Today’s Question: I’m pretty sure I recall you’re a Macintosh user. Is there any reason you don’t use or recommend Time Machine?
Tim’s Quick Answer: I am primarily a Macintosh user, and I also use and recommend Time Machine as a great backup solution, particularly for the system hard drive on your computer.
More Detail: I consider Time Machine to be a great backup solution, both as an incremental backup that enables you to recover a particular version of a file that has been lost or damaged, and as a remarkably simple way to restore your computer, such as when upgrading to a new computer. I maintain three individual Time Machine backups for the system drive of my primary computer.
I do not, however, use Time Machine to back up my external hard drives, in large part because this introduces a challenge in terms of having a hard drive large enough for Time Machine to store the data from my various external hard drives.
Therefore, in addition to using Time Machine to back up the system hard drive on my computer, I use GoodSync (http://timgrey.me/greybackup) to make an exact copy of the external hard drives that store my photos and other important data, and I use Backblaze (https://timgrey.me/cloudbackup) to provide an online (and therefore offsite) backup of all my primary storage drives.
Note that I addressed my backup workflow and recommendations in great detail in a series of presentations as part of my GreyLearning Ultimate Event on “Backing Up Your Photos” last year. The recordings of those presentations are available for purchase (and included at no additional cost in the GreyLearning Ultimate Bundle) here:
https://www.greylearning.com/courses/greylearning-ultimate-event-backing-up-your-photos-may-2023
