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ThinMachine – A $25 thin client macOS Time Machine appliance

tomverbeure.github.io

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Re: ThinMachine – A $25 thin client macOS Time Machine appliance

#41

Post by guraf »

908B64B197 wrote: post #31
Brajeshwar wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use Carbon Copy Cloner to have a replica of my drive. However, I still use Time Machine as a convenience to go back in time for my mistakes. My daughter thinks I'm one of those nerds that married a regular girl from college and can do magic with software because I can make her computer go back in time and bring back versions of her files.

> My daughter thinks I'm one of those nerds that married a regular girl from college and can do magic with software because I can make her computer go back in time and bring back versions of her files. Wait until she discovers git! As an aside, I wish there was an alternative like Time Machine on Windows.

There is, it's called File History and it's built in. I think it's been available since Vista.

Like TM you need an external or network drive to use it. Unlike TM it's not very intuitive and Microsoft doesn't do much to advertise it.

Re: ThinMachine – A $25 thin client macOS Time Machine appliance

#42

Post by sandreas »

I don't trust Time Machine any more. Years ago I wrote some shell scripts that help me mostly automate my complete system setup (with brew and friends). From time to time, I wipe my entire system and restore it with these scripts. Sometimes I have to adjust them, but mostly, they work without changes.

For my data backups, I use restic. Big advantage is, that I can read my backups even when I don't have a macOS system present (e.g. my only macOS system had a hardware issue and my Time Machine Backup was pretty much useless until I got a new one).

I know, this solution is not for everybody, but Time Machine corrupted my backups more than 5 times now and it feels so slow compared to restic, that I don't even think about retrying it after a new macOS release any more - even if my solution is a bit more work to do.

Re: ThinMachine – A $25 thin client macOS Time Machine appliance

#43

Post by tverbeure »

scorxn wrote: post #8

I have a Raspberry Pi running Pi-hole and Time Machine, making that little board probably the best value piece of tech I've ever owned. https://saschaeggi.medium.com/use-a-raspberry-pi-4-for-time-... is what I followed.

RPis are great hobby electronics projects, but IMO they don’t have any benefit for this kind of use over a thin client?

They’re more expensive, you need an extra RPi enclosure and power supply, you can’t use M.2 SSD sticks without an additional USB3 enclosure, they have a history of corrupting flash cards, and their idle power is only a little bit lower.

Re: ThinMachine – A $25 thin client macOS Time Machine appliance

#44

Post by alwillis »

beering wrote: post #2

Is netatalk the key thing here that makes it Time Machine compatible? The rest seems like standard DIY home server stuff.

> Is netatalk the key thing here that makes it Time Machine compatible? The rest seems like standard DIY home server stuff.

The last update to AFP shipped with Mac OS X Mountain Lion in 2012 [1]. Nobody should be using AFP in 2023, unless you have no other choice.

While you can use Time Machine to backup to an SMB share, ideally you want to use an APFS volume to get all of the benefits, especially if you're concerned about data integrity.

You can read about using APFS network shares for Time Machine at The Eclectic Light Company [2], a Mac-focused blog/website by Howard Oakley.

If you're interested in the details of how Time Machine works, nobody I'm aware of has written more about its details than he has [3].

He's written a slew of useful macOS utilities, including T2M2 for Time Machine [4].

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Filing_Protocol

[2]: https://eclecticlight.co/2021/04/16/time-machine-to-apfs-usi...

[3]: https://eclecticlight.co/?s=time+machine

[4]: https://eclecticlight.co/2021/09/29/going-beyond-t2m2-with-m...

Re: ThinMachine – A $25 thin client macOS Time Machine appliance

#46

Post by Shawnj2 »

climb_stealth wrote: post #12

My advice to retain your sanity: stop using Time Machine and use Carbon Copy Cloner [0] instead. It works. It keeps working. It has excellent documentation for any possible backup and restore cases. It is transparent about what it is doing. Time Machine works fine until it doesn't. And it won't tell you that a backup is broken until you try to restore from it. The errors are going to be cryptic. There is going to be…

CCC is great although it’s not quite as useful as it is on Intel Macs on AS ones because the whole paradigm of “clone the drive onto a USB and boot it” doesn’t work.

Re: ThinMachine – A $25 thin client macOS Time Machine appliance

#47

Post by alwillis »

smcleod wrote: post #29
climb_stealth wrote: post #12

My advice to retain your sanity: stop using Time Machine and use Carbon Copy Cloner [0] instead. It works. It keeps working. It has excellent documentation for any possible backup and restore cases. It is transparent about what it is doing. Time Machine works fine until it doesn't. And it won't tell you that a backup is broken until you try to restore from it. The errors are going to be cryptic. There is going to be…

CCC costs $77.50 AUD per major version just to use the app - it might be OK but that's a lot of money! TimeMachine is free and "good enough" for local / local network backups for most people, for remote backup BorgBase (although the "Vorta" borg GUI app is dreadful) and Backblaze are affordable-ish options. Also it doesn't look like CCC has write-only backups (immutable from the client side once created) like Borg ha…

> TimeMachine is free and "good enough" for local / local network backups for most people

If you backup to an APFS-formatted network share, Time Machine is quite good and much more reliable than it was when backing up to HFS+ volumes. There was a lot of hackery going on to make HFS+ act like a modern file system emulating snapshots, which it didn't have. You could end up with millions of hard links; turns out that was kinda fragile…

APFS supports snapshots and a bunch of other features that makes Time Machine faster and more reliable.

Re: ThinMachine – A $25 thin client macOS Time Machine appliance

#48

Post by filchermcurr »

mberning wrote: post #6

Synology has nice support for time machine backups. Very easy to set up in DSM.

Something happened around Big Sur that made Synology and Time Machine not get along for me. I set the share up with a quota and everything is great and happy. Time Machine backs up. But once that quota is exceeded, Time Machine complains about not having enough free space and quits. It used to delete old backups but now, no matter what I do, it just complains about free space and quits. :(

Re: ThinMachine – A $25 thin client macOS Time Machine appliance

#49

Post by tverbeure »

housemusicfan wrote: post #36
rodgerd wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But if my posts irritate some jerk on the Internet who has nothing better to do than spread negativity, then that’s definitely a nice unintended benefit. Amen.

> Amen. Inability to process criticism is how this industry gave us things like the Juicero.

When you see small time Sunday blogger pushing back against toxic negativity, your immediate reaction is “this is what got us Juicero”? Amazing.

Ironically, the one thing Juicero got right is cutting their losses early and calling it a day.

Re: ThinMachine – A $25 thin client macOS Time Machine appliance

#50

Post by pazimzadeh »

Shawnj2 wrote: post #46
climb_stealth wrote: post #12

My advice to retain your sanity: stop using Time Machine and use Carbon Copy Cloner [0] instead. It works. It keeps working. It has excellent documentation for any possible backup and restore cases. It is transparent about what it is doing. Time Machine works fine until it doesn't. And it won't tell you that a backup is broken until you try to restore from it. The errors are going to be cryptic. There is going to be…

CCC is great although it’s not quite as useful as it is on Intel Macs on AS ones because the whole paradigm of “clone the drive onto a USB and boot it” doesn’t work.

what about on apple silicon macs?
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