Thanks to your post, I now use restic with rclone as the backend, with backups to local storage and Backblaze b2.
It is what Unix directories do:
The database is just a folder in the file system and as such its modification date will only change if its content changes. Which for a directory seems to halten only when one of its direct children is added or removed.
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To have many Backups in different places ist good. But, how do you get one ore more files back in case you lost one? Could someone describe how he/she did this exactly? I found this rather difficult.
Time Machine for example can simply be activated, after which you can browse to a folder with a file that you want to retrieve.
My personal workflow to prevent errors is to copy it, paste it on my desktop, close Time Machine and drag the cooy over the file that needs to be replaced.
Physical drives that are stored in the Batcave obviously need to be retrieved by yourself from that location, should you want to restore a file from a backup drives that is stored there. Or requires somebody in Gotham city to do it for you 
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What @Solar-Glare said about Timemachine is of course correct. However, to retrieve eg a small number of files from a DT database, I copied the whole dtbase2 object from my TM backup to the desktop, opened it there in finder (command open, I think) and then drag-dropped the files one by one on DT.
In general, TM gives you the possibility to restore a single file with a mouse click.
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I think youāre referring to a backup .dtbase2 file
Your āone or more filesā can be retrieved using Finder
(Right-click the .dtbase2 file > Show Package Contents)
My backups also include a weekly file/folder export of my files
The files can be accessed directly from the backup folder
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I should give this a try as well. Thanks.
Sometimes - if you are lucky
Other times - it notifies you that your Time Machine backup is corrupt and you are SOL. Try CCC or Chronosync instead.
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Admittedly, I rarely had to resort to TM restore.
Just wondering if you tested a restore from Backblaze like that. I use Backblaze too, but I wouldnāt use it for Devon restores, because BZ does not back up lots of Mac things, like Finder tags, Finder comments, file permissions, extended attributes, custom metadata and has issues with metadata like creation dates restored from their zip option, modification dates, ā¦
Maybe the fact that you zip it up before makes it work, but I know that restores without that step result in swiss cheese.
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Adding to what others already mentioned, you donāt have to use the Time Machine app itself. You canāt open DEVON databases in the Time Machine app and would have to restore/copy the whole database.
You can however browse your Time Machine backups in Finder as well. If you know where a file is located, you can right-click a database to show package contents. This way you can restore/copy single files.
If you donāt know where a file is located in the DEVON database, or want to see all versions, I can recommend two solutions:
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DEVONās own EasyFind app can search Time Machine volumes. It shows you where youād need to go in Finder to āopenā the database or you could directly add something back to DEVON with a right-click.
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I also use BackupLoupe, which can search Time Machine backups more extensively. It can reveal files in the backup, the originals in Finder and also restore them in place.
BackupLoupe sounds interesting from their description - is it indeed successful in recovering TIme Machine backups that are otherwise rejected as corrupt by Time Machine?
I donāt know about that. Since its inception, I never encountered a corrupt Time Machine backup, so I canāt comment on BackupLoupeās claim about restoring from corrupt backup records. I use the tool mostly as a better way to search TM backups.
For me, this was a problem of Appleās TimeCapsules - backups were regularly corrupted at the time. When I switched to locally connected SSDs, things went back to how they should be.
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My issue has been large drives - once I got more than 2Tb on a drive, TimeMachine seemed to be at its limits in handling that
In my experience with other package-based applications, the āmodifiedā date in Finder is not necessarily reliable. Changing individual documents within the package may not change the overall packageās date.
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For an explanation: Backup Strategies - #43 by chrillek
The date is perfectly ok for a directory/folder. The problem is, in my opinion, that a folder is sometimes disguised as something else in macOS, namely a āpackageā. Of course one would expect the modification date of a database to change if one of its files changes. For a folder ā not so much.
I had to do something similar just this weekāI fatfingered a couple of DT databases and had to restore from backup.
I first renamed the most recent database on my Mac, adding the text OLD to the name. Then I restored a good version from Time Machine.
I actually had to do it several times before I got it right, and I changed the names of existing databasese to include the current time, in order to keep track.
When I was finally sure I had a good version of the problem databases, I moved the other copies aside. Iāll delete them at some point.
I caught a lucky break on this one tooāthat same morning, I got an error message on my Time Machine disk and had to start a new backup. Fortunately, the oldest version on that disk, from 7:26 that morning, contained a good copy of the database.
I am temporarily without redundant backups as my computing situation has changed, not by my choice. For now at least, Time Machine is my only backup. I need to fix that! For that reason, this is an extremely helpful and well-timed thread for me.
Do you do that by simply putting the archive files in the Documents folder, or through some other means?
File > Export > Files and Folders
