How do I backup my Macbook onto my S3 storage account?

Question

Hello,
I am a basic user of Amazon S3. I do know what a "bucket" is and how to use the privacy settings. But that's it. I prefer not to know the advanced uses of it. I won't be using it for anything other than personal use.

What are the steps to backup my MacBook (which the file size is about 600 GB) to my Amazon S3 account? 
I could just pay Apple for one of their backup plans, but I already have an Amazon S3 account (and it seems more secure and cheaper). So why not use S3?

I might backup my computer twice monthly. I would like a simple process, but not have to buy a 3rd party software/plugin to do it.

Any helpful link to a help file with steps, or advice is much appreciated.

T

Answer

Thanks again for trying to help. 
I wonder if instead of trying to automate it, I could just do a direct upload of my entire hard drive to my Amazon S3 bucket?  I might give that a try in the meantime.
If it works, I could just set myself a reminder twice a month to do it.

T

Answer

I'm afraid I'm stuck.
I followed all the steps as best I could, but was only 30% confident that I was doing them right. All of the help files are beyond my understanding.

Some of the errors I got along the way.

This one when I tried to configure the access keys...
aws: error: argument command: Invalid choice, valid choices are:

accessanalyzer                           | account                                 
acm                                      | acm-pca                                 
alexaforbusiness                         | amp

and then this one when I tried to run your backup command.

warning: Skipping file /Users/toddmccarty/.Trash. File/Directory is not readable.
fatal error: Unable to locate credentials

I think it would take a professional to set this up on my machine. I thank you for your time, but the $9.99 p/month from Apple is sounding much better now, haha.

I wish Amazon had a simple cloud backup product. It's surprising that they don't get into the mass market like Apple and Google.  Are you positive one doesn't exist?

T

Answer

1. Download and [install AWS CLI ](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/cli/latest/userguide/getting-started-install.html)
2. [Create a bucket](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonS3/latest/userguide/creating-bucket.html), say 'my-laptop-backup'
3. [Create an IAM User](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/IAM/latest/UserGuide/id_users_create.html) that has [permissions to objects in that bucket](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonS3/latest/userguide/example-policies-s3.html#iam-policy-ex0)
4. [Create access keys for the IAM user ](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/IAM/latest/UserGuide/id_credentials_access-keys.html) and [install them on your laptop](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/cli/latest/userguide/cli-configure-quickstart.html) via 'aws configure'
5. Twice a month run [this command](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/cli/latest/userguide/cli-services-s3-commands.html#using-s3-commands-managing-objects-sync):

```
aws s3 sync . s3://my-laptop-backup --delete
```

How do I backup my Macbook onto my S3 storage account?

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