Best Backup approach for timemachine sparsebundle

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frenchie1980
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Joined: Mon Nov 16, 2015 3:20 am

Best Backup approach for timemachine sparsebundle

Post by frenchie1980 »

Hi,

I currently use Time Machine to backup to my NAS. I'd like to setup offsite backup of my Timemachine sparsebundles to Backblaze B2, but I'm confused by all the varied ways this could be setup.

HBS3 offers two options - Backup and Sync. My broad understanding of the difference between a backup and a sync service would be that backup just adds to the destination and sync keeps them both in sync. However because of the options provided for each of these in HBS3, it's very hard to determine the difference and which is more appropriate for each purpose

Backup offers:
  • with or without version management
  • qudedup - a facility to optimise transfer size and speed, but make the backup location unreadable as a conventional folder structure
  • Remove deleted data from desitnation - sounds very much like sync to me
Sync offers:
  • one way sync - (sounds like backup)
  • two way sync - (sounds like sync)
  • active sync - (not sure what this is)

each of the sync options then gives sub options to:
  • Mirror - (sounds like sync)
  • Copy - (sounds like backup)
  • Move - (sounds like backup)
  • No option to use qudedup as far as I can see
There seems to be so much overlap in the features and options that it's very hard to determine why they as distinct options at the top level. From what I can tell for backing up a timemachine sparsebundle, I am most likely to want it setup as:
  • Backup task (not sync)
  • qudedup on - as the sparsebundle is itself not browsable, so doesn't matter if converted to something else unreadable
  • Remove deleted data - so it works much like a sync and the B2 backup doesn't balloon in size with every large change that happens in my TM backup
ldir-EDB0
Getting the hang of things
Posts: 71
Joined: Tue Dec 04, 2018 12:22 am

Re: Best Backup approach for timemachine sparsebundle

Post by ldir-EDB0 »

I've just recently started struggling with this same problem myself. "Backup" isn't easy and here are some further thoughts on the issue/s.

First off, don't expect deduplication to work miracles. Doubly so with encrypted time machine backups...and you are encrypting your time machine backups right 'cos otherwise anyone who steals your NAS can steal your Mac backups too. But encryption removes any entropy in the data, so a) they'll not compress b) they'll not de-duplicate..every block is different so can't be de-duplicated.

A potential way around that problem is to store unencrypted time machine backups on an encrypted share/volume, HOWEVER at present HBS doesn't take filesystem snapshots so any data that changes whilst HBS is running will be missing/corrupt/whatever....and you'd have to use HBS encryption to ensure your HBS backups are secure.

I've personally come to the conclusion that deduplication is 'worthless' with time machine & acronis true image backups/images.

The next problem is how to handle backup failures that occur part way through the process. I don't think there's any option other than to use a multi-version backup. Hopefully the previous version will still be valid and recoverable. So I have a rolling 'keep last 7 versions' type off site backup (which forces qudedup anyway) which should work ok, HOWEVER I'm currently experiencing very poor performance with the 'expired version data tidyup/deletion' side of the process - I have a ticket in with qnap. See my 'backup hangs at 99%' post.
deejinoz
Starting out
Posts: 24
Joined: Tue Nov 10, 2015 12:00 pm

Re: Best Backup approach for timemachine sparsebundle

Post by deejinoz »

Hi, Just wondering, as it's now a couple of years later, if either of you had had any luck with this, yet?
Cheers...
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OneCD
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Joined: Sun Aug 21, 2016 10:48 am
Location: "... there, behind that sofa!"

Re: Best Backup approach for timemachine sparsebundle

Post by OneCD »

* topic locked to prevent further necroposting *

@deejinoz, please create a new topic for your question.

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