Recently, I almost tried to restore my Mac from time machine but when I tried to get into disk utilities with CMD+R, my magic mouse is frozen in place. First, is there a reason for this if the mouse is still functioning when the Mac boots regularly?
Second, is there software that I can use to completely clone my iMac and use it to restore my Mac on the day it goes down?
I always prefer to use a wired keyboard and mouse for these kind of situations.
Clone your drive using https://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/SuperDuperDescription.html
Plenty of discussion to be found on this forum about backup strategies. But in short:
1 Time Machine
2 Clone (super duper / carbon copy)
3 Cloud
4 Optionally you could copy super important data to one or more usb sticks so you can carry them in your pocket if needed
I have Backblaze and time machine working. As my post mentioned, couldn’t use the utility to restore from backup due to the Magic Mouse being frozen. In my case, this time it was a good thing because the computer didn’t actually require a restore.
Does time machine require you have a copy of the OZ ready to install? I always use TM but it never actually worked for me ever when it comes to completely restoring a Mac to a point before restore.
Yes if you run Time Machine without any exclusions it should have the Mac OS ready for you to reinstall when you go trough the restore process with the dive already connected.
BTW its also very handy to have a USB stick with an installer ready to go using Diskmaker X
I recommend Carbon Copy Cloner for backup and creating of clones.
I’ve found TM to be too unreliable for backup, especially when run over the network.
Over the past years I’ve had a 2Tb drive taped to the back pf my iMac for TM, but I will clone all my machines (almost) daily with CCC.
On issues its just: select boot disk -> restart -> start troubleshooting on the device.
I’ve been testing Arq and Arq Cloud as a possible replacement for my expiring CrashPlan backup. I’m liking it better than Time Machine. Have only tried local drive backups and to the cloud so don’t know how well it will backup to a NAS or similar. I also do a CCC clone as well.
Having been through a failure, the CCC backup is the easiest to recover from, Time Machine is second, and the cloud is only for major disasters.