Ever wish Time Machine™ didn't have that interface?

[DaveF]

I already turned it off. Never used time machine before, so why start now.

What really bothered me is that you get a choice to set what folders to back up in the options. However when you add new (big) files to those folders, it starts backing those up automatically too. I accidentally ended up backing a 4 gig file and lost about a month of my regular backups, which are only 100 mb sized. That's when I though, screw you Time Machine, I'm going home…

How did a 4 GB file backup destroy a month of "regular" backups? I just can't make sense of this problem. Did it somehow overwrite data from another backup program? Or were you out of space on your Time Machine drive and it dumped older archives?

 

[Eraserhead]

You want a time machine Hd to be twice the size of your internal HD, I have a 300GB HD for my 175GB or so Internal Leopard drive.

You can also use Time Machine without the UI by going to the external drive/Backups.backupd/<name of computer>/<backup version>/

EDIT: To the Time Machine whiners, it isn't perfect, but it is simple and it means I have a full (current) backup pretty much every day of my laptop.

 

[Lord Sam]

I really don't care. It's fine, if a little sci-fi for 10 year olds.

 

[Topher15]

You should go to Macworld.com and read their recent TimeMachine article. Time Machine's purpose is to let you restore any file, because you deleted it or made a change to it that's undesired. So, no, deleting a file does not delete it from Time Machine -- that would defeat the whole purpose of it 🙂 Deleting a file, of course, means it won't be backed up in future Time Machines operations. But you can go "back in time" to restore it from when it existed. This restoration restores just the file(s) you select and replaces any current versions with the ones plucked from Time Machine. Of course, the ones replaced are also stored in Time Machine's history and could be restored themselves. See? 🙂


An example: Somehow (don't know how) several original photos in my iPhoto library vanished. The thumbnails were still there, but the original photos had disappeared. So I located the folder on my computer where the originals should have been, activated Time Machine, traveled back a few weeks until I saw them appear in the Time Machine folders, and restored them. They instantly reappeared in iPhoto as well, and all was good.

Thanks for the explanation. 🙂

So how many versions of a file will Time Machine actually hold? Presumingly at time point the oldest version will be deleted from TM? Can you set how far back in time TM holds files for or is it just when the space runs out?

And since TM holds multiple versions of files, it'll need multiple times the disk space, right? So a 300GB back up with TM will require more disk space than 300GB in order to to account for the history of file version TM keeps.

Also, can you use the same drive which TM uses to manually store files.

The reason why I'm asking all these questions is because I'm looking at that size external hard drive to get. I'm thinking 750GB and using part for Time Machine and part to store files (mainly video) that I don't want on my internal drive.

 

[DaveF]

So how many versions of a file will Time Machine actually hold? Presumingly at time point the oldest version will be deleted from TM? Can you set how far back in time TM holds files for or is it just when the space runs out?

When Time Machine is running low on space, it automatically purges older backups, starting with hourly, then daily, etc. I've still looking for a good explanation of its logic and what this means for practical use. I've not encountered it yet.

And since TM holds multiple versions of files, it'll need multiple times the disk space, right? So a 300GB back up with TM will require more disk space than 300GB in order to to account for the history of file version TM keeps.

Yes & no. As said earlier, the current rule of thumb guesstimate is a time machine drive twice as large as your current drive. It depends on just what you're doing, of course. More is better for Time Machine.

But, TM doesn't actually copy every single file every backup. It only copies the changed files. So if you change a 300 MB file, that gets copied. But it won't be copied again until it's changed again. (Unchanged files are referenced by "hard links", like Aliases, to their earliest fresh copy. These take almost no space and make Time Machine look like it's copied every single file at every single backup.)

And for example: I have a 160 GB laptop drive; about 60 GB is used. My Time Machine drive is 160 GB and has used about 90 GB after four months use. When it fills up, I'll buy a 500GB or larger drive. I expect that will last a while.

Also, can you use the same drive which TM uses to manually store files.

Yes.

 

[Techguy172]

I like it it's neat.

 

[dogtanian]

Looks cool but as Steve Job's said himself, nobody can be bothered to backup! Therefore as Time Machine does not work with Air Disk and my MBP, I don't bother.

 

[Topher15]

When Time Machine is running low on space, it automatically purges older backups, starting with hourly, then daily, etc. I've still looking for a good explanation of its logic and what this means for practical use. I've not encountered it yet.

Yes & no. As said earlier, the current rule of thumb guesstimate is a time machine drive twice as large as your current drive. It depends on just what you're doing, of course. More is better for Time Machine.

But, TM doesn't actually copy every single file every backup. It only copies the changed files. So if you change a 300 MB file, that gets copied. But it won't be copied again until it's changed again. (Unchanged files are referenced by "hard links", like Aliases, to their earliest fresh copy. These take almost no space and make Time Machine look like it's copied every single file at every single backup.)

And for example: I have a 160 GB laptop drive; about 60 GB is used. My Time Machine drive is 160 GB and has used about 90 GB after four months use. When it fills up, I'll buy a 500GB or larger drive. I expect that will last a while.

Yes.

Cheers.

I think I'll get the 720GB one and leave about 400Gb for TM, then get a dedicated TM drive later.

 

[Lord Sam]

Cool, and please don't ever come back on this forum and create a thread that you accidentally deleted a file in Leopard and need to recover it or you need to restore your HDD because of a failure, no one will give a damn.

Well said. Lol

 

[tagtagnc]

You can browse the filesystem without flying through space.

I agree.

Also, is anyone taking advantage of the option through Terminal (don't ask me for the command as you can Google it as I have forgotten the specifics) to backup to an external volume on another computer wirelessly? I've got my old PBG4 shared with an external Western Digital MyBook 500GB drive that I send backups to over an 802.11b (yes, B) network without flaws after I changed the option that Apple removed to backup wirelessly to unsupported drives configurations due to speed issues.

 

[tagtagnc]

Looks cool but as Steve Job's said himself, nobody can be bothered to backup! Therefore as Time Machine does not work with Air Disk and my MBP, I don't bother.

Does the MBA work as I purposed, with wireless connections? Can you change settings in Terminal to allow it to backup to a wired hard disk connected to a server or another Mac?

I'm not that familiar with the MBA so I am just throwing this out there as a possible option. Mine works just fine for over a month after a CompUSA hard drive blowout before they left town.

 

[cbrain]

To be honest Time Machine's UI doesn't bother me; I rarely use it.

 

[Sijmen]

I think it's great. But if you have a problem with it, why not just browse the partition? It's not all that obscure.

 

[tagtagnc]

I think it's great. But if you have a problem with it, why not just browse the partition? It's not all that obscure.

Have you had any issues backing up to a network volume since the OS 10.5.2 update? Mine has since failed along with many others I have found from searches on the Internet. The "sparsebundle" fails around 150MB and is making wireless network backups impossible. Your thoughts?

 

[Sijmen]

I haven't successfully created any network backup. I tried to backup from my PowerBook to my iMac, but the speed is extremely low. I had to cancel it 15% in each time.

 

[tagtagnc]

I haven't successfully created any network backup. I tried to backup from my PowerBook to my iMac, but the speed is extremely low. I had to cancel it 15% in each time.

Are you running 10.5.1 or 2? Mine has failed since the latest OS update.

Speed was an issue for me in 10.5.1, but I wasn't in a hurry and subsequent backups just as those wired went much more quickly.

 

[tagtagnc]

Backup Still Working... But...

I haven't installed any of the updates from earlier in the week in fear this item may break again. Anyone else out there that used the workaround in grabbing the "sparebundle" as it is being created then copying back to the TM drive still working after the latest round of updates?