2018 Macbook Pro Touchbar has NO Data Recovery Port!

[Drak3]

2 minutes ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

Unless it has changed substantially since I tried it, no, it's actually terrible.

No, it's not.

 

Unless you're telling me you can't follow basic instructions, or don't recognize drive letters.

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1 minute ago, Drak3 said:

No, it's not.

 

Unless you're telling me you can't follow basic instructions, or don't recognize drive letters.

I don't know why you're so obsessed with following instructions and reading when that really has nothing to do with the problem.  I've already explained the key difference and why the Windows option is objectively inferior.  First, rather than just copying all your files in a convenient, standard, and reliable way, it packages them all up through its proprietary system so you must use their tool to recover even though there is no reason for that.  Second, it's not even capable of taking incremental versions, so every additional backup for the sake of history is a complete and redundant backup, which wastes an enormous amount of space.  Third, while you are able to make a system image, this is subject to the same incremental issue I mentioned previously.  On the Time Machine side, it only has one mode of operation but it completely covers the functionality of a complete system image as well as individual file backups, and it maintains a usable history without needing any more space than it should have to.

[Drak3]

3 minutes ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

First, rather than just copying all your files in a convenient, standard, and reliable way, it packages them all up through its proprietary system so you must use their tool to recover even though there is no reason for that. 

Doing a user file backup just creates a compressed copy, .zip I believe. The files are accessible on other systems without proprietary tools.

Doing a full or partial system copy, that makes sense as you can't restore Windows programs and settings to a Linux or Unix system. Only Windows.

Up until 10, Windows also nagged users to do file backups until disabled or files were backed up.

8 minutes ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

Second, it's not even capable of taking incremental versions, so every additional backup for the sake of history is a complete and redundant backup, which wastes an enormous amount of space.

That's really only an issue if you're space limited. Otherwise redundant backups are a good thing to have, should backups after a certain date be corrupted with malware/spyware.

 

I keep multiple backups of my main system on multiple drives for that reason alone.

21 minutes ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

Third, while you are able to make a system image, this is subject to the same incremental issue I mentioned previously. 

You can also set it up to delete old backups and replace them, if space is that big a factor for you. It's what I *did* when I kept a local backup on my machines.

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4 minutes ago, Drak3 said:

Doing a user file backup just creates a compressed copy, .zip I believe. The files are accessible on other systems without proprietary tools.

Without their tool however, the file is accessible, but the original location and name are lost so putting your whole collection back together would be a task of impractical proportions.  That's what I'm getting at.

4 minutes ago, Drak3 said:

That's really only an issue if you're space limited. Otherwise redundant backups are a good thing to have, should backups after a certain date be corrupted with malware/spyware.

Well you will be space limited after a few runs of that

As for protection against malware, I don't think there's really any difference between the two methods.  In either case, the previous state is preserved.  One is just far more efficient than the other.

4 minutes ago, Drak3 said:

I keep multiple backups of my main system on multiple drives for that reason alone.

Yes I'd advise everyone to do this regardless of what tool you use

4 minutes ago, Drak3 said:

You can also set it up to delete old backups and replace them, if space is that big a factor for you. It's what I *did* when I kept a local backup on my machines.

I know, and you basically have to because, for example, a 200 GB system image with another 3 TB of data adds up pretty fast when you're taking the entire thing every time.  It doesn't solve that shortcoming though.

[Drak3]

6 minutes ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

Without their tool however, the file is accessible

No, it's not. I recovered data from Windows backups using Ubuntu 12.04 and Puppy Linux for friends on more than one occassion. 

 

12 minutes ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

As for protection against malware, I don't think there's really any difference between the two methods.  In either case, the previous state is preserved.  One is just far more efficient than the other.

There is. My method, the previous state's preservation is absolute, and when multiple discs are used, the chance of more complex malware inserting into a backed up file is negated as it can't access every copy of said file.

 

19 minutes ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

It doesn't solve that shortcoming though.

Again, it's only a shortcoming for those space limited.

 

For me, I have 2.5TB worth of uncompressed data and the images for all my systems takes up roughly 250GB.

 

But of that, maybe 500GB is not (easily) recoverable. Most of it consists of Blu Ray/DVD copies (in .ISOs)/rips, Linux .ISOs, Steam games, and NSFW stuff.

 

My main desktop has a 2TB for backups, my NAS has a 4TB. 4TB in external HDD space. Space isn't an issue for yearly system restore point backups and keeping 4 to 5 data backups. Especially when data gets compressed when backed up.

 

Spoiler

Not to mention that some systems act as data backups themselves, with my Alienware Alpha pulling double duty as a HTPC and as a backup to my emulator PC.

 

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7 hours ago, Drak3 said:

No, it's not. I recovered data from Windows backups using Ubuntu 12.04 and Puppy Linux for friends on more than one occassion. 

How exactly did you do that?  Is there a program for Linux that can read their structure?

7 hours ago, Drak3 said:

There is. My method, the previous state's preservation is absolute, and when multiple discs are used, the chance of more complex malware inserting into a backed up file is negated as it can't access every copy of said file.

I think you're conflating the process of having multiple separate physical backup drives, and having multiple complete copies of a backup on the same drive.  In the interest of keeping focus on the original topic, let me explain more clearly what I mean.  With the Windows system, a complete copy is taken every time, so if you have 20 GB to back up, and then you change 1 GB worth of files, your next backup is still 20 GB so there's now 40 total.  With Time Machine, the initial backup will be 20 GB, and the next backup will only be 1 GB since it stores only what's changed.  You can easily copy off the entire 20 GB in the state it was in before or after the changes though.  I have no reason to believe one of these methods is any more or less resilient against malware but if you can provide one I'll listen.  As for having separate drives, which again, I recommend regardless of your software, yes, that would make you immune to ransomware/malware, assuming you're paying attention enough to catch it before all backups are corrupted.

7 hours ago, Drak3 said:

Again, it's only a shortcoming for those space limited.

But it is still a shortcoming.  If only a few percent of your data changes between every backup, surely you can see how taking a complete copy of everything is incredibly wasteful and regardless of whether or not you have the space, it's simply a stupid way to do it.

[Drak3]

Just now, Ryan_Vickers said:

How exactly did you do that?  Is there a program for Linux that can read their structure?

Archive manager.

 

2 minutes ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

I think you're conflating the process of having multiple separate physical backup drives, and having multiple complete copies of a backup on the same drive.  In the interest of keeping focus on the original topic, let me explain more clearly what I mean.  With the Windows system, a complete copy is taken every time, so if you have 20 GB to back up, and then you change 1 GB worth of files, your next backup is still 20 GB so there's now 40 total.

I'm not conflating anything. I have multiple drives, each has multiple backups on each of them, except for any drive that is 'permanently' attached to the machine.

If one LOCAL backup gets infected, the rest are highly likely unaffected. The chance shrinks with backups on NAS or external drives.

If a Time Machine backup gets infected, either I'm fucked or I'm playing bounty hunter with my files.

 

So choosing between using my 2TB backup drive for 2TB worth of backups and getting redundancy , or using my 2TB backup drive for 500GB of backups for the sake of efficiency, I'm choosing redundancy.

18 minutes ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

But it is still a shortcoming.

It's a tradeoff.

 

19 minutes ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

If only a few percent of your data changes between every backup, surely you can see how taking a complete copy of everything is incredibly wasteful and regardless of whether or not you have the space, it's simply a stupid way to do it.

If I'm saved an hour of headache in exchange for using more storage on a disc I have explicitly for backing up data, and I've been saved that headache multiple times, I do not consider it stupid or wasteful.

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4 hours ago, Drak3 said:

Archive manager.

So no fancy tool then, just pulling out the files like how I said you could before - the files are accessible, but (unless it's changed since I last used it), the filenames and locations of each file are essentially scrambled and lost.

4 hours ago, Drak3 said:

I'm not conflating anything. I have multiple drives, each has multiple backups on each of them, except for any drive that is 'permanently' attached to the machine.

If one LOCAL backup gets infected, the rest are highly likely unaffected. The chance shrinks with backups on NAS or external drives.

If a Time Machine backup gets infected, either I'm fucked or I'm playing bounty hunter with my files.

Well I think you are because this still doesn't make any sense to me.  If you have multiple drives that you rotate through and never attach them all at once, regardless of how you back up to them, that's enough to keep you safe from malware.  On any given single drive, again regardless of how you back it up, if that gets taken by malware, that's it for the contents.  The Windows system doesn't offer any advantage here.

4 hours ago, Drak3 said:

It's a tradeoff.

 

If I'm saved an hour of headache in exchange for using more storage on a disc I have explicitly for backing up data, and I've been saved that headache multiple times, I do not consider it stupid or wasteful.

If you think the way Windows copies the entire thing every time has ever saved you any time or headache then despite my attempts, you clearly still do not understand how Time Machine works.  There is literally no downside to the way it does incremental changes.  In fact, because of how it works, not only does it use much less space for history, but it is much faster too, so if anything the Windows option is costing you hours, not saving them.