This is just a warning to others really. I recently upgraded my M1 Mac mini to Ventura 13.2 & shortly after discovered that all my Photoshop (the most recent version) settings had disappeared. Luckily I had several backups & was able to restore all settings. This has been a problem for a while apparently, on looking into it. I saw somewhere that this has been listed as fixed by Adobe but it clearly hasn’t been. Another lesson in keeping backups…
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Yeah - it’s a good thread title to keep visible 
Especially these days with high capacity drives being a lot more affordable than ever… I guess everyone is still on some kind of budget, but back ups save a lot of heartache.
I have not found a good overall backup solution.
I had a problem with an IOS upgrade last year that lead to me needing to completely reset my iPhone. I could not retrieve my setup from iCloud or Mac backup without also retrieving the problem. This was a very unusual issue, but it made me wonder what the best solution is for backing up my entire Apple family of devices (Mac/iPhone, iPad and watch)
At present:
- App data from each device is hosted on iCloud. Much of this data is also on one or more devices
- Email is via gmail, so Google maintains an archive
- the iPad and iPhone (and therefore watch) are backed up to iCloud
- The iPhone and iPad are synced to the Mac and occasionally manually backed up to the Mac
- The Mac is automatically backed up to an an SSD via Time Machine
- iCloud photos is turned on. Originals are downloaded to the Mac
- Photos and Videos are manually backed up to a second external SSD Photos are also manually backed up to OneDrive once a year
- Music is on iCloud via iTunes Match
Looking at the overall strategy which has just evolved over time, it is rather scattered, with an excessive reliance on iCloud.
Has anyone any suggestions for a better overall strategy?
I don’t back up anything to the “Cloud”. I use TimeMachine & Carbon Copy Cloner to backup to multiple hard drives. I backup my iPhone to my laptop, although I really need to change that to my desktop. I really need to transfer my Photos library from my laptop to my desktop too now that I come to think of it. I only use Photos for stuff I take with my phone.
I was going to start a new thread but decided to resurrect this one instead. After all, it’s only a few months old. I am reviewing my backup strategy & considering whether or not I should start some sort of online or cloud backup. The bulk of my data I need to backup is photos. At the moment this is approaching 4.5TB but this is likely to increase rapidly soon as I am going to start scanning all my old film photos (and possibly some of my dad’s). I’m also considering buying a new camera whose file sizes are vastly bigger than what I have now.
Anyway, would be interested in hearing from anyone who has this sort of amount of data, especially if you are using some sort cloud backup.
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My backup solution has been pretty static for a while, although I should take some action soon as the hardware is getting old… anyway.
I have a mix of Mac and PC’s in the house, both desktop and laptop machines + iPhones and iPads.
Windows PCs all use Onedrive so things are automatically stored offsite. They also use the built in Windows backup too to push a copy of key folders (basically documents and images) to my NAS.
The Mac uses a mix of Google Drive and iCloud Drive to sync it’s files. I used to have a weekly backup to the NAS setup … although it’s been a while and I should look into that and see if it’s still running.
All photos are periodically taken off the iPhones or cameras and stored onto the NAS using DIM to sort them. All photos are also pushed to Google Photos which is very handy for searching for things as well as a 3rd or 4th level backup.
I have a secondary NAS that powers up once a week and pulls an incremental and non destructive backup from the primary NAS. I keep thinking about moving this my mothers house in another state… but it’s at least physically located at the opposite end of the house so I won’t just lose everything if Primary is stolen or damaged.
My issue is that both the primary and secondary NAS units are well out of support and the mechanical HDD’s have lots of hours on them… like 75,000 hours. Given MTBF rates are supposed to be in the hundreds of thousands it’s technically fine… but still a back of mind concern.
I’m also up against the limits of storage space. The cheapest and quickest option is to simply add a single external drive via USB to save the non essential files (like media that could be re-ripped if needed). 8 - 10TB USB is ~$350
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