Time Machine Backup Question

[Benguitar]

Hello everyone, I posted this question on Apple's Official Discussion Board, But I figured I would post it here as well. (Since the Apple board doesn't always answer your questions, I figure at least one forum site will most likely reply)

So here it is..

I have a question or two concerning Time Machine, and I was wondering if someone could give me some answers or guidance.

Basically, I have three external hard drives that I use to store my files on.

Hard Drive 1 is a 1.5TB Iomega Drive that I use to store all of my files, My old large iPhoto library, Logic Express files and etc. This hard drive backs up via SuperDuper using "Copy Different Files"

Hard Drive 2 is a 1TB Iomega portable drive that I store a "Mirror Image" of my MacBook Pro, I take this drive with me on the road (around the country). It is basically my emergency backup, If I can't acess my Paralells or if my MacBook Pro hard drive goes down, I can boot from this one on my MacBook Pro or even boot off of someone else's Macintosh if my primary and secondary MacBook Pros die. This drive backs up via SuperDuper again, But instead uses "Smart Update"

Hard Drive 3 is a 500GB Iomega portable drive that also travels with me on the road, except this one I am currently using solely for media. I store my iTunes library and all of it's contents and my movies on this drive. I manually update this drive, Via drag & drop.

My internal hard drives on my MacBook Pro(s) are both 500GB.

Does anyone else think that it is probably a good idea to keep a Time Machine backup along with one or more of my SuperDuper backups? Should I re-format one of my external drives, or should I purchase another external hard drive for Time Machine only?

I was personally thinking about reconstructing my "Hard Drive 1" drive, but the problem is, Since I have a lot of files stored on that drive that are not natively stored on my MacBook Pro's internal hard drive, I wasn't too sure how exactly I would keep all those files on that external hard drive, while Time Machine took over that drive.

Thank you very much for reading this thread, and I really hope I can get some helpful answers on this. I just want to make sure I have a solid backup solution when I travel, just incase something terrible happens.

Thank you greatly in-advance for reading/replying!

--Benjamin

 

[glennsan]

Time Machine Backup

Hello everyone, I posted this question on Apple's Official Discussion Board, But I figured I would post it here as well. (Since the Apple board doesn't always answer your questions, I figure at least one forum site will most likely reply)

So here it is..



Thank you greatly in-advance for reading/replying!

--Benjamin

Sounds like you are the most backed up person I know. Time Machine backups are a good idea as they are almost idiot proof to get a file off of and have not failed me in a couple of years I have used them. The only real negative is that they are not bootable but I think you have that covered with the Super Duper and should not be used for long term storage as eventually when the hard drive is full the backups start to be deleted. I like TM and use it daily.

Glenn

 

[Benguitar]

Sounds like you are the most backed up person I know. Time Machine backups are a good idea as they are almost idiot proof to get a file off of and have not failed me in a couple of years I have used them. The only real negative is that they are not bootable but I think you have that covered with the Super Duper and should not be used for long term storage as eventually when the hard drive is full the backups start to be deleted. I like TM and use it daily.

Glenn

Haha, thank you very much Glenn.

Yes, That was why I have mainly stuck with SuperDuper was because it is bootable.

Now, While reading your reply and what you mentioned about "long term storage"

What if I used Time Machine to copy only certain folders onto a smaller (320GB or 500GB) hard drive, or perhaps even one or two flash drives. This way I could get a least a few months worth of documents, emails, and etc backed up incase I lost an important email, I could theorectically just plug-in a flash drive, open Time Machine, find the file and then hit "Restore"

Although, I have a feeling Time Machine doesn't work that way. Instead I bet Time Machine only wants to backup your entire systems files and will not let you be selective over which files you allow it to backup?

I think when it comes to something like, Restoring a lost email, would it make more sense to just manually keep archives of my work email account's inbox and sent box, and if an important file was lost I could just restore the inbox/sent box from an archived copy? The same theory goes for other documents as well.


--Benjamin

 

[glennsan]

TM Backup

Haha, thank you very much Glenn.

Yes, That was why I have mainly stuck with SuperDuper was because it is bootable.

Now, While reading your reply and what you mentioned about "long term storage"

What if I used Time Machine to copy only certain folders onto a smaller (320GB or 500GB) hard drive, or perhaps even one or two flash drives. This way I could get a least a few months worth of documents, emails, and etc backed up incase I lost an important email, I could theorectically just plug-in a flash drive, open Time Machine, find the file and then hit "Restore"

Although, I have a feeling Time Machine doesn't work that way. Instead I bet Time Machine only wants to backup your entire systems files and will not let you be selective over which files you allow it to backup?

I think when it comes to something like, Restoring a lost email, would it make more sense to just manually keep archives of my work email account's inbox and sent box, and if an important file was lost I could just restore the inbox/sent box from an archived copy? The same theory goes for other documents as well.


--Benjamin

TM will let you backup just selective folders if that is what you want. Also, entire email folders is what I backup as I am not certain you can retrieve individual emails or not. Someone please correct me if I am wrong.

Glenn

 

[meget]

I have on my Mac a 500GB drive, and i backup my files to a 320GB drive.

Time machine backup only those files that are changed on your computer. So if you never add new music to your music folder, time machine will only keep one copy of it and next time backup the movies folder for example when you add a movie there.

Not sure if i make sense, but i really like that my 500GB drive can fit on a 320GB one and have even 14 days going back backups due to the selective automative method. So all my documents are constantly backed up but folder like games are not, since there was need only for one backup, and there were no changes.

 

[glennsan]

I have on my Mac a 500GB drive, and i backup my files to a 320GB drive.

Time machine backup only those files that are changed on your computer. So if you never add new music to your music folder, time machine will only keep one copy of it and next time backup the movies folder for example when you add a movie there.

Not sure if i make sense, but i really like that my 500GB drive can fit on a 320GB one and have even 14 days going back backups due to the selective automative method. So all my documents are constantly backed up but folder like games are not, since there was need only for one backup, and there were no changes.

If you never change the files that process will work. But if they are changing constantly and you require different versions TM is not a good solution unless you have a very big hard drive.

Glennsan

 

[Benguitar]

TM will let you backup just selective folders if that is what you want. Also, entire email folders is what I backup as I am not certain you can retrieve individual emails or not. Someone please correct me if I am wrong.

Glenn

So, it would be wiser to keep full archives of the email folder and if an email is lost, just restore the entire email folder from a previous archive and then redoenload any new messages that weren't on that previous archive?

It sounds like I should be able to do that email archive on maybe a 16GB flash drive, along with my work documents folder which is just filled with PDFs and Excel spreadsheets.


--Benjamin