2

I really like Time Machine for local backups, but I'd also like to have a cloud backup of everything on my local disk. What's the best way to get full, versioned incremental backups of my machine, to the cloud?

The obvious solutions do not fulfil this seemingly simple goal:

  • BackBlaze is convenient and works well but doesn't back up anything outside of /Users/—and even then has undocumented exclusions such as not backing up empty directories, symlinks, etc.

  • iDrive also has various (but at least better documented) mandatory exclusions including /System and /etc. They advertise disk image backups, but this is a Windows-only feature; when I contacted iDrive support they suggested I use the iDrive app to backup my local Time Machine drive. That would work but means I have to carry around an extra hard drive (or NAS box!) just to do cloud backups, which is lame. (iDrive is also a resource hog, making my system unusably slow when it is running, even when it's not saturating the network connection.)

Ideally I'd just like to configure TimeMachine to backup to a cloud-provided network share, but I suspect that this might be terribly slow (and prone to corruption due to network disconnects) even if I could find a provider offering SMB-mountable cloud storage.

Is there a solution that provides Time Machine levels of convenience and protection without needing a local disk?

Improve this question
8
  • Relevant post: apple.stackexchange.com/questions/308473/…
    – Allan
    Commented Dec 14, 2017 at 12:06
  • Re: Backblaze - you can do a sneaky zip of Library which then does get backed up;). System & Apps are easily restored from other sources. I also consider Backblaze to be the "if the house burns down, taking Time Machine with it" solution, rather than the 'quick restore' solution. I definitely would use both.
    – Tetsujin
    Commented Dec 14, 2017 at 12:17
  • I do not intend to stop backing up with Time Machine to my NAS, but it's not unusual for me to be away from home for long periods, and having multiple weeks or even months between full backups is not ideal…
    – cpcallen
    Commented Dec 14, 2017 at 13:09
  • i‘d recommend to find a cloud that supports webdav or afp so you can mount the cloud storage as a network share that way you should be able to tell timemachine to use that drive as your TM storage
    – konqui
    Commented Dec 14, 2017 at 13:43
  • 1
    @jmh: away from home != not using my Mac.
    – cpcallen
    Commented Dec 15, 2017 at 15:23

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
2

CrashPlan (here) or self-host and use Arq (here).

Improve this answer
2
  • 1
    I thought CrashPlan no longer offered service to non-business users.
    – cpcallen
    Commented Dec 14, 2017 at 13:05
  • 1
    They're not going to stop you from paying for a business account and using it on personal machines. It's ~$15/mo.
    – Harv
    Commented Dec 14, 2017 at 13:06
0

ChronoSync supports Amazon S3 and Google Cloud services. And the developer claims that support for Backblaze and other cloud services, is coming soon.

Improve this answer

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .