Most backup apps make snapshots, so why not use those instead of conventional backups? Because of the weaknesses of snapshots, as explained.
Time Machine
A brief reference to excluding items from being backed up, from Spotlight indexing their contents, and for them to be copied up to iCloud Drive.
Unless you exclude them from backups, Time Machine will back up all items in iCloud Drive as long as they’re stored locally when the backup is made.
Consider the fidelity of backup copies, the speed of a backup method, and the risk of losing the contents of that backup. And test backups by restoring samples from them.
Classic TM backed up HFS+ to HFS+; current TM backs up APFS to APFS. But what if you want to back up a mixture of APFS and HFS+ volumes?
Good human interface design should bring fun where it’s appropriate, but fun is only justifiable when it’s completed to be functional.
Introduced in OS X 10.7 Lion in 2011, this feature has undergone considerable change. Although it stored versions in iCloud Drive at one time, it doesn’t now.
Preserve documents according to how much time or money would be needed to replace them. For work in progress, macOS versioning can be a great help.
How are snapshots made, and what do they contain? How are they sized, and can they grow? How can you copy a snapshot, or remove a file from one?
You can disable its checks of scheduling, and it better analyses Speed in Big Sur, and backups in macOS 11-14.
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