New Present (Time Capsule) - Now What Can I Use It For :-)

[oo7ml]

Hi,

I've just received a time capsule from my girlfriend for Christmas, and i have a few questions.

01 - i had to disable time machine on my MBA last year as i was running out of space. I now have 35GB left on my 256GB hard drive... will this be enough to run Time Machine with the Time Capsule, or do they need to work together at all?

02 - what else can the Time Capsule be used for, other than backing up your data... is there any known tricks or hacks?

Thanks in advance for your help.

 

[ColdCase]

Time machine does not take up space on your local drive, only the external destination drive. The time capsule should have plenty of capacity.

A Time Capsule can also be used to share files on your local network but its best use is as your house router, wifi entry point, and time machine destination for your household macs.

 

[b0fh666]

actually TM does use your local drive, unless you disabe local backups... and they're on by default.

 

[Weaselboy]

01 - i had to disable time machine on my MBA last year as i was running out of space. I now have 35GB left on my 256GB hard drive... will this be enough to run Time Machine with the Time Capsule, or do they need to work together at all?

You should be able to just leave TM on and it will manage that local snapshot space it uses on its own. When it sees the internal drive is starting to get full, it will shrink that local snapshots space used. You can read here about how it works and the purge criteria as the local disk gets full.

 

[ColdCase]

Oh yeah, I had skipped over the use case where a time machine destination is not configured or not available. Sorry, I always considered this as an unusual situation... but it is a situation some are getting into.

 

[Weaselboy]

Oh yeah, I had skipped over the use case where a time machine destination is not configured or not available. Sorry, I always considered this as an unusual situation... but it is a situation some are getting into.

Even if the backup destination is available, anything you delete goes into that hidden /.Mobilebackups "local snapshot" folder. I think the confusion comes in from the name because all this really is is sort of a second level trash can.

 

[ColdCase]

Is that something like the temporary document revisions store concept? The changes/edits one makes to a pages document before one saves or closes it for example? Its like a second level edit file, dunno where they are saved.

 

[Weaselboy]

Is that something like the temporary document revisions store concept? The changes/edits one makes to a pages document before one saves or closes it for example? Its like a second level edit file, dunno where they are saved.

I think in a way yes... but nothing goes in there unless the file was deleted. So it seems its only use is if you delete a file then after that empty the trash, you could "Enter Time Machine" and get that file back.

 

[oo7ml]

Cool, thanks guys... much appreciated ;-)