abarbarian Posted December 15, 2023 Share Posted December 15, 2023 Suggestions please folks. Do I need to make a clone ? Can I make incremental file and folder backups of user stuff ? Is there a way to just update newer files and folders once a master copy has been made ? Has to be simple to use as it is for my sister. No terminal stuff just simple gui programs. Free if possible. Thanks in advance. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
striker Posted December 20, 2023 Share Posted December 20, 2023 https://support.apple.com/en-ug/HT201250 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abarbarian Posted December 21, 2023 Author Share Posted December 21, 2023 On 12/20/2023 at 12:03 PM, striker said: https://support.apple.com/en-ug/HT201250 Yeah thanks for the link. I had seen that before. Trouble with Timeshift is it recommends a ssd/hhd double the size of your install for use. I was looking for anyones real time experiences of backups on a Mac. I have never used one before and the mac is at my sisters 100 miles away. Done quite a bit of reading around the subject and it looks like you do not need to make a clone of the installed os only of the user files and folders. It is all a tad confusing. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
striker Posted December 21, 2023 Share Posted December 21, 2023 try here: https://eclecticlight.co/?s=time+machine+ventura Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
striker Posted December 22, 2023 Share Posted December 22, 2023 My personal real time experience: I'm still on Catalina and can't update the machine anymore by normal means. There are other ways I know of but that's not your question. Over the years I did complete reinstalls from Time Machine aka put the complete system back to a known state by date, but also put back some important files only from Time Machine. That always worked bullet proof ok. But with the newer systems I don't have any personal experience. Time Machine normally runs every 24 hours one time and backs up the changed files automatically to a connected USB drive. My self don't do that, I just use one backup a week and that's it. So I'm not cloning anything at all with the help of other programs (like one used to do with Windows machines). Time Machine has been more than enough and always worked like a charm up to and including Catalina. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abarbarian Posted December 24, 2023 Author Share Posted December 24, 2023 On 12/22/2023 at 11:51 AM, striker said: My personal real time experience: I'm still on Catalina and can't update the machine anymore by normal means. There are other ways I know of but that's not your question. Over the years I did complete reinstalls from Time Machine aka put the complete system back to a known state by date, but also put back some important files only from Time Machine. That always worked bullet proof ok. But with the newer systems I don't have any personal experience. Time Machine normally runs every 24 hours one time and backs up the changed files automatically to a connected USB drive. My self don't do that, I just use one backup a week and that's it. So I'm not cloning anything at all with the help of other programs (like one used to do with Windows machines). Time Machine has been more than enough and always worked like a charm up to and including Catalina. Thanks for the information. Could you tell me how large your TimeMachine backups take and the size of your stuff you are backing up ? From my reading recomendations are to have a backup drive twice the size of the install. My problem with this is that I have plenty of drives but hey are all smaller than the drive installed on the iMac. Personally I would just customise my rysnc script to make those smaller drives usefull for various backups of content. My sister could not cope with anything to do with the terminal. I think her best bet would be to get a copy of SuprDuper as it looks easy and simple to understand and use. https://shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/SuperDuperDescription.html The iMac I got for my sister is a 2014 iMac which has been upgraded to Ventura with OpenCore Legacy Patcher. https://dortania.github.io/OpenCore-Legacy-Patcher/ OpenCore Legacy Patcher Supported Models I bought the iMac on-line and had it sent to my sister so I have never seen it and am working blind as it were. She reports it starts up and programs open and everything looks ok. She is a tad busy with Christmas at the moment so that is all the information I have. I'll probably take a trip to York early in the new year and that will give me a chanc eto have some hands on with the iMac and help out with any small setup glitches. From my reading the OpenCore Legacy Patcher is a very neat bit of kit and not only updates the os but can give a slight improvement to the way old kit runs. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
striker Posted December 24, 2023 Share Posted December 24, 2023 I know of Open Core Legacy Patcher, however there are some machine specific things to do afterwards regarding updates. And that is not something you can do without very thoroughly reading in on OCLP. That's something I personally have saved for somewhere coming year... First time backup with Time Machine (TM) can take up a couple of minutes to a couple of hours, depending on the stuff on the machine. Following backups normally only takes about 5 minutes to about 15 minutes or so, but it all also depends on the speed of the machine. At the moment I'm doing a TM backup while typing this message. TM is still preparing the backup to be made, in this case for more than 12 minutes... after that the backup needs to be made and that will take another bit of time... BTW: I'm still doing the backups on a regular HDD, in this case a 2TB disc from WD. If I would be doing this with a SSD it would be lot faster I think, but I have time on hand so not in a hurry. The sizes of the backups (the machine has a 256GB main drive from which less than 60GB is used) : see screenshot below. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
striker Posted December 24, 2023 Share Posted December 24, 2023 Ah...backup is ready, took 15 minutes to complete. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abarbarian Posted December 24, 2023 Author Share Posted December 24, 2023 57 minutes ago, striker said: I know of Open Core Legacy Patcher, however there are some machine specific things to do afterwards regarding updates. And that is not something you can do without very thoroughly reading in on OCLP. The Imac I got had it pre installed, one of the only ones on E-Bay all the rest still had Catalina installed and were twice as much. So Looking at your set up. I guess that I only need a drive twice as big as what there is installed on the pc. So for your 60 GB used a 250 GB drive would be big enough for TM. Thanks. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
striker Posted December 25, 2023 Share Posted December 25, 2023 And don't forget Finders readings are to be taken with a grain of salt... that thing is a complete bug load of all times for the last couple of years. Maybe read what Howard Oakly has to say about it: https://eclecticlight.co/2023/12/25/where-are-the-sanity-checks/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abarbarian Posted December 26, 2023 Author Share Posted December 26, 2023 19 hours ago, striker said: And don't forget Finders readings are to be taken with a grain of salt... that thing is a complete bug load of all times for the last couple of years. Maybe read what Howard Oakly has to say about it: https://eclecticlight.co/2023/12/25/where-are-the-sanity-checks/ Thanks. Found a ton of information regarding TM. These Apples are strange beasts especially when you are looking at them from a penguins viewpoint. I think I will suggest Super Duper or Carbon Copy Cloner as the simplest way for her to keep backups. Thanks for all the help. An all the best for the New Year. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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