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Does Time Machine back up "ALL" fiiles?

marc55

marc55

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Oct 14, 2011
872
283
Not sure what files Time Machine backs up.

Does it back up:
Family Tree Maker program and it's data files?
MS Office program and it's data files?

The reason I ask is more and more programs are downloadable now with no back up disc's.

Any other insight will be appreciated.

Thank you
 
Time Machine backs up your entire hard drive, including apps, user files for all users and system files, unless you specifically exclude something.
 
priitv8 said:
And it's smart enough to not back up any volatile junk like temp folders, caches etc.
Click to expand...

On the contrary: a complete backup enables you to restore to the exact state that existed before a drive failed, or other serious event. Caches and temp files may be crucial to the state you want to restore. As caches serve to improve performance, deleting them or excluding them from backups can result in decreased performance while such caches are being rebuilt. It's better to back up everything.
 
OK, so I'm understanding it backs up and restores everything, and that's great if your current SSD takes a dump.

What if you got a new MBP, you surely wouldn't want to restore completely as the drivers may be different; so how would you handle that?
 
marc55 said:
OK, so I'm understanding it backs up and restores everything, and that's great if your current SSD takes a dump.

What if you got a new MBP, you surely wouldn't want to restore completely as the drivers may be different; so how would you handle that?
Click to expand...
You can selectively restore items, excluding what you don't want.
 
priitv8 said:
And it's smart enough to not back up any volatile junk like temp folders, caches etc.
Click to expand...

Yes most of that stuff is needless clutter

One program I use actually store all it's app data in a cache folder. Very bad idea, I only realised when I wiped the computer and lost all my work.
 
GGJstudios said:
On the contrary: a complete backup enables you to restore to the exact state that existed before a drive failed, or other serious event. Caches and temp files may be crucial to the state you want to restore. As caches serve to improve performance, deleting them or excluding them from backups can result in decreased performance while such caches are being rebuilt. It's better to back up everything.
Click to expand...

I believe, however, that it doesn't back up the trash, which might be useful to know for some people.
 
GGJstudios said:
On the contrary: a complete backup enables you to restore to the exact state that existed before a drive failed
Click to expand...

Not exactly. To get things back to the exact way they were before you need to restore from TM backup and then run the OS X installer once again, since the TM backup does not save the recovery partition, which is necessary if you want to turn on Find My Mac.
 
JohnDoe98 said:
Not exactly. To get things back to the exact way they were before you need to restore from TM backup and then run the OS X installer once again, since the TM backup does not save the recovery partition, which is necessary if you want to turn on Find My Mac.
Click to expand...
I know TM doesn't backup the recovery partition. That's one of the many reasons I don't use it. I prefer CCC for backups for that reason, as CCC makes a bootable clone of the drive, including the recovery partition. It also backs up the Trash if anyone should ever want to do that.
 
GGJstudios said:
I know TM doesn't backup the recovery partition. That's one of the many reasons I don't use it. I prefer CCC for backups for that reason, as CCC makes a bootable clone of the drive, including the recovery partition. It also backs up the Trash if anyone should ever want to do that.
Click to expand...

Nice tip, didn't know that about CCC. Can you set it up to do periodic backups?
 
GGJstudios said:
On the contrary: a complete backup enables you to restore to the exact state that existed before a drive failed, or other serious event. Caches and temp files may be crucial to the state you want to restore.
Click to expand...
Even if it might be so in theory, TM doesn't do that. Volatile files would also unnecessarily increase the size of backup. This discussion confirms that my memory served me well, this time ;)
The problem with restoring WIP to state before incident, Apple tries to address with AutoSave and Document Versions. However, developers need to mod their apps to take advantage of those features.
 
JohnDoe98 said:
Not exactly. To get things back to the exact way they were before you need to restore from TM backup and then run the OS X installer once again, since the TM backup does not save the recovery partition, which is necessary if you want to turn on Find My Mac.
Click to expand...

GGJstudios said:
I know TM doesn't backup the recovery partition. That's one of the many reasons I don't use it. I prefer CCC for backups for that reason, as CCC makes a bootable clone of the drive, including the recovery partition. It also backs up the Trash if anyone should ever want to do that.
Click to expand...

Since Lion 10.7.2 Time Machine does save and restore the recovery partition. You can put in a blank hard drive and option key boot to a local Time Machine backup and the recovery partition, OS, apps and data can all be restored to the new drive.
 
I was reading about time machine, and as I understand it, I cannot use Time Machine to back up to an external USB drive like a Passport.

It sounded like I could only use Time Machine with Time Capsule?

Am I understanding it correctly?

Thank you
 
marc55 said:
I was reading about time machine, and as I understand it, I cannot use Time Machine to back up to an external USB drive like a Passport.

It sounded like I could only use Time Machine with Time Capsule?

Am I understanding it correctly?

Thank you
Click to expand...

You can use TM with whatever you want
 
marc55 said:
I was reading about time machine, and as I understand it, I cannot use Time Machine to back up to an external USB drive like a Passport.

It sounded like I could only use Time Machine with Time Capsule?

Am I understanding it correctly?

Thank you
Click to expand...

Time machine works well with USB drives, time capsule, and OS X server shares. It works with some NAS devices. It seems to work with USB drives attached to an AirPort Extreme but many report problems with corrupted backups.

I alternate backups between a Synology NAS, a OS X server, and a local USB drive (for taking offsite). All work well. My wife had issues with a Toshiba drive that would go I to sleep mode and screw up time machine. Swapped it with a Seagate and it has done fine.
 
It backs up everything it needs to fully restore your computer and applications.

Behind the scenes it doesn't need to actually back up everything because some system files are temporary/cache and don't need to be restored.
 
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