Time Machine...what abtou MBPs?

[tomegun]

I have a MBP and I'm wondering what good Time Machine is for me. I'm not the type of user to put my MBP in the same spot everyday and connect an external drive. I'm just wondering if Time Machine is useless for someone like me.

BTW, the demonstration is making me really want an iMac. I'm thinking I can put most of my music files on it and then have more space on my MBP for bootcamp. If I can swing that, I can easily sell my Dell Laptop and not miss it too much.

 

[72930]

You can just back up once in a while when you have time to...at least your music collection from the last backup would be safe if you lose/break your MBP...

 

[tomegun]

OK, so how does that work? I have an external drive that I can devote to Time Machine although I would probably opt to get one that uses USB power only and is smaller. If I connect it periodically, say two - three times a week, will Time Machine automatically start backing up the MBP? If so, that is pretty cool.

 

[mkrishnan]

It seems to be unknown right now... there's a faq put together with info from developer seeds of Leopard here:

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/223065/

You can define when during the day the backup happens, but it isn't clear what happens if the backup drive is unavailable at that time -- it may either do it as soon as the backup drive becomes available (Apple made some changes to the way recurring tasks happen a while ago to make sure for instance that users didn't get screwed by maintenance tasks that happen at midnight every day, when the notebook is never on at midnight), so it's possible that TM will be smart enough to immediately try and make the backup when the drive comes on. It's also possible that you won't get any backing up until the drive is actually present at the specified time of day.

 

[Danksi]

I know it's probably additional hardware to your current setup, but you could use an Airport Extreme connected to an external drive (AirDisk), that would allow you mobility (on your local network at least) while still benefiting from Time Machine.