Intermittent Time Machine use MBP

[bogart]

MBP 500 G disk.

I use Superduper every few days - I have two disks for this and alternate them so if something screws up I at least have the previous backup.

Between these backups at the moment I have nothing. So I'm thinking to get yet another disk, maybe a powered one, and keep it on my desk and run Time Machine to catch any files changed between the superduper backups. But I travel in my work, hence macbook pro so I won't be using that disk *all* of the time. Will Time Machine work in this intermittently-connected way ? I'm presuming I will be able to just plug-in/boot the Time Machine drive when I get to my desk and have it just work backing up what's changed while I've been away. Will this work ?

If not, any other suggestions for something that will do incremental file backups (i.e. only what's changed - like a file level rsync) intermittently and without fuss ?

andy

 

[Jolly Giant]

Will Time Machine work in this intermittently-connected way ?

probably, but not very well. you may find that TM is occasionally doing full backups rather than incremental ones if used in this way.

TM is designed to make hourly backups.

If not, any other suggestions for something that will do incremental file backups (i.e. only what's changed - like a file level rsync) intermittently and without fuss ?

CCC (as well as SD) will do that (for instance, it can be configured to make an incremental backup "when the destination drive is mounted"). also there is ChronoSync.

 

[bogart]

ChronoSync[/b].

Thanks - I had a look at CCC - I can't see it as any advantage over SD. My point is that to be useful it has to just work when plugged in with no action at all required from the user, otherwise I may as well just do SD backups more frequently. So what I want is something that just works continuously, like Time Machine, but also doesn't fuss if I unmount/stop/eject the drive and later plug it in again, without thinking about what its doing, so if the machine goes down a few days from an SD backup. Maybe SD can be configured to do that when a particular drive is plugged in but behave in a different way with a different drive ? I don't think it can but I'll be pleased to be corrected (would save me money).

Also - something badly missing (IMHO) is this - if I have a (well 2) previous SD full mirror backup(s) I don't actually need a third full backup for the files between, I just need the changed files - which of course would occupy much less space than the originals + deltas. It could be done because files have timestamps. Is there any software that does that (Stores the full backup on one drive and deltas on a different drive) ?

andy