What are you backing up w/ Time Machine

[GNice]

So are most of you just backing up critical docs, work-related files, photos, etc. w/ Time Machine? Is it not a good thing to try and have Time Machine "maintain" everything on the machine? I thought I would do that so I could just restore everything in case of a HD failure.

I ask because I created a partition on my external HD about 2.5 times the amount of space I'm consuming on my internal HD. Unfortunately Time Machine consumed all the space in a few days even though I didn't add much of anything to my machine.

Just wondering how others are utilizing Time Machine since my plan to use it as a "system backup" doesn't appear viable.

 

[Roy Hobbs]

So are most of you just backing up critical docs, work-related files, photos, etc. w/ Time Machine? Is it not a good thing to try and have Time Machine "maintain" everything on the machine? I thought I would do that so I could just restore everything in case of a HD failure.

I ask because I created a partition on my external HD about 2.5 times the amount of space I'm consuming on my internal HD. Unfortunately Time Machine consumed all the space in a few days even though I didn't add much of anything to my machine.

Just wondering how others are utilizing Time Machine since my plan to use it as a "system backup" doesn't appear viable.

My entire hard drive

 

[vandlism]

For me, Time Machine is set to back up my entire hard drive with a few excpetions. Because I'm always downloading items from the net or ripping movies, then Time Machine is set to ignore the Downloads and Ripped Movies folder...since they change all the time. I also have it set to not backup my VMWare virtual drives. Anything that takes up a lot of space, but changes a lot are not really backed up automatically for me. I can handle doing those manually.

 

[Sky Blue]

Everything but Movies, Downloads and Podcasts.

 

[xUKHCx]

Nothing except

Documents
Desktop
Music
Pictures
Movies

I have a full clone of my entire system on another drive.

 

[Rhosfelt]

right now just my documents, and I am currently trying to get something to back up my trash (can anyone help with this?)... I will also add my desktop to that too, so just..

Docs
Desktop
Trash
Pictures

(I have a clone of my "music" folder on my external already so I don't need the whole 160GBs for my whole system every-time I boot up.. )

 

[GNice]

My entire hard drive

Curious...how much space is being used on your HD and how much space is available on the drive you are using for Time Machine?

 

[Yateball]

As well as a couple other people, I back up my entire hard drive.... might as well I figure

 

[Yateball]

Curious...how much space is being used on your HD and how much space is available on the drive you are using for Time Machine?

My time machine drive is a 500gb external, and my imac hard drive is only a 250 I believe

 

[forrestmc4]

My entire HD. Once you do the initial backup the incremental ones are a breeze. I used to just run an Automator script to backup every few weeks, but knowing that I can plug in my firewire HD when I get home and backup a day's work without another thought is extremely comforting. However, there are times when I use my mac as a dvr with an eyetv hybrid, I exclude the raw video files from the backup so that it doesn't suck up space. They are automatically backed up when I compress and export them to iTunes.

 

[GNice]

Dang it...I wish I could figure out where the "extra" 75 GB went so fast. I only have ~50GB of stuff on my internal HD. My external HD partition for Time Machine is 125 GB...