Fulle Backup of Mac OS X with Time Machine.

[wyattbiker]

The Apple store sales person told me that I cannot backup my installed applications nor the OS with Time Machine. I have the latest version of Leopard. Lets say my hard disk crashes. Do I have to reinstall all the apps from scratch? Is there a backup program other than Time Machine? Should I be using dd?

Thanks

 

[r.j.s]

They lied.

TM does a full back up of the hard drive.

 

[Tallest Skil]

Was it an actual Apple Store? if so, he needs fired, as he's a complete liar.

You can do everything he said you couldn't. Don't worry about that.

 

[RoninXI]

They do need fired. Not only CAN it but it is set to do that by default...

 

[wyattbiker]

They do need fired. Not only CAN it but it is set to do that by default...

Thanks guys. Yes, a real brick and mortar store. I knew there was something suspicious with him. He was anal and pretended to know everything. Would snap at me. I am finding out a lot of those guys who work on the floor only know surface stuff.

 

[justahaze]

Thanks for the previous posts

I am a switcher and I'm looking for answers to my questions such as these about a full and complete Time Machine backup of the entire contents of my 200 gb hd. What capacity drive do I need to buy? A video on YouTube said I needed to get an external that is at least twice the capacity of the internal HD. Is it true that I need to buy an external firewire drive that is formatted specifically for mac? Also, I have a MBP intel 2.4, 2 gb ram, 15" 200 gb HD. Can anyone suggest which model of external HD would be a good choice?

 

[Mal]

I am a switcher and I'm looking for answers to my questions such as these about a full and complete Time Machine backup of the entire contents of my 200 gb hd. What capacity drive do I need to buy? A video on YouTube said I needed to get an external that is at least twice the capacity of the internal HD. Is it true that I need to buy an external firewire drive that is formatted specifically for mac? Also, I have a MBP intel 2.4, 2 gb ram, 15" 200 gb HD. Can anyone suggest which model of external HD would be a good choice?

Buy any drive that is big enough to hold your data and the changes you expect to make to it in a reasonable amount of time. 1 1/2 to 2 times is a good guideline. Any brand will do pretty much, I've had good success with an AcomData drive at home, and we have good success with Western Digital and Lacie drives at work, so just find one that has a good balance between price and warranty (a three year warranty is nice, just don't pay too much extra or it's not worth it).

jW

 

[jw2002]

They lied.

TM does a full back up of the hard drive.

I would say they were 99.99% lying. However, it is most definitely not a full backup of the drive. While Time Machine does back up system directories and files, there exist a number of items that are never backed up (see /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd.bundle/Contents/Resources/StdExclusions.plist). Most of those exclusions are no-brainers - caches and block devices for instance which don't make sense to back up. Certain logs, core dump files, and all of /tmp space are never backed up -- not that anyone would want to recover those. Anyways, a fully working System with all accounts can be fully recovered from a Time Machine back up. But the recovery will not be a full "carbon copy" of the original.

 

[petermcphee]

I would say they were 99.99% lying. However, it is most definitely not a full backup of the drive. While Time Machine does back up system directories and files, there exist a number of items that are never backed up (see /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd.bundle/Contents/Resources/StdExclusions.plist). Most of those exclusions are no-brainers - caches and block devices for instance which don't make sense to back up. Certain logs, core dump files, and all of /tmp space are never backed up -- not that anyone would want to recover those. Anyways, a fully working System with all accounts can be fully recovered from a Time Machine back up. But the recovery will not be a full "carbon copy" of the original.

For that, you could use something called Carbon Copy Cloner. I have not used it myself, but I've read that it creates a perfect backup of the entire drive, system files and all.

 

[r.j.s]

For that, you could use something called Carbon Copy Cloner. I have not used it myself, but I've read that it creates a perfect backup of the entire drive, system files and all.

It does, and it works, but like he said - those files aren't worth the effort.