Ever wish Time Machine™ didn't have that interface?

[lamina]

I wish I could just grab from my backup volume without having to load that obstructive screen. I'm chatting with a friend and need to grab a file from my backup volume, but I don't want to load up that huge and sluggish interface that is Time Machine. Wouldn't it be nice if they could confine it to one window?

[skinnylegs]

Yep....wonderful tool but clunky and IMHO ugly UI.

[redAPPLE]

i, too, would rather have a different interface.

[Jebaloo]

I just used it for the first time yesterday. I think it's ridiculous! So ugly, particularly the buttons along the bottom. They could just be normal looking buttons, do the same job, and look a lot better!

[Father Jack]

I like the "space" effect .. :o
But have to admit the bar at the bottom and the buttons suck .. :mad:

[Eluzion]

Yeah, I'm not a big fan of the Time Machine UI either. Seems out of place with the rest of Leopard.

[basesloaded190]

i think time machine could be so much better. i wish it was more customizable. meaning you could make it back up only once a day, every other day, ect. i wish you could pick what you want to back up and what you don't want to back up. if they could do that with TM i think it would make for an incredible tool

[retro83]

Yeah, I'm not a big fan of the Time Machine UI either. Seems out of place with the rest of Leopard.

I personally like it, and you can browse the backups directly as well from Finder which is handy.

I just wish that you could limit the maximum size used on a disk.

[Eidorian]

You can browse the filesystem without flying through space.

[gr8tfly]

On one hand, it's a bit gaudy. On the other, they needed something that could, in no way, be confused with the normal Desktop.

[juanster]

I like the "space" effect .. :o
But have to admit the bar at the bottom and the buttons suck .. :mad:

I agree I thought that only happened in my comp that bar hardly ever works for me. I hope they fix it soon ... It doesn't t bother me that much because I hardly to into space or hatevwrthat thingnis caked but if I did I would bother me a lottttt

[Father Jack]

i wish you could pick what you want to back up and what you don't want to back up. if they could do that with TM i think it would make for an incredible tool
You can choose what not to back up buy going through system preferences / time machine / options.

[basesloaded190]

You can choose what not to back up buy going through system preferences / time machine / options.

what i meant was that instead of having to choose what you DONT want to back up, i wish you could just choose what you DO want to back up

[Kilamite]

what i meant was that instead of having to choose what you DONT want to back up, i wish you could just choose what you DO want to back up

You'd be checking a hell of a lot by doing it that way.

If you just want to back up specific documents, why not do it manually instead?

[DaveF]

I personally like it, and you can browse the backups directly as well from Finder which is handy.

I just wish that you could limit the maximum size used on a disk.Partition the disk to give Time Machine the space you want it to have.

i wish you could pick what you want to back up and what you don't want to back up. if they could do that with TM i think it would make for an incredible toolWhile that would offer more flexibility, why don't you want to have Time Machine back up (almost) everything by default.

I've specifically excluded the Podcasts folder for iTunes -- no need to store those. And I created a "scratch" folder that isn't backed up for when I'm doing video editing. I don't want multiple GB of temp video to be saved while being transcoded.

[redshift20]

Eh.. it's not a standard interface, but I still think it's cool.. :D

What really gets me is I can't find how to turn Time Machine off! I've looked all over in the preferences, to no avail. They should just put a huge on/off slider that is easy to see. :rolleyes:

[Topher15]

I don't use Time Machine yet but will be soon and have a few questions...

- Time Machine mirrors you're computers hard drive, right. Well if you delete or edit a file on you're computer would the same not happen on you're Time Machine backup?

- Or does it save multiple versions of your files? I'm going to get a external hard drive (question thread (http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=435930)) and was going to leave 320GB (the same as my iMac) for Time Machine and the rest of the space for manual storage. But if it saves multiple file backups would I need to leave more space?

- If you browse a previous version of a file or folder in Time Machine and click restore does it overwrite the version of the file or folder that it on the Mac itself? So say you edited a file, then made some new files, but then wanted to revert to the original file. Would TM just bring back that file and leave everything else in that folder as it is?

Thanks

[HLdan]

i think time machine could be so much better. i wish it was more customizable. meaning you could make it back up only once a day, every other day, ect. i wish you could pick what you want to back up and what you don't want to back up. if they could do that with TM i think it would make for an incredible tool

Um, you can choose what you want backed up, maybe you've never used it. Also it's stupid to want to set TM to back up once a day or every other day. What's the point of that if you delete a file you can't recover it if TM backed up every other day.

On a different note, I like the TM UI, it's makes otherwise a boring idea fun to use. Nobody wants to waste time backing stuff up and nobody hardly used the Apple old back up solution. By making the space theme it created a reason for people to back up because the effect is cool.
Why does this forum always want to take away the fun experience of Mac OS X? We may as well be back on OS 9 or maybe even Windows if we want a "plain" and boring experience.

[Daveoc64]

Um, you can choose what you want backed up, maybe you've never used it. Also it's stupid to want to set TM to back up once a day or every other day. What's the point of that if you delete a file you can't recover it if TM backed up every other day.

On a different note, I like the TM UI, it's makes otherwise a boring idea fun to use. Nobody wants to waste time backing stuff up and nobody hardly used the Apple old back up solution. By making the space theme it created a reason for people to back up because the effect is cool.
Why does this forum always want to take away the fun experience of Mac OS X? We may as well be back on OS 9 or maybe even Windows if we want a "plain" and boring experience.

Backup isn't supposed to be fun.

It's by its nature a boring process. The Time Machine interface totally gets in the way of the task and is generally OTT.

[mrklaw]

I've specifically excluded the Podcasts folder for iTunes -- no need to store those. And I created a "scratch" folder that isn't backed up for when I'm doing video editing. I don't want multiple GB of temp video to be saved while being transcoded.

ooh, thats a good idea - podcasts change a lot too so it'd bloat my backup

I've also excluded my parallels XP hard drive space as each time I use it, time machine would back the whole thing up. Wonder how I can back up my XP in the event my HDD goes down?

[Vinnie_vw]

I already turned it off. Never used time machine before, so why start now.

What really bothered me is that you get a choice to set what folders to back up in the options. However when you add new (big) files to those folders, it starts backing those up automatically too. I accidentally ended up backing a 4 gig file and lost about a month of my regular backups, which are only 100 mb sized. That's when I though, screw you Time Machine, I'm going home…

[Father Jack]

what i meant was that instead of having to choose what you DONT want to back up, i wish you could just choose what you DO want to back up
Fair point .... That would be handy .. :)

[DaveF]

I don't use Time Machine yet but will be soon and have a few questions...

- Time Machine mirrors you're computers hard drive, right. Well if you delete or edit a file on you're computer would the same not happen on you're Time Machine backup?

- Or does it save multiple versions of your files? I'm going to get a external hard drive (question thread (http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=435930)) and was going to leave 320GB (the same as my iMac) for Time Machine and the rest of the space for manual storage. But if it saves multiple file backups would I need to leave more space?

- If you browse a previous version of a file or folder in Time Machine and click restore does it overwrite the version of the file or folder that it on the Mac itself? So say you edited a file, then made some new files, but then wanted to revert to the original file. Would TM just bring back that file and leave everything else in that folder as it is?

Thanks
You should go to Macworld.com and read their recent TimeMachine article (http://www.macworld.com/article/132118/2008/02/timemachine1.html). Time Machine's purpose is to let you restore any file, because you deleted it or made a change to it that's undesired. So, no, deleting a file does not delete it from Time Machine -- that would defeat the whole purpose of it :) Deleting a file, of course, means it won't be backed up in future Time Machines operations. But you can go "back in time" to restore it from when it existed. This restoration restores just the file(s) you select and replaces any current versions with the ones plucked from Time Machine. Of course, the ones replaced are also stored in Time Machine's history and could be restored themselves. See? :)


An example: Somehow (don't know how) several original photos in my iPhoto library vanished. The thumbnails were still there, but the original photos had disappeared. So I located the folder on my computer where the originals should have been, activated Time Machine, traveled back a few weeks until I saw them appear in the Time Machine folders, and restored them. They instantly reappeared in iPhoto as well, and all was good.

[DaveF]

On a different note, I like the TM UI, it's makes otherwise a boring idea fun to use. Nobody wants to waste time backing stuff up and nobody hardly used the Apple old back up solution. By making the space theme it created a reason for people to back up because the effect is cool.
I agree completely.

I guess that Time Machine is envisioned to be used as I use it: invoked rarely, after a file is found to be unexpectedly corrupt or after an accidental deletion. This is not a workaday tool. It's something that you hope is never needed, but maybe is used every couple months.

To that end, the interface is highly efficient -- it's not a regular use tool with the efficiency of things like Expose. Rather, it's a tool with a lot of visual flair that does several powerful things:
* Indicates you're doing something different and special from normal OS X operations.

* Uses large buttons to quickly communicate the feature set (Forward & backwards in time, restore, cancel)

* Uses the progressing Finder windows to communicate the concept of going backward in time. This is the epitome of good Apple UI: graphical whiz-bang to make something sophisticated easy to grasp: progress through many, many backup states, the concept of "time travel" made visual. This reduces a complex software backup system to something understandable to anyone.

But I get the impression that some think of Time Machine as a regular tool; they want the restoration equivalent of Cmd-Z (undo) to be pressed without hesitation and without secondary graphical fluff. That's just not what the tool is.

In the long run, I think Time Machine needs to be made more efficient, rolled into Finder and made more of a mundane, worker-bee tool. But for now, this is so revolutionary it's OK to have this crazy, sexy -- and effective -- interface.

[HLdan]

I already turned it off. Never used time machine before, so why start now.



Cool, and please don't ever come back on this forum and create a thread that you accidentally deleted a file in Leopard and need to recover it or you need to restore your HDD because of a failure, no one will give a damn.

[DaveF]

I already turned it off. Never used time machine before, so why start now.

What really bothered me is that you get a choice to set what folders to back up in the options. However when you add new (big) files to those folders, it starts backing those up automatically too. I accidentally ended up backing a 4 gig file and lost about a month of my regular backups, which are only 100 mb sized. That's when I though, screw you Time Machine, I'm going home…How did a 4 GB file backup destroy a month of "regular" backups? I just can't make sense of this problem. Did it somehow overwrite data from another backup program? Or were you out of space on your Time Machine drive and it dumped older archives?

[Eraserhead]

You want a time machine Hd to be twice the size of your internal HD, I have a 300GB HD for my 175GB or so Internal Leopard drive.

You can also use Time Machine without the UI by going to the external drive/Backups.backupd/<name of computer>/<backup version>/

EDIT: To the Time Machine whiners, it isn't perfect, but it is simple and it means I have a full (current) backup pretty much every day of my laptop.

[Lord Sam]

I really don't care. It's fine, if a little sci-fi for 10 year olds.

[Topher15]

You should go to Macworld.com and read their recent TimeMachine article (http://www.macworld.com/article/132118/2008/02/timemachine1.html). Time Machine's purpose is to let you restore any file, because you deleted it or made a change to it that's undesired. So, no, deleting a file does not delete it from Time Machine -- that would defeat the whole purpose of it :) Deleting a file, of course, means it won't be backed up in future Time Machines operations. But you can go "back in time" to restore it from when it existed. This restoration restores just the file(s) you select and replaces any current versions with the ones plucked from Time Machine. Of course, the ones replaced are also stored in Time Machine's history and could be restored themselves. See? :)


An example: Somehow (don't know how) several original photos in my iPhoto library vanished. The thumbnails were still there, but the original photos had disappeared. So I located the folder on my computer where the originals should have been, activated Time Machine, traveled back a few weeks until I saw them appear in the Time Machine folders, and restored them. They instantly reappeared in iPhoto as well, and all was good.
Thanks for the explanation. :)

So how many versions of a file will Time Machine actually hold? Presumingly at time point the oldest version will be deleted from TM? Can you set how far back in time TM holds files for or is it just when the space runs out?

And since TM holds multiple versions of files, it'll need multiple times the disk space, right? So a 300GB back up with TM will require more disk space than 300GB in order to to account for the history of file version TM keeps.

Also, can you use the same drive which TM uses to manually store files.

The reason why I'm asking all these questions is because I'm looking at that size external hard drive to get. I'm thinking 750GB and using part for Time Machine and part to store files (mainly video) that I don't want on my internal drive.

[DaveF]

So how many versions of a file will Time Machine actually hold? Presumingly at time point the oldest version will be deleted from TM? Can you set how far back in time TM holds files for or is it just when the space runs out?When Time Machine is running low on space, it automatically purges older backups, starting with hourly, then daily, etc. I've still looking for a good explanation of its logic and what this means for practical use. I've not encountered it yet.

And since TM holds multiple versions of files, it'll need multiple times the disk space, right? So a 300GB back up with TM will require more disk space than 300GB in order to to account for the history of file version TM keeps.Yes & no. As said earlier, the current rule of thumb guesstimate is a time machine drive twice as large as your current drive. It depends on just what you're doing, of course. More is better for Time Machine.

But, TM doesn't actually copy every single file every backup. It only copies the changed files. So if you change a 300 MB file, that gets copied. But it won't be copied again until it's changed again. (Unchanged files are referenced by "hard links", like Aliases, to their earliest fresh copy. These take almost no space and make Time Machine look like it's copied every single file at every single backup.)

And for example: I have a 160 GB laptop drive; about 60 GB is used. My Time Machine drive is 160 GB and has used about 90 GB after four months use. When it fills up, I'll buy a 500GB or larger drive. I expect that will last a while.


Also, can you use the same drive which TM uses to manually store files.
Yes.

[Techguy172]

I like it it's neat.

[dogtanian]

Looks cool but as Steve Job's said himself, nobody can be bothered to backup! Therefore as Time Machine does not work with Air Disk and my MBP, I don't bother.

[Topher15]

When Time Machine is running low on space, it automatically purges older backups, starting with hourly, then daily, etc. I've still looking for a good explanation of its logic and what this means for practical use. I've not encountered it yet.

Yes & no. As said earlier, the current rule of thumb guesstimate is a time machine drive twice as large as your current drive. It depends on just what you're doing, of course. More is better for Time Machine.

But, TM doesn't actually copy every single file every backup. It only copies the changed files. So if you change a 300 MB file, that gets copied. But it won't be copied again until it's changed again. (Unchanged files are referenced by "hard links", like Aliases, to their earliest fresh copy. These take almost no space and make Time Machine look like it's copied every single file at every single backup.)

And for example: I have a 160 GB laptop drive; about 60 GB is used. My Time Machine drive is 160 GB and has used about 90 GB after four months use. When it fills up, I'll buy a 500GB or larger drive. I expect that will last a while.

Yes.
Cheers.

I think I'll get the 720GB one and leave about 400Gb for TM, then get a dedicated TM drive later.

[Lord Sam]

Cool, and please don't ever come back on this forum and create a thread that you accidentally deleted a file in Leopard and need to recover it or you need to restore your HDD because of a failure, no one will give a damn. Well said. Lol

[tagtagnc]

You can browse the filesystem without flying through space.

I agree.

Also, is anyone taking advantage of the option through Terminal (don't ask me for the command as you can Google it as I have forgotten the specifics) to backup to an external volume on another computer wirelessly? I've got my old PBG4 shared with an external Western Digital MyBook 500GB drive that I send backups to over an 802.11b (yes, B) network without flaws after I changed the option that Apple removed to backup wirelessly to unsupported drives configurations due to speed issues.

[tagtagnc]

Looks cool but as Steve Job's said himself, nobody can be bothered to backup! Therefore as Time Machine does not work with Air Disk and my MBP, I don't bother.

Does the MBA work as I purposed, with wireless connections? Can you change settings in Terminal to allow it to backup to a wired hard disk connected to a server or another Mac?

I'm not that familiar with the MBA so I am just throwing this out there as a possible option. Mine works just fine for over a month after a CompUSA hard drive blowout before they left town.

[cbrain]

To be honest Time Machine's UI doesn't bother me; I rarely use it.

[Sijmen]

I think it's great. But if you have a problem with it, why not just browse the partition? It's not all that obscure.

[tagtagnc]

I think it's great. But if you have a problem with it, why not just browse the partition? It's not all that obscure.

Have you had any issues backing up to a network volume since the OS 10.5.2 update? Mine has since failed along with many others I have found from searches on the Internet. The "sparsebundle" fails around 150MB and is making wireless network backups impossible. Your thoughts?

[Sijmen]

I haven't successfully created any network backup. I tried to backup from my PowerBook to my iMac, but the speed is extremely low. I had to cancel it 15% in each time.

[tagtagnc]

I haven't successfully created any network backup. I tried to backup from my PowerBook to my iMac, but the speed is extremely low. I had to cancel it 15% in each time.

Are you running 10.5.1 or 2? Mine has failed since the latest OS update.

Speed was an issue for me in 10.5.1, but I wasn't in a hurry and subsequent backups just as those wired went much more quickly.

[tagtagnc]

I haven't installed any of the updates from earlier in the week in fear this item may break again. Anyone else out there that used the workaround in grabbing the "sparebundle" as it is being created then copying back to the TM drive still working after the latest round of updates?