Clarification needed with Time Machine

[Kadin]

With regards to Time Machine keeping one daily and weekly backup for anything past 24hrs, what happens when you make multiple modifications to files throughout a given day?

For example, let's say I add files or delete some from a directory once an hour for an entire 24hr period (which is roughly 24 backups). Does TM keep one large snapshot of the entire state for that period in time for it's single 'daily' backup?

Where I'm getting confused is if you have so many changes within say a week, yet TM only keeps one instance of that week, does it simply condense every change into that 'one' copy it keeps? Hope that makes sense...

 

[Tomorrow]

For example, let's say I add files or delete some from a directory once an hour for an entire 24hr period (which is roughly 24 backups). Does TM keep one large snapshot of the entire state for that period in time for it's single 'daily' backup?

No, it keeps hourly backups for the past 24 hours (only if a file has changed). So if you make multiple changes to a file today, it will make a separate copy of it at each hourly interval that it senses a change. If you wait until tomorrow, you'll have only one copy from today's work, because hourly copies are only kept for the current day, then copies are kept daily farther back than that.

 

[Kadin]

No, it keeps hourly backups for the past 24 hours (only if a file has changed). So if you make multiple changes to a file today, it will make a separate copy of it at each hourly interval that it senses a change. If you wait until tomorrow, you'll have only one copy from today's work, because hourly copies are only kept for the current day, then copies are kept daily farther back than that.

Sorry if I'm not understanding the response... I'm a tad under the weather today. So let me make an example just to confirm my understanding.

Let's say I take 'Document A' and edit it at 1pm today. This file is backed up with my normal hourly backup. Then at 3pm I edit it again which is then backed up. I then edit it later again at say 6pm and lastly at 10pm. So let's say 4 different modifications to this file within this 24hr period.

Fast forward to next Wed (9 days later). I realize I need the 3pm version back as the data from 6/10pm were incorrect. Can I get back to that version? Or will the 10pm version be the only one I have access to?

 

[aicul]

You can get the version you want. But...

1. After a week only weekly backups are kept, and also monthly, and the oldest monthly backup is scrapped once disk space is used up.

2. don't confuse dopcument versioning with backups. Timecapsule is for backups.

 

[Tomorrow]

Let's say I take 'Document A' and edit it at 1pm today. This file is backed up with my normal hourly backup. Then at 3pm I edit it again which is then backed up. I then edit it later again at say 6pm and lastly at 10pm. So let's say 4 different modifications to this file within this 24hr period.

Fast forward to next Wed (9 days later). I realize I need the 3pm version back as the data from 6/10pm were incorrect. Can I get back to that version? Or will the 10pm version be the only one I have access to?

I would not rely on Time Machine to do this. You need to be making and saving multiple copies.

 

[Kadin]

I would not rely on Time Machine to do this. You need to be making and saving multiple copies.

Thanks to both of you for your responses. Yeah I would obviously not do this directly, I simply used this as an example so I could understand the fundamental way the backup system worked. I appreciate shedding the light for me...

 

[GabooN]

Time Machine keeps 1 per hour for last 24 hours, 1 per day for past month, and 1 per week for the previous months.

So I'm assuming that it would save every file that was within a week period, and merge them into a single week backup, but with the most current version of each file that is contained within that week?

Just curious to confirm.

I realize Time Machine is more for the case where you lost the file completely and would like to get it back, as opposed to a version backup file.
The new features in Lion will compliment time machine nicely. It is like a smaller scale time machine for the individual file you are working on, contained on your internal drive without having to be at home and connected to your time machine drive.