But BackBlaze won’t backup a NAS.
I know Backblaze B2 or whatever will, and it’s not crazy expensive (for my use case), so I’ll probably do that, but I’m open to other options if there are any.
B2 is cloud storage, i.e. a big bucket of bytes. You can certainly fill up that bucket with backups but it’s not a backup system like BackBlaze. There are other members of this forum that use B2 as a backup destination for Arq and they seem happy with it. I agree the price seems reasonable.
Oh. Hmm. That makes this harder. How on earth do other people do this? Do they still plug their laptops in sometimes? I’m so lost.
What’s not nice about the Ultrafine? (not a photographer/graphic designer so I may be missing something about requirements there, apologies if that’s true).
I plug in a Samsung T7 for Time Machine backups and I love it. Time Machine itself is a bit iffy but the drive itself is fine, plugging it in once a day to do its thing isn’t much of a hassle for me. Offsite backups are limited to mostly things in the cloud at the moment although I’m working out a strategy for that.
Some users here use a dock, to which you could connect your external display and backup disc (and, as @ThatNerd said, the Samsung T7’s are a fine choice). Then you can use Time Machine to backup to the T7, and BackBlaze to backup offsite.
As @ThatNerd implied, the experiences of users here using TM has been somewhat varied, and more so when backing up to a NAS. Some people, myself included, have no problems with TM (full disclosure: I’m backing up to a Time Capsule, which is pretty old), others have given up on TM altogether. Arq is a very capable and versatile replacement.
When talking about backups I suggest the approach of enumerating the types of disasters you want to protect against. Then compare your plans to those scenarios and see how well it matches. The 3 main groups I use are “stupid user tricks”, hardware/software failure, and physical loss (theft or fire). The stupid user tricks covers things like overwriting a file or erasing the wrong disk. I’ve needed my backups twice, once for an OS upgrade gone bad and once when my MBP GPU died. Never had to deal with physical,loss but that’s where offsite can be important.
The more automatic a backup is the more protection it provides. Having to remember to plug in a drive or carry one offsite invites procrastination. There’s also the question of backup frequency. My needs are minimal so once a day backups are plenty.
How I do it: I’m only handling backups for my wife and me for our personal data as we’re retired. I have an older Synology and a 2012 Mac Mini. The Mini has 2 8tb drives in a JBOD enclosure. One drive is used for media files and archived data. The other drive holds backups made with Carbon Copy Cloner with safety net turned on. It backups up our 2 iMacs and 2 MBAs. I also have another external drive attached that backups up the media/archive drive. Both the media and backup drives are then backed up to BackBlaze. The media drive is also synced to the Synology. The Synology also serves as a backup destination for Time Machine for all the other computers. The backups are in a different part of the house from all the other computers. This minimizes noise and provides some protection from physical loss.
Lastly, be sure to test any backups you have to be sure you can recover data from them.
The colours are decent and the resolution is good. The problem is the enclosure. The one I owned, which seems representative of all of them to my knowledge, had a very creaky stand. It wobbled a lot, especially when I stood at my desk while working. The USB-C ports on the back were very unreliable, in my experience. Often, it would suddenly reset itself to 100% brightness, or no longer recognize my laptop was plugged in. Sometimes, the screen would just turn off until I unplugged the laptop, then plugged it back in. It has no headphone jack, which is a nicety for a permanently stationed monitor that I got used to with the old Thunderbolt displays. It also took far too much force to adjust my monitor’s angle. Finally, because there’s no glass aboard the screen, I found the screen difficult to clean properly, easily made dirty, and still too reflective. It’s not that it’s terrible; it’s that, for the price (nearly $2k Canadian), I expect better.
This is basically what I do with my iMac, but I don’t want my backups to happen exclusively while plugged in to my desk. I like to move around the house throughout the day (been working from home for 10 years and that keeps me focused. Keeping everything stationed at a desk would be what I prefer to avoid. (I also have not had serious issues with Time Machine, FWIW.)
@glenthompson, your whole post is great, thank you. Not quoting the whole thing to save space.
I run a freelance business, so I need reliable backups for archives and Time Machine in case something goes wrong. In the past 6 months, I needed to restore from TM because of a command line disaster on my part. Before that, my last issue was 5 years ago: we went on holiday, and I came back to find out my RAID enclosure had a disc failure, but the software had failed, and so I lost everything. I didn’t have a recent backup of that backup, and I wasn’t a Backblaze user at the time. I lost a few years of wedding photo archives from an old business that a client had just emailed me for, asking if I still had them, ironically.
That experience taught me to be thorough, so my current setup is this:
- 1 Time Machine drive
- my archive drive
- a backup of my archive drive
- Backblaze backing up my whole computer, as well as my archive drive, 24/7
My assumption was that a Synology or two might do something similar, but wirelessly:
- 1 4-bay hard drive with four 4TB drives, with two partitions
- 1 partition is for Time Machine backups for my computer and my wife’s MacBook
- 1 partition is for archives
- Either plug in another hard drive to the Synology to redundantly back up the archive partition, or set up a second smaller Synology and have it wirelessly back up the first’s archive
- Run Backblaze / B2 on my computer to back all that data up to the cloud, including what’s on my laptop, my wife’s laptop, and my archive drive.
That way, I never have to plug in to anything to run a backup, and I have a contingency plan for a computer failure, one Synology going down, my backup archive getting fried, or my house burning down in a freak accident (knock on wood).
Am I over-thinking this? Is there an easier way to achieve this level of peace of mind without actually plugging anything in over USB?
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I’ve got a Mac Mini as well that I use as a music and Plex server. I’d love to be able to attach an external drive to it so my wife’s Macbook Pro could back up to it through time machine wirelessly. But how does one do that? I don’t see that option? Do I need to run special server software? I’m stuck on MacOS Mojave on that Mac Mini.
Attach the drive and share it via the Sharing section of System Preferences. Connect your wife’s Mac to the shared drive and tell Time Machine to use it as a destination. I mount the drives in login items so they’re mounted when I login.
I forgot to add that I have a SSD attached to my iMac that is a CCC clone (non-bootable). It’s my first line backup as I can rebuild a system faster than the other backups.
I have fully embraced the paperless lifestyle so good backups and recovery planning is a necessary part of that.
If you’re a creative, I highly recommend this display:
It was one of the top contenders when I researched last year. No complaints so far. And a very solid and heavy stand… you’d have to try really hard to make it wobble!
Also comes in 32 inch if you prefer larger.
I bought the 27 inch ultrafine when it was launched. I have not experienced any of the issues you have. My ultrafine is on a monitor mount. I did not use the stand. The stand is probably still in the garage. USB C ports work very reliably for me. Having said that, I only have an hard drive and a Logitech Bluetooth adapter connected. In relation to having an audio jack, I don’t think any displays apple sells has that port. Having said that, your MacBook Pro will so that should be sufficient.
It does seem like you got a dud. I will say that LG has had quality assurance issues with these displays and you seem to have one of those. The internet is a place where people who have issues tend to complain about it and people who don’t, they don’t necessarily sing it’s praises… atleast in the case of a monitor.
If you must get one today, I would recommend the ultrafine. If you can wait, there are enough rumours going around of a somewhat reasonably priced apple display is right around the corner.
I have heard good things but about this, but would much prefer a higher PPI. Thanks for reminding me this exists, though.
This is quite possible. But I also kept having bad keyboards. I bought three laptops, each of which had at least one major keyboard issue that forced me to give away my computer for a week to Apple so they could fix it. That was just a bad time for me with Apple products; I got very unlucky repeatedly. I’m a little loathe to go back to the Ultrafine just because it was part of that timeline for me. But it would certainly be cheaper than the XDR.
I have questions about this. Does this mean the machine must be on, with the shared drive attached via USB? Because if so, that sounds like something better suited to a Mac mini than a portable.
@snelly, I think you are on the right track with that Synology plan. I use one like this as well.
Synology on LAN with two volumes
- Time Machine for all the Macs (Macs backup to it when on wifi in the house)
- General storage
You can then have the Synology backup to Backblaze B2 directly by itself – have a look here: The Best Synology NAS Cloud Backup
For extra peace of mind you can of course also run Backblaze on your Mac(s) but that then only has to back up the Mac itself and not worry about your archive volume on the Synology.
Alternatively you can use something like Arq to back up the Mac to the Synology archive/general storage volume which the Synology will send to B2.
Lastly, for another level you can connect a USB drive to the Synology and have it back up to there as well, but this is getting into Siracusa levels of overkill. Fine if it makes you sleep better at night, but not strictly necessary.
As for monitors I am also a satisfied Ultrafine 5K user (with my MBP 16"). Sure, the stand could be better but the display is just fine (hi Marco) otherwise. I don’t think there is anything on the market currently that is worth an upgrade from the 5K. The XDR is too expensive if you don’t need all those features and there will surely be better displays coming in the next year or so. Stick with that 5K until then I’d say.
Yes it does. The person I was responding to was using a Mini, just as I am for this purpose. You could do it with a laptop but the number of ports might be limited. I’m using a 2012 Mini I picked up for about $200.
Gotcha, that makes sense. Thanks!
Your lifestyle sounds remarkably close to what I’m considering. I would love the XDR for the HDR and screen size but I’d rather wait for Gen2 at this point. I’m glad you can also confirm your Ultrafine isn’t garbage; I’m relieved by the anecdotal evidence. Thank you! The clarity with the Synology setup is very helpful.
What Synology models would you recommend? I’m not sure where to start or how much $$ to set aside.
Well, for the storage-only use as described the most basic Synology models would suffice. I’d look at DS420j. The one I have is older and discontinued but similar to that.
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