Mac: Entire device restoration is not supported for now.

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Mac: Entire device restoration is not supported for now.

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16
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DS918+ DS1522+
Router
  1. MR2200ac
  2. RT6600ax
Operating system
  1. macOS
Mobile operating system
  1. iOS
I was so enthusiasm installing ABB for Mac yesterday, but then I read this disclosure in Synology's documentation: "Entire device restoration is not supported for now." and confirmed that's the case when I wanted to do a bare metal restore of my Mac; the only restore options are File and Folders, no "Entire Device"
Capture d’écran, le 2023-01-13 à 16.10.02.jpg

Do we know if Synology is even considering adding this option (and if so when) or is it a Mac Ventura limitation as of now?
 
You must have a special use case.
IMO bare metal backups are something from the past.
Modern, efficient backups separate data/ applications from the OS to prevent issues restoring the backup on incompatible or modified hardware.
Bare metal restore is often more work than separate reinstallation and data/application restore, as you might find out that you need to re-run all updates etc anyway.
 
Do we know if Synology is even considering adding this option (and if so when) or is it a Mac Ventura limitation as of now?
Yes, this is still on the table and should be implemented as part of the Migration Assistant step in some way. Atm there is no eta on this.
 
You must have a special use case.
IMO bare metal backups are something from the past.
Modern, efficient backups separate data/ applications from the OS to prevent issues restoring the backup on incompatible or modified hardware.
Bare metal restore is often more work than separate reinstallation and data/application restore, as you might find out that you need to re-run all updates etc anyway.
I agree that old full restore methods worked that way before (for both Mac and PC). But currently on the Mac side, when you want to do a full TimeMachine restore, Apple is already reinstalling the full bare metal macOS, then repushing the old data back from the TimeMachine backup. So implementing a new ABB "Entire device" option, would probably do exactly what they're doing with the current TimeMachine restore method, but at an ABB level, allowing us to ditch the deprecated TimeMachine backup types, and enjoy a more robust and up to date backup method with ABB.
 
Understood. Just want to make sure you are aware.
For efficiency reasons, we only backup user specific data, the rest is in a separate images or setup files and merged in a restore.
 
As someone that has recently migrated two old Mac Mini 2012 to M1 (Catalina to Ventura), then setup CCC again: it does seem the way forward is to use Apple’s Migration Assistant. This found Time Machine, the old Mac Mini, and CCC clone on local USB drive as viable restore sources. So my view is that this would be acceptable to me for ABB to slot is as another source, somehow (not fully check out this is done yet).

That CCC article about maintaining a backup as a legacy clone where the locked base OS is also cloned: I eventually decided to use this for my weekly clone but not for my monthly … both to USB drives and so I have a reasonable hope of a bootable clone and if that doesn’t work then a fallback using the new approach.

For me, this is a transition and I need to feel comfortable that leaving the old backup/clone approach to the backup/migrate is working, and quick enough to restore to working. So I’m doing belt-and-braces and extra belt for now. The good thing with ABB is that it optimises the storage it uses so doing this isn’t costing me much extra space over what I was doing before. And when I switch off the Ds215j, Time Machine NAS, it will be less.
 
APFS and the logic of the latest OS can struggle your brain… If I remember correctly the system volume is actually now an APFS snapshot and cryptographically sealed, read only. Nothing can modify it so there’s no point to backup it. (This is the reason we had huge downloads for system updates even if the actual update was a few MB).

Check eclectic light’s articles, it explains everything.
 

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