I’m on the step of my backup where I need to decide the remote backup size?? I’m not sure what option to choose?? I’m using an Imac and backing up to an external hardrive??
There’s no such step that I know of, and no specific need to decide. Did you mean
Did you read the page? If so, do you have specific questions? It depends on usage.
Yes this is what I’m talking about it says remote volume size and then I have to select I’m not sure what to select here I’m trying to do a complete backup of my imac w/ duplicati instead of using time machine because there are some issues w/ my mac and I may have to do a complete reset so I want a backup of everything??
It’s not critical as long as you don’t change it to something absurdly different than default 50 MB. Manual explains why you might want to change it somewhat, depending on your circumstances.
I don’t have a Mac, but Erase your Mac and reset it to factory settings (Apple) suggests Time Machine for your backup. I don’t know how complete that is. Is the issue that you want more?
Note that if you have a broken system, that’s an entirely different situation for either backup…
Any idea what that is in terms of file count and total size? Do you know where things are kept?
Generally one wants to backup one’s own data rather than the OS, which is easy to just install.
Does TimeMachine Back-up Everything? might be relevant talk in terms of getting system back.
If you can spare the space, having multiple backups might be a reasonable idea, but I’d assume Time Machine is very much designed for macOS usage, while Duplicati is for multiple platforms.
No I don’t need more im just not sure how much it would take to backup everything im very new to all of this and its very frustrating I was told by apple that I may need to reset it and I just want to have everything backed up in case I need to I’ve read articles that you can use other software for your backup and would prefer to backup using duplicati over time machine if possible are there any mac users on here?
I’m not looking for anything special just a basic backup of everything I don’t know what tht would be in terms of total size and file count or even how to determine that thats why I am asking questions…
From what I understand, you would like a full backup before resetting the machine.
However, there is little value in backing up the operating system and system files, as those cannot easily be restored, and you probably want to just make a backup of your own files.
On MacOS these are generally in your user folder, and includes Documents, Downloads, Pictures, Desktop etc. You can make a backup of your user folder (open ~/ from a terminal), but this folder contains a bunch of things that you most likely do not want a backup of, including program caches.
You can see a suggested list of folders to exclude for MacOS home folder on Reddit.
After you figure out what you want to back up, it should be as simple as selecting the folders in finder and clicking CMD+I to see the size of each, and summing up those.