Time Machine: is this really a backup program, or a joke that I'm not getting?

Discussion in 'macOS' started by Krupke, Apr 15, 2013.

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  1. Krupke, Apr 15, 2013

    Krupke macrumors member

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    Seriously. I'm trying to figure out what I'm supposed to do with this thing. Okay, I'm kind of new to the whole Mac thing, and I thought that TM was the Mac equivalent of Windows System Restore. Now I realize Im not really sure what it does, what its doing, and why in the holy wide world of sports is this program taking up MY ENTIRE 500gb hard drive partition! (Which is fully HALF of my iMac's 1tb hard drive!!). :eek:

    I think the back up must be bigger than the actual amount of data that I am having it back up. And even that isn't enough to feed this monstrous beast. It's now telling me I don't have enough room to do any more of its backups, so I had to shut it off. It doesn't appear to have much more than an on-off switch, or a way for me to tell it "Hey, whatever you think you're doing, STOP IT. I just want you to back up 1% of my drive, and only stuff that I created. I do not want you to back up 10 separate copies of every shred of data on the hard disk".

    Maybe I need to RTFM, and it'll tell me I'm all wrong about it. But my iMac never came with a copy of that......
     
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  2. Peace, Apr 15, 2013

    Peace macrumors Core

    Peace

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  3. Krupke, Apr 15, 2013

    Krupke thread starter macrumors member

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  4. benwiggy, Apr 16, 2013

    benwiggy macrumors 68020

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    It's not entirely clear from what you say, but have you divided your 1TB hard drive in two, using one half for the backup of the other half?
    That's not the best strategy for protecting against drive failure.

    Time Machine backs up everything. Then it backs up only the things that have changed. If you have a 1Gb file and you rename it or move it every day, then TM will copy it over again. If you only change a few tiny files, then TM will only copy those.
    It's usually a good idea to have your TM volume 3 times larger than your source volume.
     
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