Hi all!
I tend to make an annual offsite backup on an M-Disc, which is a type of optical BluRay disc that’s supposed to be really durable. I’ve done this for years, but now I’m looking for good ideas to integrate Time Machine into this. This is just for my family, my wife and daughter has a Macbook, while I’m the kind of geek who runs Ubuntu on my laptop and Debian on my other boxes. This is schematically how it looks:
Currently, the two Macbooks do regular backups using Time Machine over SMB to the file server at the bottom. I also copy stuff from the file server onto two external HDDs that I alternate to offsite storage (i.e. my in-laws’ house). That is not an incremental backup, but it also brings along the Time Machine files from the file server.
So, now to the big question on how I should bring Time Machine into the M-Disc backup plan. Now, M-Discs are expensive and although come in 100 GB sizes, I use mostly 50 GB. So, I don’t tend to bring everything over, mostly documents and pictures, some of our family videos.
The simplest thing I could do, I suppose is simply to burn the Time Machine files that are already on the file server, but those are pretty large and much more than I would usually bring along. Also, would I be able to recover from them if there was a catastrophic loss of the file server?
So, I have been thinking about making a separate Time Machine plan, one that I run only once a year, and only for the most important data on the Macbooks. Now, the problems is that I don’t know how I would set that up since the drive itself resides on the different computer, and that’s even a different OS. Perhaps I could somehow create disc image ISO files? Would that be possible? In particular, would I be able to make (max) 50 GB ISO images (I think it would be only one now, they don’t have that much data yet)?
Next problem is the backup strategy: I would need to create an initial backup now, but then, would I annually create a new increment over this first initial backup, or would I create another increment for every year?
I don’t know if that’s a choice I will actually have, but I can see pros and cons: If I create an increment for every year, I would need to have all discs back to the first to restore the latest state, but I would have all the increments to go through to follow the annual changes. OTOH, if I create an increment over the initial backup, I would need just the two, but I couldn’t see the annual changes.
Any help from you Mac Power Users would be greatly appreciated!