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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

#71

Post by rcthompson »

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…

Can I ask what you find inadequate about Vorta? I've recently started using it and it seems perfectly functional to me (although it's probably not an app I'd recommend to someone who doesn't already understand borg).

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

#72

Post by NoZebra120vClip »

guraf wrote: post #41
908B64B197 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Windows has one habit which I detest and I don't know why it acts this way: if you leave your drive disconnected for long enough, it will disable File History entirely and nag you about reconnecting and re-setting it up all over again. That recalcitrance is what discourages me from keeping it going at all. I just give up, it's not important enough to keep going through all that.

If it were really important for Windows not to have the drive disconnected for too long, it would issue pre-emptive warnings before the timeout was reached, but it doesn't, it just shames you after the horse has left the barn.

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

#73

Post by zikduruqe »

squarefoot wrote: post #53
tverbeure wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Can confirm about MicroSD flash cards, they're too unreliable for stuff that must be on 24/7, and get corrupt easily. Good for tinkering projects and media players, not for critical stuff where the downtime needed to pull the card and fsck/reinstall it might not be an option.

I've been running a weather website on a RPi2 since 2014. And it's on the same SD card. MicroSD cards don't get corrupted as much as the interwebz says they do.

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

#74

Post by s3p »

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…

Can I use CCC to backup to something like an AWS bucket of Backblaze B2 if I don't have a NAS in my house?

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

#75

Post by fastaguy88 »

Another cheap networked Time Machine solution is a used Intel Mac Mini (~$120 for 2.5 Ghz Intel i5, 8 GB Ram, 256 GB SSD), and set it up to export your time machine disks over the network. Not only is it "real" Time Machine, it allows you to add to an existing Time Machine disk that used to be plugged into your machine. No need to learn anything new.

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

#76

Post by tverbeure »

zikduruqe wrote: post #73
squarefoot wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can confirm about MicroSD flash cards, they're too unreliable for stuff that must be on 24/7, and get corrupt easily. Good for tinkering projects and media players, not for critical stuff where the downtime needed to pull the card and fsck/reinstall it might not be an option.

I've been running a weather website on a RPi2 since 2014. And it's on the same SD card. MicroSD cards don't get corrupted as much as the interwebz says they do.

It has probably to do with the number of unmanaged power cycles. A hobby electronics project will see many of those. A weather station may only see them when the power in the neighbor goes down.

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

#77

Post by whartung »

wlesieutre wrote: post #28
Brajeshwar wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've found that the ideal size of Timemachine drive is just about twice of the target drive. It last for months if not years -- enough to go back. Beyond that, there must be an archival/backup system in place if you still want to get back files deleted years ago.

In my experience there's no need to worry about long term disk usage of Time Machine. The backup is going to get in a bad state and start failing to add new backups, requiring you to wipe it and start over before the drive fills up.

I’ve had this happen enough to just expect it “someday” and learned not to fight it.

When Time Machine goes stupid, just wipe it and start over. Any efforts to try and recover or repair are just folly. Just watch your life tick away for days and days only to inevitably fail.

It doesn’t happen often, but does happen every couple years. Many times it’s an indicator the drive is bad.

That said, I’ve never had a problem recovering from TM. Whether it’s a single file, directory, or a complete reinstall.

I have TM for my main drive, and use BackBlaze for everything (including my main and media drives).

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

#78

Post by Eric_WVGG »

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…

I also use CCC — in addition to Time Machine, running on a tiny little SD card sitting flush inside the laptop. https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1687325-REG/transcend...

CCC is great, but it doesn’t back up in near-real time and doesn’t do versioning. It wouldn’t have saved my butt while I was on the road last Friday like “built-in” Time Machine in my SD slot did.

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

#79

Post by vGPU »

crossroadsguy wrote: post #58
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…

> 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 no support and the forums are not going to help. and > Time Machine uses the "fuck you user" approach apply to every piece of software or service out there by Apple. Every single one! iCloud? The only answer you’re ever going to get anywhe…

Agreed. Have a 14 MBP. Nice hardware. MacOS makes me want to scream and tear my hair out.

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

#80

Post by tverbeure »

saagarjha wrote: post #62

Ok so like this seems to have been written today but I think it’s notable that the Mac they showed in the post is running a five year old version of macOS: I don’t actually think this is a good idea anymore, and I say this as someone who ran a Raspberry Pi in a similar configuration for a while. Today, if you’re using Time Machine, you should back up to an APFS volume with snapshots. They are far faster and more reli…

Yeah, I wrote this on a 2012 MacBook Pro running Mojave. My replacement MacBook Air 15” will be ready for pickup in a week. :-)
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