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Time Machine alternatives
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besson3c
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Dec 29, 2015, 02:11 PM
 
Hey guys,

I'm getting really tired of the fairly regular "you must start a new backup" TM dialog boxes I've seen on both my and my wife's Mac with our network backups. We've played around with changing the TM sparseimage band sizes which helped with performance, but not in eliminating these errors.

This problem is widely documented and is pretty common. It looks like the problem stems from the fragility of HFS+, which is not surprising. I don't think we are going to be able to "fix" this problem in this thread, so I'm looking for alternatives. I would prefer:

- incremental backups in the style of TM
- preferably something that isn't subscription based
- something that runs over the network on some sort of automated schedule

Any ideas?
     
turtle777
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Dec 29, 2015, 03:53 PM
 
Have a look at Arq.

I have been using it for online incremental backups for a while, no issues so far.

Can't tell how it would perform in a local network setting.
I assume you would have to set up some kind of NAS to act as a storage device, Arq can't directly back up to an external HD.

-t
( Last edited by turtle777; Dec 29, 2015 at 05:26 PM. Reason: NAS, not NAT)
     
besson3c  (op)
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Dec 29, 2015, 04:07 PM
 
Thanks Turtle, I'll give this a try. And I don't have time to respond to your response in the political thread, but just know that you are wrong, as usual.
     
OreoCookie
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Jan 3, 2016, 11:49 PM
 
In addition, you should get Backblaze or some other online backup service (Crashplan is an alternative).
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Mike Wuerthele
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Jan 4, 2016, 08:36 AM
 
We did a pretty lengthy series of articles about backing up last year, including looks at a few of the major choices. I'll link to them in a while.
     
besson3c  (op)
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Jan 16, 2016, 01:33 AM
 
Arq is working great so far Turtle, thanks very much!
     
turtle777
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Jan 16, 2016, 12:03 PM
 
Originally Posted by besson3c View Post
Arq is working great so far Turtle, thanks very much!
You're welcome.

I haven't tested it with data in the hundreds of GB range.
I'm backing up all my documents and had no issues so far. (Total of about 50GB, spread across three Google accounts.)

-t
     
mindwaves
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Jan 18, 2016, 08:13 AM
 
No online backups ever for me, especially anything on Google's servers! Local backup storage only. If my house burns, it burns!
     
besson3c  (op)
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Jan 18, 2016, 08:32 AM
 
Originally Posted by mindwaves View Post
No online backups ever for me, especially anything on Google's servers! Local backup storage only. If my house burns, it burns!
Why? If it is encrypted and only you have the keys your porn is safe.
     
mindwaves
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Jan 19, 2016, 10:27 AM
 
Originally Posted by besson3c View Post
Why? If it is encrypted and only you have the keys your porn is safe.
Being local adds another measure of security, and I'm wary of Google trying to extract ads from my data, encrypted or not.
     
besson3c  (op)
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Jan 19, 2016, 11:01 AM
 
Originally Posted by mindwaves View Post
Being local adds another measure of security, and I'm wary of Google trying to extract ads from my data, encrypted or not.
If Google does not store encryption keys and can (and does) break through your encryption, ads are the least of our problems.

This resistance to the cloud usually doesn't make sense. Are you on a free email service? A social network? Most of us have given up something to make the most of what the internet has to offer (entertainment and work-wise), it is strange to draw the lines here, especially given the presence of encryption.
     
turtle777
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Jan 19, 2016, 11:19 AM
 
Originally Posted by mindwaves View Post
Being local adds another measure of security
With backups, it shouldn't be either / or.

You need to have both: local backups and cloud backups.

In terms of security, I think it's foolish to believe the data in your home is more secure.
If you store only encrypted data in the cloud, it's many times more secure than your (probably encrypted) backup at home.

-t
     
besson3c  (op)
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Jan 19, 2016, 11:32 AM
 
Besides, if you are really interested in security, there is always a counter-argument for the cloud. Namely, they have more physical security than most people have in their homes, not to mention redundancies, know-how, etc.

Can you access your local backup from anywhere in the world? Are you comfortable with monitoring for disk/RAID failures and dealing with these as they arise? When you backup off your LAN are these backups secure? Do you know the difference between encrypting the payload of your backup data vs. encrypting the storage of the data? Time Machine does the latter but not the former (secure AFP only seems to be a OS X Server feature).
     
besson3c  (op)
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Jan 19, 2016, 11:33 AM
 
Turtle is right about something for a change!

(Just poking the bear that is Turtle. I really think you're more of a bear than a turtle).
     
mindwaves
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Jan 19, 2016, 12:35 PM
 
With all of the hacking that goes on in this world, having a local encrypted backup is far more secure.

Don't need to access my backup from around the world and don't need to worry about redundancies for my own personal use. An actually, no use of free email servers (besides my iCloud account, and no FB, Instagram, etc use).
     
turtle777
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Jan 19, 2016, 01:07 PM
 
Originally Posted by mindwaves View Post
With all of the hacking that goes on in this world, having a local encrypted backup is far more secure.
I disagree.

Physical access is far easier to get in your home than in a data center.

And you know the old adage about security: Once someone gains PHYSICAL access, all bets are off.

-t
     
mindwaves
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Jan 19, 2016, 01:42 PM
 
Originally Posted by turtle777 View Post
I disagree.

Physical access is far easier to get in your home than in a data center.

And you know the old adage about security: Once someone gains PHYSICAL access, all bets are off.

-t
That is true, but the odds of someone breaking into my house and stealing my backup drive and hacking it or selling it to someone who hacks is far less likely than someone hacking it online.
     
besson3c  (op)
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Jan 19, 2016, 01:51 PM
 
Originally Posted by mindwaves View Post
That is true, but the odds of someone breaking into my house and stealing my backup drive and hacking it or selling it to someone who hacks is far less likely than someone hacking it online.
It depends on your use case, but I would say that if you felt that somebody would want to target you personally, say you are a celebrity or high status individual, what Turtle says about your physical security is particularly important.

As far as somebody "hacking" your backup drive, the encrypting of your data anonymizes this data, so if you are concerned with a hacker tracing your backup to you personally, this would be like looking for a needle in a haystack unless they had compromised your network (which they could do with physical access around your home).
     
ghporter
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Jan 20, 2016, 09:10 PM
 
Rule #1 of computer security is that if the bad guy has physical access of any kind to your hardware, then you ARE compromised. It may take the bad guy some time to fully capitalize on this access, but it's still a complete and total compromise. For this reason, written password lists should not be stored on the desk with your computer (duh!). But people completely ignore the possibility to lock up a password list in a secure, hard to compromise physical storage device, like a safe.

If your backup is encrypted and local, and your computer is physically compromised, then so is your backup. Again, it may take considerable time for the intruder to read your backups, but that only delays the inevitable. In contrast, a remote backup that is encrypted is more secure because, instead of some direct connection through your network, the remote backup must be accessed through protocols that require authentication - even if that's behind the scenes, it's still an order of magnitude better protected. And unlike a local backup, it can't be stolen with your computer. It's like locking up your passwords in a safe; they're available when you need them, but you have to go through an added, intentionally complex process to retrieve them.

You may have figured out one glitch in the above: what about your remote back up after your hardware is compromised? This is one place that remote backups shine. Assume the bad guy wasn't able to log into your computer, but could copy your data, or even steal your drives or your whole computer. You're gonna notice that, right? You use an alternate method to log in to your remote service and change your credentials right away, and now your remote back up is secure against the bad guy. You can restore your data on new hardware, and even potentially exploit some remote wipe capability (like iOS devices have) to make the bad guy's efforts futile. Of course if your computer was easy enough to log into by some random bad guy, you have other security issues.

Glenn -----OTR/L, MOT, Tx
     
OreoCookie
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Jan 20, 2016, 11:50 PM
 
Originally Posted by mindwaves View Post
That is true, but the odds of someone breaking into my house and stealing my backup drive and hacking it or selling it to someone who hacks is far less likely than someone hacking it online.
There are plenty of solutions where the backup is encrypted on the user's machine before it is sent to the cloud. Many third-party backup tools create fully encrypted Amazon S3-based backups this way. So even if someone gains access to the data center, he or she will have no way to make sense of the data. Note that the big online backup services work this way and allow you to prevent them from decrypting your data.

I also think the risks that you think of are much higher than you realize: the biggest risk you run is not some hacker targeting you, a burglar who takes your computer and your backup drive is enough. The thief probably doesn't care about your data, but the end result for you is the same: total data loss. Ditto for water damage, a surge in the electric system or a fire. All of these are realistic scenarios that hose all your data.
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mindwaves
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Jan 26, 2016, 10:20 PM
 
For me, I rather take the possibility of total data loss as opposed to possibly have compromised data by placing my data on the cloud.
     
OreoCookie
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Jan 26, 2016, 11:15 PM
 
Originally Posted by mindwaves View Post
For me, I rather take the possibility of total data loss as opposed to possibly have compromised data by placing my data on the cloud.
But if your data is encrypted before transmission and the service doesn't have the key, what is the issue? Not all services work like that, but with data bucket services such as Amazon S3 or Backblaze B2 you know for sure that everything is encrypted before transmission, and the service has no way of knowing the key, and hence, no way of decrypting your data. (In case where the service also provides the app, you have to trust that they do what they actually do.)
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mindwaves
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Jan 27, 2016, 02:12 AM
 
Because I trust myself more than others.
     
OreoCookie
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Jan 27, 2016, 03:05 AM
 
Originally Posted by mindwaves View Post
Because I trust myself more than others.
As I said, you can encrypt the data yourself before transmission to some of these services (such as S3 or B2). These bitbucket-type services have an API and all they do is accept blobs of data, whether these are plain text or encrypted with an algorithm of your choice is up to you.
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mindwaves
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Jan 27, 2016, 10:37 AM
 
Originally Posted by OreoCookie View Post
As I said, you can encrypt the data yourself before transmission to some of these services (such as S3 or B2). These bitbucket-type services have an API and all they do is accept blobs of data, whether these are plain text or encrypted with an algorithm of your choice is up to you.
Yes, it is true, but I prefer my data to be my data (not stored in the cloud somewhere (encrypted or otherwise), but local inside my own house).
     
turtle777
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Jan 27, 2016, 11:20 AM
 
Originally Posted by mindwaves View Post
Yes, it is true, but I prefer my data to be my data (not stored in the cloud somewhere (encrypted or otherwise), but local inside my own house).
I don't think you understand how the encryption-before-transmission works.
How is it NOT your data if it is stored encrypted, and basically, useless for anyone besides you.

-t
     
mindwaves
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Jan 27, 2016, 12:12 PM
 
Originally Posted by turtle777 View Post
I don't think you understand how the encryption-before-transmission works.
How is it NOT your data if it is stored encrypted, and basically, useless for anyone besides you.

-t
Uh, yes, I do know, but as I have mentioned many other times before in this thread, I prefer my data to be local. You and others prefer cloud storage. Different strokes for different folks. My last comment in this thread.
     
ghporter
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Jan 31, 2016, 05:47 PM
 
Just as a follow up, mindwaves - as long as you have a robust PHYSICAL back up plan, including an off-site copy of a recent backup (which could be "the other USB hard drive" locked up in a fire safe in your home), you're well covered. All of our "most important documents" are in a small, waterproof fire safe that is otherwise secured in the house; if we need to "bug out," we grab that and have passports, shot records, marriage certificate, etc. It would be easy to toss a small external drive in there once a week, too...

For everyone in general: The biggest, most useful feature of cloud backups is that they are NOT where your computer is. This makes them "resistant" to anything that could destroy your computer, while keeping them secure from prying eyes and other people's fiddling with them. This is the "off site" part of a backup plan, and it is critical to recovering from a catastrophic event where your machine is. I cannot stress enough that this kind of backup storage (even if you use it only for a few specific bits of information) can save you MONTHS of stressful work recovering or rebuilding important information.

Glenn -----OTR/L, MOT, Tx
     
OreoCookie
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Jan 31, 2016, 09:02 PM
 
@Glenn
Seconded.
(And just to be clear: I do have and recommend having a local Time Machine backup (in my case it is on my NAS).)
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