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Is my Time Machine working...?

L

(L)SD

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Dec 17, 2010
23
0
Texas
I have an external drive connected (Free Agent) to a Mac Mini (10.5.8) When I open the Free Agent and start T.Machine, it shows, for instance, what's on the desktop currently of the Mini. Then I started deleting from the Mini desktop, to clear it up, but the Free Agent's most recent Desktop (today, NOW) also shows those items deleting...are the videos on my Mini desktop actually backed up on the Free Agent, or is it just some kind of 'virtual mirror' of the Mini, not really permanently backed up? Do I have to drag/drop everything I want to save to the Free Agent, or will that give me duplicate backups?
(L)SD - Dallas:eek:
 
I believe what Time Machine shows you as "NOW" is, indeed, now--it's not actually showing you the backup at all. The way to test would be to go back one backup and confirm that the deleted items are present in Time Machine, which they should be.

Keep in mind that Time Machine only backs up once an hour, so if you create, then delete, a file in between two backups, it will not appear in Time Machine. So if you wanted to test that it was working, you should create a file, wait an hour, then delete it and see if it appears in the previous TM backup.

You can tell when Time Machine is actually running, by the way, because the little icon in the menu bar at top right will start spinning the clock hands backwards. Depending on how many files you've modified since the last backup, this might not take long, and it happens in the background so it's easy not to notice (that's the idea, of course). I think you can also initiate an immediate backup manually, if you're feeling paranoid, but that might only be an option (it'd be in the menu you get by clicking the icon in the menu bar) if you have Time Machine configured to run manually only.
 
(L)SD said:
I have an external drive connected (Free Agent) to a Mac Mini (10.5.8) When I open the Free Agent and start T.Machine, it shows, for instance, what's on the desktop currently of the Mini. Then I started deleting from the Mini desktop, to clear it up, but the Free Agent's most recent Desktop (today, NOW) also shows those items deleting...are the videos on my Mini desktop actually backed up on the Free Agent, or is it just some kind of 'virtual mirror' of the Mini, not really permanently backed up? Do I have to drag/drop everything I want to save to the Free Agent, or will that give me duplicate backups?
(L)SD - Dallas:eek:
Click to expand...

That's what it should do. As of _now_ you deleted them. Move the slider on the right to a previous date (i.e. back in time) and they should show.
 
Do you have the disk that time machine saves to hooked up and on all the time. So every hour time machine runs and backs the disk on your mini up.

If that is the case and you have it configured correctly everything should be find.

Time Machine saves everything until the disk is full then it deletes the oldest backups. So if your oldest backup is 6 month old... you could retrieve a file that you deleted 5 months ago.

To check enter time machine. You get the starfield and the endless line of finder windows... On the right hand side you see a scale of time. If you wanted to restore something from months ago.. clicking on that scale and traversing the finder window that pops up would allow you to do that.
 
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