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HiFiGuy528

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Jul 24, 2008
1,876
65
I have 320GB to use as backup drive with Time Machine. Do you think it is beneficial to backup OS X or should I skip it to save space? I do have the reinstall OS X disc.
 
Your reinstall disks don't include documents/photos/music.... yes backing up is essential. I don't use Time Machine though- SuperDuper! is my choice.
 
I backup "System" just so that I have a seamless integration with Mac OS X. Personal experience.... Migration is really erratic and doesnt work the way it should! And dragging data all the way from your backup is too painful! Besides, if you dont do a Mac OS X backup, you wont get the full extent of prefs and other tweaked settings as You CANNOT replace your new User Library with the backed up version unless you also replace the System folder (Which you cant). Both are Linked!

What I dont backup is Applications and Caches (Change every hour)
 
Your reinstall disks don't include documents/photos/music.... yes backing up is essential. I don't use Time Machine though- SuperDuper! is my choice.

He doesnt mean "to backup or not" He means "What to backup"! He's asking whether to backup the Mac OS X System folder or not!
 
^ in Time Machine with default prefs go to your cache folders and then youll see they are not backed up by default as the folders back in time go black. also search for "cache" in that article youll see a poster says that caches arent backed up by default.
 
My preference. Drives are cheap. Get a big one, let Time Machine backup everything. And then forget about it. Works for me. Sure, periodically I'll use Carbon Copy Cloner to just do a full image in another drive. Never used it. But I like having double backups just in case.

Still like TM better though.
 
I decided to basically backup my User folder, and not worry about the rest. I can always reload OS X, and I just wanted to have my personal data backed up.

I've done this on all of my machines, and it works for me. Others may want to backup the entire drive, but for my purposes, it would be over kill, and it would take larger drives than I have...
 
^ in Time Machine with default prefs go to your cache folders and then youll see they are not backed up by default as the folders back in time go black. also search for "cache" in that article youll see a poster says that caches arent backed up by default.

Hmmm... thats strange! Why would they mention then to manually exclude it?
And ars is never hesitant to edit their articles!:confused:
Anyways.... sorry if Im wrong!
 
I personally back up everything with time machine, but occasionally I will use superduper to make a image file of the harddrive just for extra security. You never know what could happen.

So far time machine has been great though.

Zack
 
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