I’m not sure if AFP (via Netatalk) is really the right thing to use. I’m pretty sure that “native” Time Machine now prefera CIFS (Samba) over the network.
Thanks! I've added a warning at the top of the blog post, and will revisit next weekend.
ThinMachine – A $25 thin client macOS Time Machine appliance
101–110 of 189 posts
Re: ThinMachine – A $25 thin client macOS Time Machine appliance
#102Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agreed. Have a 14 MBP. Nice hardware. MacOS makes me want to scream and tear my hair out.
Is the rubber around your screen starting to peel and degrade? I have a 2014 and the rubber just comes off if I rub it with a finger.
2014 MacBook Pro, and the rubber around my screen is also failing.
But, honestly, it's 9 years old and still going strong. Which is exceptional for a laptop used basically every day for those 9 years.
Re: ThinMachine – A $25 thin client macOS Time Machine appliance
#103My 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…
It’s the cost of a Mac.
You’re probably spending upwards of $1000 USD to buy your Mac. You’d might as well factor in the one time (or maybe two time if you need to upgrade the major version again during the lifetime of the mac) purchase of a backup solution into the cost of your Mac.
Because relying on Time Machine basically means your computer is a ticking time bomb just waiting to lose your data.
Re: ThinMachine – A $25 thin client macOS Time Machine appliance
#104Apple Silicon MacBook Pros come with an SD slot. There are some MicroSD adapters (I use a BaseQi 303A) that are flush with the case - so flush infact that they are a bit hard to remove. Those are excellent for TimeMachine backups.
Re: ThinMachine – A $25 thin client macOS Time Machine appliance
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agreed. Have a 14 MBP. Nice hardware. MacOS makes me want to scream and tear my hair out.
Is the rubber around your screen starting to peel and degrade? I have a 2014 and the rubber just comes off if I rub it with a finger.
2019 and the stuck on piece of plastic under the screen saying MacBook Pro is bubbling and peeling from the heat of the machine.
Re: ThinMachine – A $25 thin client macOS Time Machine appliance
#106I’m using “mega” for 20TB of media storage, they are sluggish with large amount of files so cli is very much of help.
For personal documents I backup into mega separate folder copy of iCloud Drive directory on each device - de duplication handles everything.
KopiaUI for offsite backups via sftp
Re: ThinMachine – A $25 thin client macOS Time Machine appliance
#107After years of struggling with a NAS from a well known manufacturer, my solution is a 2012 Mac Mini. I replaced the internal 2,5" HDD with an 8TB SATA SSD.
Advantages:
- extremely reliable
- completely silent
- low power usage
- all in one (no external drives, no external power brick)
Disadvantage:
- no longer officially supports latest macOS
Re: ThinMachine – A $25 thin client macOS Time Machine appliance
#108Ok 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…
When Time Machine backups over the network, it creates a disk image and writes to that. So I don't understand why you would need APFS drivers on Linux?
Re: ThinMachine – A $25 thin client macOS Time Machine appliance
#109My main TimeMachine backup (for my and my wife's MBPs) is over SMB to ZFS (RAIDZ2) on my NAS. Running pretty well for 2 years or so now. The only issues I've had seem to be related to running out of space with the quotas I've set (so I make sure I leave some space for my wife), since the ZFS snapshots prevent the TimeMachine's auto pruning mechanisms from freeing up space like it expects. Thankfully I was always able to ZFS roll back and find a recent a known good snapshot, manually prune old ZFS snapshots to make space, run a Time Machine verification, and keep going (after making a manual "known good" snapshot).
Thankfully, I recently discovered the ZFS refquota setting that seems to have resolved the wonky dance above and lets my quotas work as TimeMachine expects (though extra space is used for my ZFS snapshots, which is fine because the TImeMachine stuff is only a small part of the array's storage).
The only other issue I've had is with ZFS on arch (kernel upgrades / dkms issuss), so I recently moved to NixOS an it's been solid so far. TimeMachine backups over Tailscale are pretty sweet!
Separately, I have a second TimeMachine backup to an AirPort Extreme-attached USB drive.
I also use restic for cross-platform backups to the same NAS above, which then sends ZFS snapshots (of the TM + restic data) to a remote server.
Finally I have a USB drive in a safe that I manually take out and run a locally-attached TimeMachine backup to every month or so.
Keeping everything backed up was a (tongue-in-cheek) part of my wedding vows -- stakes are high.
Re: ThinMachine – A $25 thin client macOS Time Machine appliance
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
Hah, I think I hit a nerve there. I hear you. Overall I'm actually super happy with my Macbook. Luckily for the most part no one is forced to use the Apple eco system. CCC for system backups. Tresorit for backing individual directories with a bit more privacy and flexibility than Dropbox. I don't think it's self-sabotage to keep using apple software, but more a case of people not having been in the situation where th…
How do you use Tresorit for backup?