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AWESOME time machine idea, help me feedback to make it happen!!

bluedoggiant

bluedoggiant

macrumors 68030
Original poster
Well, I thought it would be cool if we can be able to "flag" our backups. So just in case, we lose a file, instead of going into Time Machine on a frantic chase for it, and you don't know which back up its in, you can flag the latest copy so you know where it is, and if you lose it, you can like click this flag to get to it!! wouldn't that be cool? feedback to apple here:
http://www.apple.com/feedback/macosx.html
 
I don't understand. How would I know in advance what files I was going to unexpectedly lose?

As for "chasing" Time Machine backups to find the most recent one -- that's exactly the problem it solves. Enter TM and it shows starts up at the latest backup. Clicking the arrows step you through changes to (fairly) easily find the file revision you want.
 
When you are in time machine, I think you can use the spotlight to search the backup. I think that is Apple's answer.
 
yeah spotlight within Time Machine is THE way to find the file.

i think an awesome idea would to add an option in Time Machine's preferences to do scheduled backups instead of backing up every hour. you could if you wanted edit that system file (can remember which) to make the backups every x hours or even every day but thats not very user friendly.

some "power" users might like the idea of not backing up every hour and like only backing up every day or week. for the people who want the original Time Machine way of backing up they could not tick scheduled backups. think of it as 'bookmarks'.

something i just threw together quickly in photoshop. naturally Apple would explain how Time Machine backs up normally in that text that i covered and then add an explanation of scheduled backups.

119xor8.jpg
 
richthomas said:
yeah spotlight within Time Machine is THE way to find the file.

i think an awesome idea would to add an option in Time Machine's preferences to do scheduled backups instead of backing up every hour. you could if you wanted edit that system file (can remember which) to make the backups every x hours or even every day but thats not very user friendly.

some "power" users might like the idea of not backing up every hour and like only backing up every day or week. for the people who want the original Time Machine way of backing up they could not tick scheduled backups. think of it as 'bookmarks'.

something i just threw together quickly in photoshop. naturally Apple would explain how Time Machine backs up normally in that text that i covered and then add an explanation of scheduled backups.

[snip]
Click to expand...

see i love that idea. along with that i have always wanted the option to chose what you want to back up, not what you don't want to back up. some people don't want everything backed up all the time, just certain folders. if they would do these two things, time machine would be even better imho
 
Nugget said:
Yeah, I have no idea what you're trying to say.
Click to expand...

So we force a backup from the time machine menu, and just in case we lose the file, and the folder its in always gets updated, you can flag the file in the backup, or flag the entire backup.
 
How do you search within Time Machine backups? I tried typing a search in the search box in the Finder window in Time Machine (other than the frontmost "Now" window) which turned up nothing. I couldn't search for a file I deleted a week ago. Is there a way to do this?

I'd like TM to log what it backs up each time. On occasion while watching the TM progress window I see that the backup is much bigger than I expect, and I'd like to be able to figure out what the huge backup contains. TM has glitched a few times, and I'd be nice to have a better idea of what it's actually doing.
 
Not to hijack the thread, but can someone explain how Time Machine actually works?

I understand that it makes an image of our hard drive for every set time... but won't those multiple images take a lot of space? For example:

80gb used out of 320 on a harddisk. With time machine, the mac is hooked to an external hd, with shall we say 320gb too. Does this mean that only 4 images of the hard disk can be made? Even on Window's System Restore I'm abit confused about this.

Or is there some algorithm involved?

Thanks.
 
Luzzio said:
Not to hijack the thread, but can someone explain how Time Machine actually works?

I understand that it makes an image of our hard drive for every set time... but won't those multiple images take a lot of space? For example:

80gb used out of 320 on a harddisk. With time machine, the mac is hooked to an external hd, with shall we say 320gb too. Does this mean that only 4 images of the hard disk can be made? Even on Window's System Restore I'm abit confused about this.

Or is there some algorithm involved?

Thanks.
Click to expand...

If nothing changed then it makes an alias. which takes like no more than 1MB.
 
So what exactly would be flagged? Would it automatically flag something that was recently deleted? Or would the user have to flag a very important file and, if anything happens to it, you can pull it up in the time machine folder? I really don't get what you are trying to say here.
 
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