The file restore from my cloud backup after my catastrophic drive failure is taking much, much long than I had anticipated... or hoped. I started the restore July 25th and they're telling me they're not even half-way done collecting the files.
Needless to say, this makes everything I do take far longer than it should.
Partly because I haven't yet received the afore-mentioned backup yet and have to request files to be downloaded from the cloud multiple times for each project I'm working on.
But mostly because those older file on local backup I DO have available are trapped on Apple's "Time Machine" technology.
I used to really love Apple's approach to backup but, now that I am forced to use it for something other than an occasional "oops" moment, it's just so horribly bad. The goofy "space vortex" interface is absolute shit for serious recovery. I finally abandoned it and started restoring directly from the Time Machine file bundle, but this has its problems as well. So many times I get an "ALIAS BROKEN" error and can't even get at the original file. Even worse, every time I get the error, the Finder snaps my search window closed... so instead of choosing an alternative file to restore, I have to start my search all over from the beginning. Like I said... bad.
So... once I get up and running again, Time Machine will be completely abandoned in favor of a more traiditional technology that actually... well, you know... works.
I love comments! However, all comments are moderated, and won't appear until approved. Are you an abusive troll with nothing to contribute? Don't bother. Selling something? Don't bother. Spam linking? Don't bother.
PLEASE NOTE: My comment-spam protection requires JavaScript... if you have it turned off or are using a mobile device without JavaScript, commenting won't work. Sorry.
Atom Entries Feed Comments Feed
It’s been my experience that Time Machine has been broken since Lion. Snow Leopard worked flawlessly for me, but since then I’ve found it good for only one thing: restoring your profile when you upgrade your hardware. Yeah, I still religiously backup every day to it, but I know it will be useless for actually restoring an individual file.
I also have Carbon Copy Cloner in use. Every couple weeks or so I clone the entire drive to an external USB. While this isn’t a “set it and forget it” process like with TM, at least I know I can retrieve something QUICKLY should I ever need to.
In short, “Apple, fix your shit!”
I use Time Machine on my Mac mini 2014 desktop and it works fine, but there’s not years of backups stored yet so everything with the backup and the occasional restores I do goes plenty fast (one of the few things that works well on this Mac mini).
I use Mozy Pro now for cloud backups. I used to use Crashplan, and it worked pretty well, but it just seemed to be pricier than what I was using storage wise (yes, I know it’s unlimited, but I wasn’t really needing unlimited).
I manually backup large files like my VMware Fusion VMs, which can take 30 mins of backup time for each one.
Time Machine is definitely broken, but I have restored my whole system with it (post-Lion) at least twice.
I dunno Time Machine has saved my arse a number of times. Full restore twice without issue. Hate the interface and the way it gets stuck with nothing logged as to why. Love/hate relationship.