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Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard's Time Machine

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Apr 12, 2001
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AppleInsider explores the new Time Machine backup feature in the upcoming Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard.
Time Machine is one of the most visually prominent new features demonstrated in Mac OS X Leopard, even if the core idea of backups is as old -- or perhaps older -- than the concept of having any data worthy of being restored. Here's a look at what's new and different about Apple's approach with Time Machine, why backups are a problem to be solved, and how well Leopard's new Time Machine actually works in practice.
Click to expand...

The article goes into some depth as the workings of Apple's backup solution. Apple also discusses Time Machine on their site and provides a QuickTime video demonstrating the new feature.

Mac OS X Leopard is expected to be released later this month. Gold Master was expected to be declared this week, but we've not yet heard an update on this status.

Article Link
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2007/10/12/mac-os-x-10-5-leopards-time-machine/
Much Ado

Much Ado

macrumors 68000
Sep 7, 2006
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The one app that really makes Leopard attractive, and it's a back-up solution.

Funny how it goes, isn't it?
 
W

w00master

macrumors 65816
Jul 18, 2002
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Awesome article. For me, Time Machine is my *most* anticipated new feature of Leopard. I can't wait to get my hands on it. However, I do have some questions that hopefully peeps on here can answer:

1. Approximately how much space is this going to take up as time goes on? Is there anyway to "stop" Time machine after a period of time for certain areas and/or time periods?

2. Can you create a backup of the Time Machine Backup?

3. How do you do a full restore if your main system crashes?


w00master
 
~Shard~

~Shard~

macrumors P6
Jun 4, 2003
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w00master said:
Awesome article. For me, Time Machine is my *most* anticipated new feature of Leopard. I can't wait to get my hands on it. However, I do have some questions that hopefully peeps on here can answer:

1. Approximately how much space is this going to take up as time goes on? Is there anyway to "stop" Time machine after a period of time for certain areas and/or time periods?

2. Can you create a backup of the Time Machine Backup?

3. How do you do a full restore if your main system crashes?
Click to expand...

You'll find the answers to all your quesitons and more in our dedicated Time Machine FAQ. :cool:


Multimedia said:
Wow what an advanced concept. :rolleyes:
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Your contributions are always appreciated Multimedia. :rolleyes: :p
 
B

BrianMojo

macrumors regular
Jul 10, 2006
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Boston, MA
Multimedia said:
Wow what an advanced concept. :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

Read the article and you'll see why the technology behind it makes it an advanced concept, or at the very least makes backing up as easy and intuitive as it should be (Gasp! Apple making something that's already standard more easy and intuitive and thereby improving the experience greatly? Who would've guessed?).
 
MongoTheGeek

MongoTheGeek

macrumors 68040
Sep 13, 2003
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Its not so much where you are as when you are.
Multimedia said:
Wow what an advanced concept. :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

What's advanced is how easy and idiot proof it is, along with versioning.

I'm running the beta and it's saved my ass once.

I know, yada, yada, not for production, yada.

As for backing up the backup, I don't know. I guess you could point its save disk at another machine that is running it, or do a "normal" backup on that machine.
 
P

pmade

macrumors newbie
Jul 17, 2007
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I just purchased a 750GB SATA drive for my Mac Pro in anticipation of Time Machine ;)
 
ricosuave

ricosuave

macrumors 6502
Mar 27, 2007
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In front of my mac
MongoTheGeek said:
What's advanced is how easy and idiot proof it is, along with versioning.

I'm running the beta and it's saved my ass once.

I know, yada, yada, not for production, yada.

As for backing up the backup, I don't know. I guess you could point its save disk at another machine that is running it, or do a "normal" backup on that machine.
Click to expand...

I think he meant use the backup of the time machine data. Sure you can make a copy of the data. Time Machine creates a folder called Backups.backupdb where ever you decide to back up to. However, I do not see a preferece in the settings to use the backed up copy of such database.
 
pgwalsh

pgwalsh

macrumors 68000
Jun 21, 2002
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I am definitely looking forward to time machine and think it will be one of the most useful features in Leopard.

One question is: Will it makes it unnecessary to have a mirror raid? Not talking striped raid, just mirrored.
 
OllyW

OllyW

Moderator
Staff member
Oct 11, 2005
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The Black Country, England
thejadedmonkey said:
I just looked. All I found was this.
Click to expand...

Did you miss this?

19) Does TM makes bootable backups?

I'm going to guess that due to the way TM keeps track of how your HD looked through history I believe that the TM backup is some large database of files/folders. This would mean it's probably not bootable but the Leopard install CD has an option to restore a disk from TM BUD (confirmed by c-Row).
Click to expand...
 
E

edoates

macrumors 6502
May 22, 2006
299
6
w00master said:
Awesome article.
...
2. Can you create a backup of the Time Machine Backup?

3. How do you do a full restore if your main system crashes?


w00master
Click to expand...

2. Maybe you could use SuperDuper! or some other cloning backup utility.
3. No one seems to know. And that is the big question for me, as well.

I use SuperDuper! now because the incremental backup feature (Smart Backup) is easy to implement and schedule to run in the middle of the night. For the 700,000 files on my system disk, it takes abut 13 minutes to run after a day of normal activity (essentially, the time to scan the directories for changes).

The beauty of SD is that it makes a bootable copy of your system drive, so recovery is simply "boot off of the clone, and do another SD copy back to your now fixed system drive." It is also possible to use Disk Utility "Restore" and boot from the OS X installation DVD. Each of those takes about the same time to restore (a few hours for a couple of hundred gigabytes and hundreds of thousands of files).

Time Machine gives us a pretty neat way to restore old versions of files or to get deleted files back. To me, that's the main attraction: a new "versioning" system which operates better than the old VAX/VMS versions. They worked OK, but a delete was a delete. With time machine, one has not only old versions, but deleted copies, too.

So, who knows how "restore" works from a catastrophic failure?

Eddie O
 
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