Hi, I have an M1 MacBook Pro and have all my instrument data/sound files stored on an external 4TB thunderbolt drive.
I backed up everything with the Macs Time Machine.
Last weekend I needed to restore everything (obviously have a separate backup of later documents/projects etc).
When I used to be on Windows, I used True Image to do an image backup of all my drives, which I did by booting from a USB flash drive. If I needed to restore everything to a freshly installed state, I did an image restore, and EVERYTHING was back exactly as it was when I made the backup.
The Macs Time Maschine happily allowed me to backup both my internal and external drives in one go.
But, when I reformatted my Mac (and reformatted my 4TB drive) and ran Time Machine, I had to restore each disk separately, no real biggie, I just restored the external, then restored the internal.
However, every single NI product said it needed repairing. I didn't check my other products, I probably should have, but anyway at that point, I simply reformatted again and reinstalled everything from scratch.
To be honest, on my fast broadband, redownloading all my NI, Arturia and Steinberg stuff, takes less than a day and once I've set it off and deselected the few I don't want installed, I can just leave it alone to do it's stuff. I have my Omnisphere install files so don't need to download those.
What takes all the time is setting everything up how I want, disabling usage data reporting (which is often in a different place for each product), setting everything up to use the directories I want to use on my external disks etc, remembering what preferences I had set with Cubase, setting up my Elgato Stream Deck to work with Cubase etc etc etc.
OK, it's not that I need to reload my Mac that often, if ever, I only had to do it this time because I was playing with system files and screwed up. (and it was only because I presumed I had a working backup, that I didn't try to fix my mistake and decided to simply kick off a restore instead) .
But it would be nice knowing I had a backup where if I did ever have to reformat, I can simply kick off a restore and once done have everything as it is right now.
Obviously I'd still have to install any updates etc but at least all my preferences would be set.
I'm writing an essay again, I'll shut up.
Any advice greatly received.
TLDR:
What's the best system image style backup for the Mac (not Time Machine)