I&#x27;ve never used Time Machine specifically because I heard early reports of it not saving someone who suffered a total disk failure. I haven&#x27;t bothered trying it since then. (First impressions are powerful things.)<p>I&#x27;ve used Carbon Copy Cloner (a glorified rsync + a great UI) for 5+ years and I&#x27;ve survived no less than two total disk failures. The best part is that CCC makes my full-disk backups bootable, so I can literally plug in my USB drive (or my 256GB SD Card--yes, I do full-disk backups to SD cards) and boot my entire laptop directly from the external drive, bypassing my (possibly defunct) internal disk. That allows me to continue working while I wait to get my laptop replaced.<p>When the new laptop arrives, I install CCC and do the imaging in reverse, copying the external disk to my new Mac. Then I reboot and my laptop is back to the way it was the last time I used it. (This depends on replacing my old laptop with a new one using the same hardware, but that&#x27;s not difficult if I stay within a few years of the latest hardware.)