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Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard's Time Machine
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DavidLeblond
macrumors 68020
So does this mean that my iMac, my iBook, and my wife's Macbook Pro can all hook up to a firewire disk connected to my iMac to backup without me having to create 3 partitions?
Ho-hum, this type of feature is available in many web based programs (i.e. wikipedia, google docs, etc) already. Yeah, sure it's now built into the OS but at what cost? Space? Speed? Internal HDs are not limitless and heaven knows not officially upgradeable. Sure looks like this OS has nice eye candy but I'm just not seeing HUGE improvements in productivity (kinda like the iPhone).
Don't get me wrong. I'll be in line on day 1 (hope it's not November, December or January 1). I just wish for some company would produce an efficient, stable, good looking OS for business.
Don't get me wrong. I'll be in line on day 1 (hope it's not November, December or January 1). I just wish for some company would produce an efficient, stable, good looking OS for business.
SiliconAddict
macrumors 603
The thing about Leopard and Vista? Seagate, Toshiba, Western Digital, Maxtor et al must just love these OS's to death with these new space gobbling features. My _guess_ is that an external 500GB hard drive MAY last 2-3 years before it gets full depending on how much work you do on your system.
I'm not saying this is a bad thing. Distaster recovery being provided to the masses is a "Good Thing". Just that its going to be expensive.
I'm not saying this is a bad thing. Distaster recovery being provided to the masses is a "Good Thing". Just that its going to be expensive.
Lepton
macrumors 6502a
Time machine makes regular copies of the files it backs up - it doesn't compress them. And if you have a large file and make one tiny change, the whole file is re-backed up. The advantage is, you can look through the archives yourself if you want to and just drag a backup onto your regular disk to get it back. The disadvantage is the space it takes.
When the backup disk gets full, it will warn you when the disk doesn't have much room left. You can just tell it to start backing up to another disk. It won't lose track. Otherwise, you can just let it start deleting the oldest backups automatically, in this way it keeps a rolling backup of however much it can fit on the backup disk. Remember, it keeps hourly backups of the last 24 hours, daily backups of the last week, and as many weekly backups as it can fit on the disk. If you don't give it a new empty disk when the old one is full, it will just keep however many weeks it can, issuing optional warnings as it deletes the oldest stuff, so you know what's happening.
In the future, I believe Apple will address this issue of it making a backup of full, uncompressed files, even when the files have only changed a teensy bit. Remember the fuss over this new ZFS file system? Once fully implemented, it can do proper, partial backups of files with no extra overhead. Once that ability is in Leopard, obviously we will see it going straight into Time Machine. If a huge file like a database gets a teenly little change, only that teeny part will need to be backed up, rather than making a new full backup copy of the file. ZFS also lets you add new hard disks to the backup pool on the fly. ZFS and Time Machine go hand in glove. I'm sure we will see Time Machine making huge gains once ZFS gets into OSX. My guess is it will happen way before OSX 10.6.
When the backup disk gets full, it will warn you when the disk doesn't have much room left. You can just tell it to start backing up to another disk. It won't lose track. Otherwise, you can just let it start deleting the oldest backups automatically, in this way it keeps a rolling backup of however much it can fit on the backup disk. Remember, it keeps hourly backups of the last 24 hours, daily backups of the last week, and as many weekly backups as it can fit on the disk. If you don't give it a new empty disk when the old one is full, it will just keep however many weeks it can, issuing optional warnings as it deletes the oldest stuff, so you know what's happening.
In the future, I believe Apple will address this issue of it making a backup of full, uncompressed files, even when the files have only changed a teensy bit. Remember the fuss over this new ZFS file system? Once fully implemented, it can do proper, partial backups of files with no extra overhead. Once that ability is in Leopard, obviously we will see it going straight into Time Machine. If a huge file like a database gets a teenly little change, only that teeny part will need to be backed up, rather than making a new full backup copy of the file. ZFS also lets you add new hard disks to the backup pool on the fly. ZFS and Time Machine go hand in glove. I'm sure we will see Time Machine making huge gains once ZFS gets into OSX. My guess is it will happen way before OSX 10.6.
samh004
macrumors 68020
When Leopard was released I looked at this and though, Meh! Now I'm actually thinking it would make a great solution for backing up all the macs in the house, my mothers included, and would be very convenient.
My issues would be how well it'd work on NAS with the HDD connected to the Airport Extreme, it's not amazingly fast I know, but it's the best solution ?
The best way to backup multiple systems, should I go for 1 partition and several large disk images, or 2/3 partitions and use Airport Disk Utility to manage who sees which volume ?
Also, when you "Secure Empty Trash", is the Time Machine copy deleted too, seeing as you clearly wanted to get rid of that record/file or you wouldn't of chosen that option ?
My issues would be how well it'd work on NAS with the HDD connected to the Airport Extreme, it's not amazingly fast I know, but it's the best solution ?
The best way to backup multiple systems, should I go for 1 partition and several large disk images, or 2/3 partitions and use Airport Disk Utility to manage who sees which volume ?
Also, when you "Secure Empty Trash", is the Time Machine copy deleted too, seeing as you clearly wanted to get rid of that record/file or you wouldn't of chosen that option ?
sort of on topic...
anyone knows what parts were specifically removed from the original Apple Insider's articles regarding Preview and Dictionary?
In case you don't know, Apple Legal asked AI to remove something, I don't know what, from the original articles. So, I am just wondering if this is going to be something like the Fast OS switching option being removed.
anyone knows what parts were specifically removed from the original Apple Insider's articles regarding Preview and Dictionary?
In case you don't know, Apple Legal asked AI to remove something, I don't know what, from the original articles. So, I am just wondering if this is going to be something like the Fast OS switching option being removed.
aswitcher
macrumors 603
SiliconAddict
macrumors 603
Did you eve bother to read the article? 🙄 TM can use external hard drives, which is preferable anyways. One lightening strike and your backups, connected to your system are toast.
Every one of his posts is a complaint about something, old and miserable suits him fine.
Which is a reminder to people to cycle thru at least two drives and keep one of them at the mother in-laws, parents, safe deposit box and switch them out once a month.
Think TWO time machine drives. Not one.
SiliconAddict
macrumors 603
I'm all about the DLT tape. I have a script that runs on my laptop (MBP), my desktop (Home Brewed), and my wife's laptop once a month that backs up everything onto my home server which does weekly diffs. Once every 3 months a full backup is done with verification on Backup Exec 10 which goes into my safety deposit box which has two full sets of backups at any given time. At this point in time the only thing I could lose of value are my analog photographs which is why I've been in the process of scanning them all into iPhoto and archiving them. I can recover hardware, but in the event of a fire. . . once the data is lost. Its gone forever.
thejadedmonkey
macrumors G3
Sarcasm anyone.
Doesn't anyone recognise sarcasm when its written.
Multimedia was being sarcastic, or is to far an advanced concept to grab hold of.
Time machine is great and it will stop all of the threads about I lost 3 days of work because I was too ******* dumb to save it.
The chances of us being able to buy Leopard before the end of this month are virtually gone. Gold Master to mass distribution in 2 weeks, not a hope in hell. Apple would the power of a Russian Pirating empire. Realistically you need a good 6 weeks to get enough copies produced and shipped.
We'll be told you can pre-order from ??th October available from the end of Nov beginning of Dec.
Doesn't anyone recognise sarcasm when its written.
Multimedia was being sarcastic, or is to far an advanced concept to grab hold of.
Time machine is great and it will stop all of the threads about I lost 3 days of work because I was too ******* dumb to save it.
The chances of us being able to buy Leopard before the end of this month are virtually gone. Gold Master to mass distribution in 2 weeks, not a hope in hell. Apple would the power of a Russian Pirating empire. Realistically you need a good 6 weeks to get enough copies produced and shipped.
We'll be told you can pre-order from ??th October available from the end of Nov beginning of Dec.
mkrishnan
Moderator emeritus
Except this one (which was also diligently asked by several others in this thread. This and the other supporting documentation provided in that FAQ, as far as I can tell, do not compellingly explain how catastrophic recovery works.
So far, it seems that...
1) The TM archive continues to sound like it is not much like a bootable clone at all, and Apple hasn't revealed a way to make it act like one.
2) It was suggested in the FAQ (but not clearly documented, that I could see) that, if you had a failure, you could re-install Leopard on your replacement drive, and then image files back onto that install of Leopard, even though they're orphaned (they do not belong to a time state instance of the drive that you're using anymore). I guess I'll believe that this works reliably when I see it.
So there's no indication that TM has the capability to directly recover from a catastrophic failure in the way that you can boot directly from and use your clone made by CCC or SD, and/or reverse clone if you so desire onto your replacement drive.
MattJessop
macrumors regular
*facepalm* Ung. My head hurts after reading that article. I thought being an Apple fan was supposed to make life simpler, not delve you into hard-link quantum mechanics.
Now all we need to do is reverse engineer Time Machine to pull files from the future as well as the past. That essay you're going to be set tomorrow? No problem! Hand it into the teacher before he's even set you the question!! Do that Apple, and I can guarantee you will get 100% marketshare very soon ;-)
Of course, you'd have to break the time-space continuum, but we all know Steve Jobs can do anything.
Now all we need to do is reverse engineer Time Machine to pull files from the future as well as the past. That essay you're going to be set tomorrow? No problem! Hand it into the teacher before he's even set you the question!! Do that Apple, and I can guarantee you will get 100% marketshare very soon ;-)
Of course, you'd have to break the time-space continuum, but we all know Steve Jobs can do anything.
I am curious to see TM usage when working on a Laptop. I have a MacBook Pro which only attaches to an external storage once and a while. I work on the go, in different places like work, school or even a coffee shop. How protected are my files then? If I delete something while I am at school, is it gone? Do these backups only happen when I plug in my external hard drive at home? Or are these backups stored on my laptop until they can be dumped onto my external drive at home?
I know the question of .mac has been addressed, but what if I had an external storage device that I could access remotely, like my own server or the like.
It seems like this is an incredibly powerful tool for desktop users, but maybe not so much for us mobile-only users.
I know the question of .mac has been addressed, but what if I had an external storage device that I could access remotely, like my own server or the like.
It seems like this is an incredibly powerful tool for desktop users, but maybe not so much for us mobile-only users.
Regarding Time Machine, does anybody know if you have to let TM backup system files, programs, etc.? In other words, can I set TM to skip over my system files and have it just backup things like photos, videos, music, documents, etc?
In Vista I had to have backup, backup my Windows drive and it took up too much space, I'd rather just have it backup the kinds of things that can't be recovered period, y'know?
Thanks in advance.
In Vista I had to have backup, backup my Windows drive and it took up too much space, I'd rather just have it backup the kinds of things that can't be recovered period, y'know?
Thanks in advance.
I imagine the best way to handle that is get an Airport Extreme or similar router and plug your external HD directly into it.
That way, your laptop would do its time machien backup when you are home and on your wireless network.
~Shard~
macrumors P6
You haven't read many of his posts, have you? I can point out at least 3 others from today alone which are quite similar... 😛 😉 😀
Does anyone know if Time Machine's external disk backup is blessed in a way that it can be used as an external boot drive?