OT: Mac question/issue

[tucktronix]

Just purchased a refurb iMac thru ebay to replace my older iMac and I'm trying to backup using time machine. I keep getting stuck at "preparing for backup" and it sits there forever. Should I try backing up internally.. or do I need to get another SSD?? HELP!! #$%&^$#!!

[Tusker]

Are you trying to backup the old Mac to the new one, or backup the old Mac elsewhere?

 

If you are transferring files from an old Mac to a new Mac, you could try using Migration Assistant. 

[Docbop]

Been a long time since I last setup a Time Machine and if I remember right the initial scan does take quite awhile depending on how many files are on  the drive.   After the scan it then makes it initial backup of the entire drive so not a quick process to get started with.   Internally it using the UNIX command rsync and that's why it's scanning all the files all the time. 

 

You could use just a regular backup program and it might be faster, but using Apple's Time Machine gets all the system files and such other might not get, depending on which you use and the type of backup you tell it to make.  Also speed of the SSD and how it's connected USB A or C or Thunderbolt.   I've had Apple's migration tool take over a day to transfer a 2 TB's of data to a new system. 

 

So none of this stuff is fast and the speed depends on the drives and connections. 

 

[analogika]

5 hours ago, tucktronix said:

Just purchased a refurb iMac thru ebay to replace my older iMac and I'm trying to backup using time machine. I keep getting stuck at "preparing for backup" and it sits there forever. Should I try backing up internally.. or do I need to get another SSD?? HELP!! #$%&^$#!!

 

What kind of "forever" are we talking about? Two hours? Two days? 

 

Let it run overnight. 

 

You don't need Time Machine to transfer to the new machine, though — just use the Migration Assistant as directed during initial setup (or search for the utility if you've already set it up). 

 

PSA re — Backups: If you don't have at least two copies of everything, it wasn't important. 

[David Emm]

20 minutes ago, analogika said:

PSA re — Backups: If you don't have at least two copies of everything, it wasn't important. 

 

Two, hell, try 6 or 7 at my house! I learned my lesson early on. A brownout auto-deleted about 4 hours of work in Wordstar. Remember that ancient artifact?

 

External storage is as prone to failures as anything else, or at least you should assume so. I have never had a thumb drive or SSD fail, with only two HD fails. Not a bad record, but never take things for granted. I can understand getting fidgety over "preparing for backup," but its usually just the Mac version of a cow chewing cud. For now, we still have to sometimes contend with sluggish-looking behavior for large files and various piles of files. I won't complain, as I remember shoveling numerous floppies in and out of various drives. Ugh!     

[Docbop]

19 minutes ago, David Emm said:

 

Two, hell, try 6 or 7 at my house! I learned my lesson early on. A brownout auto-deleted about 4 hours of work in Wordstar. Remember that ancient artifact?

 

External storage is as prone to failures as anything else, or at least you should assume so. I have never had a thumb drive or SSD fail, with only two HD fails. Not a bad record, but never take things for granted. I can understand getting fidgety over "preparing for backup," but its usually just the Mac version of a cow chewing cud. For now, we still have to sometimes contend with sluggish-looking behavior for large files and various piles of files. I won't complain, as I remember shoveling numerous floppies in and out of various drives. Ugh!     

 

When I was working for corporations and having to design backup systems we'd ask the pointy headed boss of the department we were designing a system for....  How many levels of Murphy can you afford to protect against?      Remember Murphy's Law, whatever bad can happen will happen.     We'd have fun.  local backup,  local off site,  the trucK,  the local copy was carried in,  multiple remote copy across the county both by file transfer and sending physical copy so what if the jet crashed and again the truck.  Then the remote site was a clustered server so  their stuff had to come to our site.    We'd see the pointy hair boss about to have a heart attack thinking about the cost.   

[David Emm]

13 minutes ago, Docbop said:

We'd see the pointy hair boss about to have a heart attack thinking about the cost.   

 

I'll bet he would have crapped a boat motor if you'd handed him a 4 TB SSD that's the size of a pack of Dunhills.

[cassdad]

Really? - Just backing up to iCloud is not secure enough?

[analogika]

3 hours ago, cassdad said:

Really? - Just backing up to iCloud is not secure enough?

Storing something in iCloud is not “backing it up”. 

[tucktronix]

Thanks Guys..

 

I gave up on the Time Machine backup and decided to go peer-to-peer with Migration Assistant. I will try on the new iMac in a later time. Tried 3 apps this morning and so far they have all worked OK. I will check my other apps and files tonight. 

[tucktronix]

15 hours ago, analogika said:

What kind of "forever" are we talking about? Two hours? Two days? 

 

Let it run overnight. 

 

You don't need Time Machine to transfer to the new machine, though — just use the Migration Assistant as directed during initial setup (or search for the utility if you've already set it up). 

 

PSA re — Backups: If you don't have at least two copies of everything, it wasn't important.

I will retry the Time Machine backup tonight on the old Mac

[cassdad]

12 hours ago, analogika said:

Storing something in iCloud is not “backing it up”. 

Apple says it is…..  it’s automatic, and backs up all the files and folders I tell it to in addition to their standard set.  It is set up to operate seamlessly and automatically in the background, and can be used at any time, for any MAC computer, for full restoration if needed.  At least that’s my understanding.

[Docbop]

10 minutes ago, cassdad said:

Apple says it is…..  it’s automatic, and backs up all the files and folders I tell it to in addition to their standard set.  It is set up to operate seamlessly and automatically in the background, and can be used at any time, for any MAC computer, for full restoration if needed.  At least that’s my understanding.

 

here's the short to  the point info from the linked article below.      

The hard truth: Apple doesn't let you store Time Machine backups in iCloud, even if you have space.

 

https://www.howtogeek.com/738706/can-i-use-icloud-drive-for-time-machine-backups/

 

ICloud is just storage and you can put what you want up in the iCloud.   I have multiple computers so I use iCloud for files that don't want to duplicate on each computer.   I also keep a copy of stuff I've recorded as a backup, but I put down the stuff to the local computer to work on it.     Time Machine is a backup solution that you have to give it a local drive or a network connected drive.  You setup Time Machine and how often it  makes a full backup and how often it make an incremental backup (just modified files).   

 

 

[cassdad]

7 hours ago, Docbop said:

 

here's the short to  the point info from the linked article below.      

The hard truth: Apple doesn't let you store Time Machine backups in iCloud, even if you have space.

 

https://www.howtogeek.com/738706/can-i-use-icloud-drive-for-time-machine-backups/

 

ICloud is just storage and you can put what you want up in the iCloud.   I have multiple computers so I use iCloud for files that don't want to duplicate on each computer.   I also keep a copy of stuff I've recorded as a backup, but I put down the stuff to the local computer to work on it.     Time Machine is a backup solution that you have to give it a local drive or a network connected drive.  You setup Time Machine and how often it  makes a full backup and how often it make an incremental backup (just modified files).   

 

 

OK, I think I understand that.  I also use Time Machine (to a local hard drive) in addition to “iCloud”.  Time Machine seems to pick a regular time (daily?) to do a “backup”.  iCloud is a different thing, in that, in my experience, it just keeps all your files / folders synced / identical, almost real time, within the limits of your own internet connection speed (up and down).  So, for me, iCloud immediately syncs any file changes I do, almost real time.  Time Machine just does regular backups.  But I could be completely wrong - but that’s how mine seems to be working.  And it keeps all the files / folders synced between iCloud, my Macbook Pro, and my iPad Pro.  Works great for me.  YMMV.

[jazzpiano88]

I often wonder if Time Machine actually works.    I’ve never had a crash so never needed to restore. 
It seems like a very bizarre and antiquated type of program. 
 

[Reezekeys]

4 hours ago, jazzpiano88 said:

It seems like a very bizarre and antiquated type of program.

 

?? Isn't it a more-or-less typical incremental backup program dressed up in a pretty and easy to navigate UI? That's what I always thought. BTW in addition to restoring, you can set up a new Mac using a TM backup - I've done that a few times. I've also grabbed files from my TM backup, but bever done a complete restore. For what I've needed. it's always worked fine. I did discover something new (to me) regarding TM backup drives or partitions - they are set to "read only" and apparently you can't use that drive or partition for anything other than the TM backup data. I remember having other files & folders on a TM drive but went from Big Sur to Sonoma when I got my M2 MacBook Air; I assume Apple made the change with a later MacOS somewhere along the way.

 

PS - talking about "antiquated" - I used to use sw called Retrospect with a Travan tape drive! I found a bunch of tape cartridges in a box in my gararge. There's probably no way to access them today, even if I still had the drive!

[Docbop]

7 hours ago, jazzpiano88 said:

I often wonder if Time Machine actually works.    I’ve never had a crash so never needed to restore. 
It seems like a very bizarre and antiquated type of program. 
 

 

I've needed to use a Time Machine backup once and was a little disappointed.   For me I assumed it made full backups more ofter than it did, but mainly it's making incremental backups.   So what I needed was older than I hoped for.    Main frustration is from what I could find at the time it doesn't liet you configure how often make full backups, you only have a couple options for how often it makes incremental backups.  

[analogika]

22 hours ago, cassdad said:

Apple says it is…..  it’s automatic, and backs up all the files and folders I tell it to in addition to their standard set.  It is set up to operate seamlessly and automatically in the background, and can be used at any time, for any MAC computer, for full restoration if needed.  At least that’s my understanding.

 

Could you link to that info, please? 

 

AFAIK, iCloud Backup is a function of iOS and iPadOS only, and not available on the Mac. 

 

iCloud STORAGE (Documents in the Cloud and such) is available on the Mac, but that just moves Documents into the Cloud, deleting local copies when space is tight. It doesn't duplicate them AFAIK, let alone do a versioned backup. 

[analogika]

2 hours ago, Docbop said:

 

I've needed to use a Time Machine backup once and was a little disappointed.   For me I assumed it made full backups more ofter than it did, but mainly it's making incremental backups.   So what I needed was older than I hoped for.    Main frustration is from what I could find at the time it doesn't liet you configure how often make full backups, you only have a couple options for how often it makes incremental backups.  

 

It makes full backups, hourly. Eventually, those backups are condensed into daily backups, and then, after some time, into weekly backups. When backup space is tight, older backups are deleted, but you are explicitly informed of this when it happens. And every backup instance is a full backup of the drives at that point in time. 

[Docbop]

1 hour ago, analogika said:

 

It makes full backups, hourly. Eventually, those backups are condensed into daily backups, and then, after some time, into weekly backups. When backup space is tight, older backups are deleted, but you are explicitly informed of this when it happens. And every backup instance is a full backup of the drives at that point in time. 

Not from my experience and from what I've read about how Time Machine works.     If it did a full backup even hour it would slow down the system, it does increment backups meaning only files that have changed.   If file has not changed Time Machine just stores a link to the file.   So when you look at a Time Machine backup folder you see all files, but most are just links back to the last backed up copy.   

[cassdad]

4 hours ago, analogika said:

 

Could you link to that info, please? 

 

AFAIK, iCloud Backup is a function of iOS and iPadOS only, and not available on the Mac. 

 

iCloud STORAGE (Documents in the Cloud and such) is available on the Mac, but that just moves Documents into the Cloud, deleting local copies when space is tight. It doesn't duplicate them AFAIK, let alone do a versioned backup. 

I really don’t know, Analogika - You are asking questions way beyond my interest in this matter.  All I know is that on my Macbook Pro, in the iCloud settings, I can do all the things I wrote of previously.  No links, no investigation….  I just check what I want “synced” in the iCloud, and it’s always kept synced without me taking any action at all.  It just works, and I don’t care how or why.  If you don’t believe it, that’s fine, really.  I’m only concerned that it works effortlessly for me, which it does.  Peace.

[jazzpiano88]

17 hours ago, Reezekeys said:

21 hours ago, jazzpiano88 said:

It seems like a very bizarre and antiquated type of program.

 

?? Isn't it a more-or-less typical incremental backup program dressed up in a pretty and easy to navigate UI?

 

That's fine.  It's just my impression of a UI that looks like something pre-dating the even now now out moded Skuomorphic Jony Ive Era of 10 or 20 years ago.

 

I'm fairly surprised you find it pretty and dressed up.  Are you still going by Heathkit and Sears Catalogs for your standards?  Or perhaps playing disco music from the 70’s  

[Reezekeys]

Pretty, schmetty. It's easy to navigate, gets the job done, a no-brainer to set up and use, not to mention free and pre-installed on every Mac. Should I switch to a different backup program because of how it looks? And don't you go talkin' 'bout my Heathkits! I built and used a few of those amps! 🙂 

[jazzpiano88]

14 hours ago, Reezekeys said:

Pretty, schmetty. It's easy to navigate, gets the job done, a no-brainer to set up and use, not to mention free and pre-installed on every Mac. Should I switch to a different backup program because of how it looks? And don't you go talkin' 'bout my Heathkits! I built and used a few of those amps! 🙂 

 

I just wonder about it since it was built back in the 90s and Apple has had trouble managing their phone backups, restores and upgrades. 

 

I did build a Heathkit multimeter and iambic keyer back in the day.   They were fun and usable, but only barely - I may plug the keyer in - It was a luxury at the time (The "accu - keyer schematic was in the literature and had memory and wish I could have built it) .    Putting channel numbers on their CRT TV's was pretty novel at the time.   Then they started advertising this new word called "Software" and I remember thinking WFT is "Software".   😂 

[analogika]

On 6/26/2024 at 10:44 PM, Docbop said:

Not from my experience and from what I've read about how Time Machine works.     If it did a full backup even hour it would slow down the system, it does increment backups meaning only files that have changed.   If file has not changed Time Machine just stores a link to the file.   So when you look at a Time Machine backup folder you see all files, but most are just links back to the last backed up copy.   

That is a full backup every hour. They literally built their file systems to allow a file to exist in multiple different locations, while only existing once, physically. 
 

What this means is that you get a full backup of the state of the drive at every hour, which is condensed down to a daily state after some time, to a weekly state eventually, and then only deleted when space runs out. And you’re told when this happens. 
 

You’re not disagreeing, just clarifying the mechanism. 

[analogika]

On 6/27/2024 at 1:30 AM, cassdad said:

I really don’t know, Analogika - You are asking questions way beyond my interest in this matter.  All I know is that on my Macbook Pro, in the iCloud settings, I can do all the things I wrote of previously.  No links, no investigation….  I just check what I want “synced” in the iCloud, and it’s always kept synced without me taking any action at all.  It just works, and I don’t care how or why.  If you don’t believe it, that’s fine, really.  I’m only concerned that it works effortlessly for me, which it does.  Peace.

If you believe activating this feature means you’re running a backup, you need to reconsider, because it may be “effortless”, but it is not backing up your data. 

Unless the answers to my questions have changed recently, it is vital for you to realise: 

 

You do not have a functioning backup solution. 
 

It’s merely a function intended to ease the space constraints of expensive and too-small internal SSDs. If that’s all you’re using it for, good. 

I know some people consider it a backup, which it most decidedly is NOT (again, unless things have changed fundamentally): it does not keep multiple copies of your data, it merely moves them back and forth to and from the cloud. 

 

If your computer dies and the copy in the cloud breaks: gone

If you delete the data on your Mac, it’s deleted off the cloud (though you may have access to a mistakenly deleted file for another thirty days in iCloud; I’m not sure). Then: gone. 

 

If you accidentally delete six chapters of the biography of Geddy Lee you’re working on, then that broken copy gets synced to iCloud and the six chapters are gone. 

 

etc. 

[cassdad]

10 hours ago, analogika said:

If you believe activating this feature means you’re running a backup, you need to reconsider, because it may be “effortless”, but it is not backing up your data. 

Unless the answers to my questions have changed recently, it is vital for you to realise: 

 

You do not have a functioning backup solution. 
 

It’s merely a function intended to ease the space constraints of expensive and too-small internal SSDs. If that’s all you’re using it for, good. 

I know some people consider it a backup, which it most decidedly is NOT (again, unless things have changed fundamentally): it does not keep multiple copies of your data, it merely moves them back and forth to and from the cloud. 

 

If your computer dies and the copy in the cloud breaks: gone

If you delete the data on your Mac, it’s deleted off the cloud (though you may have access to a mistakenly deleted file for another thirty days in iCloud; I’m not sure). Then: gone. 

 

If you accidentally delete six chapters of the biography of Geddy Lee you’re working on, then that broken copy gets synced to iCloud and the six chapters are gone. 

 

etc. 

Righto, good points, thank you!