Chronosync

[L Robbin]

Lightroom Version Number

LR CC 9.0

Operating System

1. macOS 10.15 Catalina

I am just beginning your FAQ book on LR Classic subscription. I like it already. I saw you indicated you use Chronosync. Not familiar with it. I have Time Machine for backup and Carbon Copy Cloner for copying folders (for further protection)(BTW I'm finding it a challenge in figuring out how to use it!!) Can you compare Chronosync with these two programs?

 

[clee01l]

If you have TimeMachine, you really do not need anything else. I back Time machine up to alternate disks destinations. One is a Time Capsule and the other is a locally attached EHD. I back up 3 separate volumes into one Time Machine backup. If either of the backup disk fail, I have the other that is no more than 30 minutes behind the failed disk.

 

[L Robbin]

I have two external hard drives that I back up to. What is a time capsule?

 

[clee01l]

I have two external hard drives that I back up to. What is a time capsule?

Time Capsule is a NAS device dedicated to TimeMachine backups . You can also use TimeMachine and point to your 2 EHDs And achieve alternate backups like I do.

 

[Conrad Chavez]

Can you compare Chronosync with these two programs?

Time Machine does automatic versioned backups of everything, every hour. You can easily recover any backed up versions of specific files and folders, or you can recover an entire bootable Mac (by rebooting into macOS Recovery Mode). If your Time Machine volume runs out of space, the oldest backups are thrown out.

Carbon Copy Cloner is primarily designed to create a complete bootable copy (clone) of a Mac system. I use this to maintain an exact ready-to-go backup of my entire Mac system, because it takes a while for Time Machine to rebuild one from its backups. In this way, CCC complements Time Machine; neither can fully replace the other. Carbon Copy Cloner can be scheduled if you want it to be more automatic like Time Machine, has some power-user options for verification, and limited abilities to clone folders, and to keep versions (using Snapshots).

Chronosync is like Carbon Copy Cloner, a backup program for power users. But with more of an emphasis on folder-to-folder synchronization (hence the name), even though it can also be used for whole volume bootable backups. It has scheduling, and limited versioning (Archives). A big reason to use Chronosync over the other two is if you want to preview which files will get changed/deleted on the backup (Trial Sync), and have the option to exclude specific files from the sync. Another thing Chronosync does that the other two don’t is do bidirectional syncing.

I have two external hard drives that I back up to.

How are the two external hard drives used for backup? Are they two identical mirrors of your original drive, a single RAID array backup of your original drive, or did you originally use one hard drive that ran out of space so you added another one to continue the same backup? The answer will help us figure out which program you should be using, and how.

For example, if both external hard drives are identical copies of the original drive, Time Machine isn't useful for that because it only targets one backup drive, but either Carbon Copy Cloner or Chronosync could be used to keep both backups up to date.

 

[Johan Elzenga]

Time Machine does not necessarily target only one backup drive. It can target multiple backups too.

 

[clee01l]

.Time Machine isn't useful for that because it only targets one backup drive, but either Carbon Copy Cloner or Chronosync could be used to keep both backups up to date.

If you had read my earlier response, you will find that this statement is not true.. It is exactly what I described doing with TimeMachine. Not only do I back up to alternate backup volumes, I back up 3 separate volumes to one larger Time Machine volume each time I backup.
Someone with experience with CCC may correct me, but I do not believe CCC offers version control. With CCC it is not possible to go back to the version of a document from last week, last month or last year to recover that version after you have replaced it with new data.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

[Ed Anderson]

For backups, CCC has two options available. "Dont delete anything" or a "safety net" feature. I use the safety net. Modified or deleted files are moved to the safety net folder and mine currently has backups of files over 12 months (a dated sub-folder is placed in the main safety net folder when it saves the original before mod / delete). If the drive the safety net is on drops below 256 GB, then CCC will begin pruning the older backups to make space. Attach snip to give a visual of what I explained above.

Edit: The snip is from the backup drive. So if the file was modded or deleted from my working photos drive, then when CCC does the comparison to the backup its what triggers the file move to the safety net.

 

[Ed Anderson]

A snip of the setup in CCC.

 

[Conrad Chavez]

Someone with experience with CCC may correct me, but I do not believe CCC offers version control. With CCC it is not possible to go back to the version of a document from last week, last month or last year to recover that version after you have replaced it with new data.

Ed beat me to it, and provided a clear illustration of it. For a while now CCC has had SafetyNet, which preserves items replaced during a backup by moving them to a dedicated folder, and continues to do so with each subsequent backup, by creating dated folders over time (see Ed’s screen shot), as long as there is room on the backup volume. So if you edited a file 6 days in a row and ran a CCC clone every day, there are now 6 versions of that file in SafetyNet that you can pull out and restore, similar to Time Machine.

Chronosync has a similar feature, but they call it Archives.

On top of that, for APFS volumes, CCC now also supports Snapshots. These are basically the same as Time Machine snapshots. So much so that there is a volume view in CCC that will show you all of the snapshots, CCC or Time Machine, in a single list. You can restore files from a snapshot of a specific day and time, or delete any that are taking too much space.

Carbon Copy Cloner is actually an easy way to look at APFS Time Machine snapshots (keep in mind, this is not the same list as the dated backup folders in the Time Machine UI). The only other way I know of to browse Time Machine snapshots is in the Mac Terminal.

Time Machine does not necessarily target only one backup drive. It can target multiple backups too.

I might need that explained to me, because I haven’t tried it. Here’s what I currently do with Carbon Copy Cloner:

• System volume is backed up to System backup drive.
• Photo/video volume is backed up to Photo/video backup drive.
• Archives volume (that is, other documents I don’t want to use up space on the system volume) is backed up to Archives backup drive.

In Carbon Copy Cloner or Chronosync, I just make three jobs. Each handles one of the backups above from a specific volume to a specific backup volume. Then I just run all the jobs, and all volumes get backed up to their respective backup volumes.
How would that be set up with Time Machine?

 

[Johan Elzenga]

I might need that explained to me, because I haven’t tried it. Here’s what I currently do with Carbon Copy Cloner:

• System volume is backed up to System backup drive.
• Photo/video volume is backed up to Photo/video backup drive.
• Archives volume (that is, other documents I don’t want to use up space on the system volume) is backed up to Archives backup drive.

In Carbon Copy Cloner or Chronosync, I just make three jobs. Each handles one of the backups above from a specific volume to a specific backup volume. Then I just run all the jobs, and all volumes get backed up to their respective backup volumes.
How would that be set up with Time Machine?

I did not say that Time Machine can do all that. That is why I use CCC as well, next to Time Machine. Time Machine does not have the option to have multiple 'backup tasks' like CCC. It only has one backup task. You can add multiple drives to be backed up, and you can exclude drives, folders or files, but that's it.

Time Machine backs up to one destination disk. You cannot spread out a backup over multiple disks. It can use multiple destination disks for multiple backups however. That is what I meant when I said 'Time Machine does not necessarily target only one backup drive'. If you assign two backup disks, then Time Machine will alternate between those two disk. So today at 10:00 hours it will backup to disk A, and at 11:00 hours it will backup to disk B. So Disk A and Disk B will both be a complete (incremental) backup of the same source.