| So, you need to cover yourself against (at least) the following: 1. Bug in your backup software
This is addressed by using more than 1 piece of backup software. 2. Corruption in your live data
(i.e. your filesystem corrupts your favourite baby photo)
This is addressed by having lots of incremental backups going back into history. Note that Time Machine throws away historical incrementals over time, so does not protect against this, given long enough time windows. 3. Failure of your backup hardware
This is addressed by using more than 1 piece of backup hardware. 4. Destruction of your backup hardware
This is addressed by having your backups exist in more than 1 physical location, so you can never lose your live data and all your backups because of, say, a house fire. 5. User error deletion of data
This is addressed by having backups that run frequently. My strategy is: * Time Machine to a Time Capsule on my LAN * Time Machine to an external disk on my Mac * Nightly Carbon Copy Cloner clone of my entire disk to (the same) external disk on my Mac * Nightly Arq backup to Glacier's Ireland location (I live in London) So (in addition to the live copy of my data on my Mac's main disk) I have 4 copies of my data, from 3 different pieces of backup software, on 3 different pieces of hardware, in 2 different locations. The CCC clone is there mainly because it's bootable, so if my mac's SSD fails, I can reboot and hold a key and I'm no more than 24 hours behind. |