Not convinced Time Machine backing up. Help?

[crabapplemcn]

I have a WD EHD connected wirelessly through Airport Extreme. When I open the TM App, it shows my EHD and says last backup was just recently. When I enter time machine I can see the many backups fanned out in space. But from finder, when I access my shared drive and backup folder, it shows latest is from 2010?



Sometimes a device called time machine will show up in finder and have the appropriate file system of back ups. Am I backing up to external drive and if so why aren't latest dates showing in finder? Thanks

 

[Spudlicious]

For me TimeMachine is one of the best features of OS X, while Finder is a rancid thing. My bet is that your TimeMachine is working, but it's easy to prove. Try selecting one of the backups you so nicely describe as being fanned out in space and opening an individual file, perhaps viewing a jpg.

 

[glenthompson]

Any good backup plan requires testing. Pick one of your folders, rename it, then try to restore it from the TM backup. Make sure you can work with the files in the folder then delete it and rename the old folder back.

Full blown test - make a bootable external drive and install OS X on it, then restore everything from the backup. Can you run everything fine? Time consuming but gives you great confidence in your backups.

 

[Fishrrman]

My opinion only, but I believe the best backup to have is a fully-bootable cloned backup of your internal drive created with either CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper.

Can be on a USB3 external drive, either HDD or SSD.

These can serve as more than just "backups of data".
If you ever get into an "I can't boot!" moment, there's nothing out there -- NOTHING -- that can get you back up-and-running as quickly and easily as having a bootable cloned backup close-at-hand.

Time and time and time and time again, I see posts here from folks who are flopping around like fish out of water because they've had a crash or some other problem and they have no easy "secondary boot device" available...

 

[Spudlicious]

My opinion only, but I believe the best backup to have is a fully-bootable cloned backup of your internal drive created with either CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper.

Can be on a USB3 external drive, either HDD or SSD.

These can serve as more than just "backups of data".
If you ever get into an "I can't boot!" moment, there's nothing out there -- NOTHING -- that can get you back up-and-running as quickly and easily as having a bootable cloned backup close-at-hand.

Time and time and time and time again, I see posts here from folks who are flopping around like fish out of water because they've had a crash or some other problem and they have no easy "secondary boot device" available...

You speak sense, sir. For my Windows computer I have a cloned SSD ready to drop in, but that's not a viable option for my MBP. I do have a bootable external drive for that desperate day, yet I feel the TimeMachine option to select a particular point to recover to is just beautiful software.

 

[zhenya]

My opinion only, but I believe the best backup to have is a fully-bootable cloned backup of your internal drive created with either CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper.

Can be on a USB3 external drive, either HDD or SSD.

These can serve as more than just "backups of data".
If you ever get into an "I can't boot!" moment, there's nothing out there -- NOTHING -- that can get you back up-and-running as quickly and easily as having a bootable cloned backup close-at-hand.

Time and time and time and time again, I see posts here from folks who are flopping around like fish out of water because they've had a crash or some other problem and they have no easy "secondary boot device" available...

On Windows I feel this is the case, but the tools in OS X are so good on their own that I have no problem relying on just Time Machine for my local backups. I can restore easily to any point in time. Works just as well if not better than a cloned disk that is likely heavily out of date.

 

[glenthompson]

My opinion only, but I believe the best backup to have is a fully-bootable cloned backup of your internal drive created with either CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper.

Can be on a USB3 external drive, either HDD or SSD.

These can serve as more than just "backups of data".
If you ever get into an "I can't boot!" moment, there's nothing out there -- NOTHING -- that can get you back up-and-running as quickly and easily as having a bootable cloned backup close-at-hand.

Time and time and time and time again, I see posts here from folks who are flopping around like fish out of water because they've had a crash or some other problem and they have no easy "secondary boot device" available...

I agree about the CCC bootable clone. If my MBP dies I can plug the CCC clone into my wife's iMac, boot from it and be working just like usual (but slower due to no SSD). IMHO the best backup strategy is to have multiple backups using different methods to different locations. Covers all scenarios fairly well. In my case I use Time Machine (multiple destinations), CCC (2 different drives), and CrashPlan (for offsite).