# Time Machine 70 Hacker News commenters recommended Time Machine and 95 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 13 of 13 months; owners who said how long report a median of 6 years (13 owners). **Verdict:** Built into macOS and free; people recommend it for quiet, hands-off backups and restoring whole machines. Critics most often report stalled or silently failed backups. ## Why people recommend it - Quiet, reliable hands-off backups (5 comments): "It works as advertised and does so quietly and without much input." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45875850)) "rock solid for ten years for my wife, who is an ordinary user" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45876312)) "it's worked 100% fine for me and saved my butt a few times" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46851752)) - Works with NAS and network shares (4 comments): "I've been using Time Machine for six months pointing to a network share on my TrueNAS box and it has worked fine" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47969462)) "Time Machine to a network share via Samba has been pretty reliable for me - only once has it corrupted itself" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47967357)) "TM has been working reasonably well for me to back up 10 TB over SMB to a Synology NAS." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47967523)) - Restores machines to identical state (3 comments): "I've restored a laptop from a timemachine backup and it came back damn nearly identical and that was magical." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49734350)) "It works and everything comes back to an identical state of the snapshot." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47767351)) "the snapshots were available in Finder itself so you could browse through the files you wanted and retrieve them" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47925661)) - Easy for non-technical users (3 comments): "It made backups into a nice experience that were accessible to everyone." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46850558)) "rock solid for ten years for my wife, who is an ordinary user" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45876312)) "I convinced my mom to setup Time Machine as a backup, so at least she'd have something" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48851574)) ## What people warn about - Silent failures and stalled backups (4 comments): "Then would silently fail/stop working, or just tell you that it had stopped working and that whatever you had in it was no longer accessible." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47923435)) "The problem is them fucking up. Every other popular backup solution that does it does it just fine. And doesn't hide failures silently" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46849533)) "My biggest gripes with Time Machine are the lack of visibility, the silent failures and the inflexible scheduling." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46849649)) - Corruption and database problems (3 comments): "a key DB file inside the Photo library which Time Machine omitted from all backups and prevented me from restoring the library" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47923881)) "I heard in the past that Time Machine backups would inevitably become corrupt because of a fundamental defect." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47225120)) "Time Machine has a reputation for silent failures and corruption issues that have frustrated users for years." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46594287)) - Slow backups, throttled by macOS (3 comments): "And if Time Machine kicks in, there goes any form of performance since Apple can't seem to figure out what a 'background task' is." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47340208)) "TM heavily throttles disk I/O used for backing up in order to ensure that normal user activity isn't affected" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47967869)) "macOS may wait for idle time, may prioritize internal disk and the backup will go extremely slow on an HDD" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49911996)) - Little visibility into backup status (2 comments): "something I feel can be improved upon with a bit more visibility in to the status" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46849038)) "My biggest gripes with Time Machine are the lack of visibility, the silent failures and the inflexible scheduling." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46849649)) ## Alternatives hackers recommend - [Carbon Copy Cloner](https://hackerapproved.com/p/carbon-copy-cloner.md): 15 recommend - [SuperDuper](https://hackerapproved.com/p/superduper.md): 12 recommend ## Cite as Hacker Approved, "Time Machine", https://hackerapproved.com/p/time-machine/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).