Time Machine...why bother?

[cmaier]

Merge meaning, take all the files that were changed, created, added and take the most recent.

We aren't talking version control here.

People I'm sure would be happy with just the most recent of the day.

-Kevin

Based on the thread, I'm not so sure people would be happy with just the most recent. I can imagine lots of horror stories ("i accidentally copied one file over another, and TM didn't magically figure out I really wanted the first version!").

Anyway, TM behaves like I expect *backup* software to behave. I do not want to restore a directory and find it full of a bunch of files that I deleted prior to the backup.

Having read apple's explanation of TM, I think it behaves exactly like they suggest it behaves, and I think the problem is that some people expect it to be some sort of infinite-life trashcan or versioning software, and eliminate any possibility of data loss.

Perhaps the next version of OS X will have file versioning built in to time machine (the plumbing is all there - would have to run in the background like spotlight and keep an eye on fsevents (the internal api) instead of the public api.) Would work much better with ZFS, however, to avoid duplicating constant blocks.

All of this reminds me of VMS - whenever you changed a file you would get a new version (with ;version_number appended). You'd type "purge" to get rid of old stuff. Ah, good times.

 

[netnothing]

If you have a hard disk crash you will get back the most recent of the day and the most recent will be rolled into the daily, etc.
What people are getting wound up about is if someone accidentally deletes a file and then wants to get it back.
Normally if you delete a file you've been working on a lot in a day it's an obvious mistake and you can simply retrieve it from the trash can. If you've emptied the trash can then you have 24 hours to realise your mistake and get it back. If you wait longer than that you can get changes made up until the previous daily backup for a month and the previous month for as long as you have disk space.
This only affects changes to files caused by user activity in deleting and emptying the trash can. To me this is a bonus over and above the primary use of Time Machine which is to protect your machine against hard disk failure, etc: In that instance I know I will lose an hours work at most and I would hazard a guess that that's far, far better then any backup system used by 99.9% of Mac (or PC) users.

The more I talk about it, the more it's all making sense.

- The Monthly backup is the most recent Weekly snapshot (making the assumption here)

- The Weekly backup is the most recent Daily snapshot (making the assumption here)

- The Daily backup is the first snapshot taken on that day.

- Then the Hourlies take over until you to the current time.

In order for a file to remain beyond the hourly snapshots, it has to stay on the system for more than 24 hours.

In order for a file to remain beyond the daily backups, it has to stay on the system for more than 1 week.

And so on, and so on.

-Kevin

 

[cmaier]

I find the suggestion that it is a primary purpose of backup software to protect against the loss of intentionally deleted files to be somewhat weird. Backup, to me, is supposed to protect against accidents and malfunctions. If it protects against intentional actions, that's a mere byproduct of its primary purpose. To protect against intentional deletions we have trashcans that buffer erasures, versioning software, etc.

Now, personally, I do use my infrant NAS to run backups from all my networked machines, and have it set to always add files, so I treat it as a giant, perpetual, trashcan. But I certainly don't expect that to be default backup behavior. I only do that because I also run weekly full-image incremental backups as well, and I have tons of available disk space for backups.

 

[todd2000]

If you have a hard disk crash you will get back the most recent of the day and the most recent will be rolled into the daily, etc.
What people are getting wound up about is if someone accidentally deletes a file and then wants to get it back.
Normally if you delete a file you've been working on a lot in a day it's an obvious mistake and you can simply retrieve it from the trash can. If you've emptied the trash can then you have 24 hours to realise your mistake and get it back. If you wait longer than that you can get changes made up until the previous daily backup for a month and the previous month for as long as you have disk space.
This only affects changes to files caused by user activity in deleting and emptying the trash can. To me this is a bonus over and above the primary use of Time Machine which is to protect your machine against hard disk failure, etc: In that instance I know I will lose an hours work at most and I would hazard a guess that that's far, far better then any backup system used by 99.9% of Mac (or PC) users.

Exactly! TM is still a better solution then my previous backup strategy, of cloning my drive 3 times a week. That is if I can get it to start working properly.

 

[THX1139]

...Once I've used Leopard for a month or so, we'll see if the folks are getting a Mac for Xmas.

Wow, a Mac for Christmas? Gee, and all I ever got was socks.

 

[CalBoy]

Wow, a Mac for Christmas? Gee, and all I ever got was socks.

Beats a sweater

I'm actually hoping that I can convince my dad do ditch his HP soon. It's on its last leg anyways, and the macbook would really be good for him. Plus I've gotten my mom hooked onto Photo Booth and the Mosaic screensaver

*sigh* He can be stubborn though.