OT: Time Machine Alternatives?

[Jerry Jensen]

On Oct 16, 2013, at 1:22 PM, Mark Wieder <mwieder at ahsoftware.net> wrote:

> I've been using Time Machine to make backups, and it seems to do that job
> well, but the backup disk ends up with cross-linked files pretty rapidly and
> I end up reformatting the backup disk and starting from scratch frequently.
> This seems to me to be missing the point of having historical backups.
> 
> So I'm throwing this open to see what others are using for backups on OSX. I
> assume there's something better than Time Machine out there and I'm just not
> aware of it. Thanks in advance.

I use Time Machine at home and at work. Its nice to be able to just set it up for 2 drives and it works at either place without me messing with it. When a disk gets near full, I save that disk and start another. At home I have 2 disks in rotation, at work its on a local server with a ton of storage so I keep lots of old setups, along with all the other users there. Keep 'em moving and the hard links don't get too hairy. I've never had any problem restoring.

Carbon Copy Cloner is good too - I use it to copy important files from one building to another nightly at work. It can do incremental backups (only copying changed files) and keep copies of the older files for you. Its a different approach, but very useful. No problems with restoring here either, and the backup is bootable.

I had difficulties with Chronosync when a user was moving between a desktop and a laptop only when traveling. Somehow something always seemed to get screwed up, usually having to do with BusyCal. Now his laptop runs everything everywhere so procrastination succeeded again! I never did solve those problems, which may not fault Chronosync in any way.

.Jerry