sales. Other top SSD companies tend towards high-end niches (eg military, enterprise embedded, controller architectures, multi-petabyte arrays), like Pure, Foremay, and Nimbus. Samsung is either in the top-10 or top-15, by the way.

So, I think they generally got to where they wanted to be

2 Likes

Currently I keep everything in google drive, but I am less and less satisfied with this solution, over the last few days I have been thinking of writing my own. Though I have been thinking move about long term archiving of data rather then the more frequent day to day stuff.

I use TimeMachine, CarbonCopyCloner, and Code42 (thru my work). I have hard backup drives (TM and CCC) as well as cloud backups (C42) and archives (GoogleDrive, Dropbox).

I don’t fuss with one “best”. I found a set of software, hardware, and cloud resources that cover a range of needs (backup and archival storage) in different ways. Experience has taught me that redundancy is essential.

–
JJW

3 Likes

I’m using TimeMachine to a NAS, Arq to S3, duplicity (a terminal solution) for weekly backups, also to the NAS, and Carbon Copy Cloner to 2 different external hard disks, of which one is stored on a remote location. That should cover me. Hopefully.

Currently still using CrashPlan and may stick with them as it looks like it will still be the best deal for me even having to go to their small business plan. I’ve tested and will be using Chronosync to backup all our “workstation” computers to our server, and then use CrashPlan to back up a bit over 3TB of the server. If I have trouble with this I’ll switch to Arq + B2.

I’ve got another “cloud” – a safe deposit box at my bank. Alternate backups of my server computer and clones of the boot drives are in the safe.

Backblaze user here. Very happy with it. Saved my bacon and was easier to restore from selectively than Time Machine when my MacBook Adorable died for the 1st time (of 4 times) in the past few months…

I tried all sort of backup solutions but for me Crashplan works best. I can restore straight from the app, without going to a website and have granular control over the backups. It works extremely reliable but here it comes; I have setup my own Crashplan Proe Server which might not be feasible for most.
I once used the Crashplan cloud and that was pretty slow. Probably because I am living in Asia. I used Backblaze for some time but I just didn’t feel comfortable with it. Never knew what it was backup (it includes lots of staff by default) and it wasn’t clear for me how long each data is kept for restore. With Crashplan I control all by myself.

In order to run Crashplan server software (on a separate Windows or Linux box) you must be on the Small Business plan, which costs $120/year per PC. Indeed, this is not feasible for most people.

I’m pretty much the same but no cloud version of all my data.

Locally time machine to one external drive and also to our RAID server alternating.

Carbon Copy Cloner backs up my personal partition on the RAID server where my picture files are stored nightly and also does a bootable backup of my main machine nightly to another external hard drive.

Monthly version of that set of stuff (server partition copy and bootable backup) rotates among 2 more external hard drives with one stored in a fire proof safe here and one stored in another city in a fireproof safe.

Yearly I burn CD or DVD copies of all picture files and also all archive files

Cloud portions are:

dropbox for a few key files I need everywhere or that are shared scrivener projects.

google drive for some specific files shared with specific people for some projects

GitLab for all my LambTracker code

iCloud for Safari bookmarks and nothing else.