Using Apple Time Machine with an ordinary USB stick

I was looking for an optimal backup solution for quite a while. By optimal I mean fast, daily, portable and inexpensive. I looked at some online backup solutions, but they all failed at several gigabytes of data, not to mention the monthly payments for premium options and very questionable security – it was hard to find an encrypted online storage, and to make matters worse SSL wasn’t a solid standard but a “marketing feature enhancing security”...

I tried desktop solutions like the iBackup, however it runs slow, the compression is poor and it often screws up the current backup with some errors in the middle of the process. I was thinking of a Time Capsule, but the costs were too high. I have an external HDD, but that is neither fast nor portable.

So I turned back again to look at the Time Machine and to my surprise it turned out it supports USB drives of any kind. I had a spare OCZ 8GB stick in a rigid rubber body, so I gave it a shot. It’s a pain at the start as you have to select all the directories and files you do not wish to backup (instead of selecting the ones you do, where’s the famous Apple user-friendlienes?).

However, once it’s done, the backup is both quick and simple. And consumes less space than when using the iBackup – the same data that used up 7GB, now takes just over 3GB. Plenty of space for versioning, which is pretty smart too – a day of coding took 9 MB. It depends on what you actually do, because video, graphics etc. will take up a lot, but still, I expected more.

The best part is the seamless integration with the OS. It’s perfect for daily backups in the evening. You just plug the stick in and the backup starts, distinctly spinning the Time Machine icon in the menu bar. And if you have a USB port extender you can keep the stick all day and have it back up constantly in the background, much as it would do with a Time Capsule. How cool is that? :)

I know 8GB is probably not much to most of you. But you can get a 16 or 32GB stick for a good price nowadays. Also, I tend to think you should backup just the important stuff, other things are obsolete as they can be easily obtained again. So it kind of works for me. And I have the external HDD anyway to put the big and not-often-used things there. Plus, after 3 died disks I kind of stopped trusting them and turned to solid state. So there you have it, I think I have found an optimal backup solution! :)