What is the appeal of time machine?

[Tumbleweed666]

Try CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper instead.

Either will create a bootable clone of your internal hard drive.

No "over and over" copies of the same files.

CCC can also "archive" older versions of files, IF you tell it to.
CCC can also create a clone of your recovery partition on your backup drive.

TM doesn't make ""over and over" copies of the same files", it only copies changed files since the last TM backup.
Finding archived older versions of files would generally be much more difficult with CCC than with TM.
CCC is better in terms of creating a cloned drive you can boot from.
I use both. I am using CCC for the catastrophic disk fail type error, and TM for the user error, finger fumble problem. And it's always better to have different types of backup.

 

[dyn]

If you ever have a hard drive fail, you'll immediately grasp the appeal of Time Machine.

And you can use it for migrating to a new disk (SSD for example; the old doesn't have to be broken) or even a new Mac.

 

[afro-ninja]

3 TB external drive cost me £80.

Where?! That's a brilliant deal

 

[sjinsjca]

Time Machine excels as a foundation for a backup strategy, especially when paired with a Time Capsule or current-model Airport Extreme router, with their always-on backup capabilities.

Time Machine is reliable and manages disconnections well. It presents an unusual and intuitive user interface for browsing versions of files and directories through time.

But any backup strategy should be multi-layered and duplicative. Depending on your needs, adding a cloud service like Backblaze or even Dropbox can be very helpful. At a minimum, back up duplicatively to at least two disks.

 

[Fishrrman]

I've seen numerous reports right here on MRforums - MANY of them - from users who, in a moment of need, connected their TM backup and discovered that it..... wouldn't mount. They couldn't access their backups.

I've seen next-to-no reports from folks who, in a similar moment of need, couldn't get their cloned backup to mount or boot.

TM is designed so that it makes backing up look, well, "so easy". Just connect a drive and flick the TM "switch" to on, and you're backed up! Nothing to it!

With CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper, there's a little more "front-end work" involved -- hey, looks 'WAY more complicated than TM, eh?

But the proof of the backup is not just in the backing up, it's in the GETTING YOUR DATA BACK in a moment of extreme need.

 

[Partron22]

Time Machine plus SuperDuper works quite well for me.
I use SuperDuper for weekly total-disk backups.

Time Machine gets pointed at just Document and Development folders, not System, Apps, Downloads, Desktop, Pictures, Music etc etc.
That gives me hourly backup of all the docs I'm actively working on, plus a Desktop that's great for keeping temporary stuff which I don't want immortalized to take up space on my Time Machine partition. Never losing more than an hour's work on whatever App I'm working on is extremely appealing.

This strategy would be simpler to implement if Apple's Time Machine options had an "include only these items in backups" setting. As is, it's a bit of work to set up, but lets me use a small TM partition and gives me decent control over whatall's getting archived hourly.

 

[flynz4]

I've seen numerous reports right here on MRforums - MANY of them - from users who, in a moment of need, connected their TM backup and discovered that it..... wouldn't mount. They couldn't access their backups.

I've seen next-to-no reports from folks who, in a similar moment of need, couldn't get their cloned backup to mount or boot.

TM is designed so that it makes backing up look, well, "so easy". Just connect a drive and flick the TM "switch" to on, and you're backed up! Nothing to it!

With CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper, there's a little more "front-end work" involved -- hey, looks 'WAY more complicated than TM, eh?

But the proof of the backup is not just in the backing up, it's in the GETTING YOUR DATA BACK in a moment of extreme need.

You (not just this post but consistently) treat Time Machine Backups, and CCC clones as mutually exclusive. I really do not understand your logic... but it is your data.

I prefer to think of them as complimentary. I use both Time Machine and CCC... and think that is a great combination. I also use cloud based backup (Crashplan). That combination gives me the perfect trifecta.

/Jim

 

[smirking]

I prefer to think of them as complimentary. I use both Time Machine and CCC... and think that is a great combination. I also use cloud based backup (Crashplan). That combination gives me the perfect trifecta.

That's a really smart approach. I think the gist of the problem is that people treat backup solutions as infalliable solutions. Nothing has a 100% success rate and under the right conditions any of them can fail so if your data means the world to you, it's best to hege your bets and use redundant/complimentary solutions so in a worst case scenario you don't lose anything or at least you don't lose everything entirely.

Personally I'm a fan of Time Machine. I use Super Duper as an alternate, but Time Machine is my main backup solution.

 

[Soulweaponry]

I'm trying to use it right now and I don't know how to find old iPhoto stuff! I looked at an old backup from last year and when i went into time machine, it just opened finder. But it wouldn't let me open iPhoto or anything. When i click it, it just says "27 gigs" with a big don't sign on it. What does that mean? How do i restore old iPhoto stuff? Helppppppp

 

[DeltaMac]

Look through Pondini's FAQs for Time Machine. You'll find answers to just about any time machine question…
http://pondini.org/TM/15p1.html

 

[Bear]

I'm trying to use it right now and I don't know how to find old iPhoto stuff! I looked at an old backup from last year and when i went into time machine, it just opened finder. But it wouldn't let me open iPhoto or anything. When i click it, it just says "27 gigs" with a big don't sign on it. What does that mean? How do i restore old iPhoto stuff? Helppppppp

Have iPhoto be the active application and then enter Time Machine.

 

[Soulweaponry]

Have iPhoto be the active application and then enter Time Machine.

I have iPhoto open and up front. Then i enter time machine and it does some kinda fancy visual moving everything away and putting "finder" in the forefront. Whaaat? I must be doing something wrong. I'm such a noob

 

[Weaselboy]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fF99QYsb2FU

About 1min 50 secs in.

I have iPhoto open and up front. Then i enter time machine and it does some kinda fancy visual moving everything away and putting "finder" in the forefront. Whaaat? I must be doing something wrong. I'm such a noob

Close Finder and open iPhoto and have it up front as the active application then enter TM and you should see iPhoto with the TM timeline to the right like in the video RemarkabLee posted.

 

[RemarkabLee]

I think you can 'browse backups' from the File menu of iPhoto as well? I don't have a Mac at work to test that theory though...

 

[westrock2000]

I like it mostly because it is natively integrated with the boot menu. I have had to rebuild a couple time so far and I do not have an optical drive on my server. So being able to boot into recovery mode and have BOTH the ability to reimage from backups or download a fresh copy of the OS straight from Apple is really awesome in my mind.

 

[Macman45]

Do you have x plane backed up somewhere or whould you have ot re-download it again if your drive failed? How much of that 300GB changes from running it?

I would probably backup up xplane also since it only needs to copy the 300GB once to the Time Machine drive, That way if you need to do a restore, x plane is part of it and you don't need to reinstall it again.

It's backed up on my R4...it's the scenery that occupies the space..a basic install takes about 60GB, but I have the entire UK photo real scenery packs as well as a lot of custom aircraft.

 

[gnurf]

Where?! That's a brilliant deal

That's actually a pretty common price in Europe now. We're at this weird point where internal drives cost MORE than external drives. I would presume this is because the innards of a nice USB drive no longer are plain enclosures + regular drives, but a special drive with no actual SATA connectors, so it's just a box with an embedded drive.

It also means you can't make any use of the drive if only the connectors go bad :/

I use TimeMachineEditor like many others here, and I've scheduled it to twice a day to fit my schedule. The second backup is roughly around the time I'm too tired to code anymore

I also simply run from recovery mode about once a month and take a full drive snapshot via DiskUtility to another external drive. This covers the big stuff with infrequent changes (instruments and other audio, developer tools, games). I basically exclude everything but the plugin locations, /Applications and my user directory from TM. The monthly disk imaging may be more frequent if something big is being installed.

I don't rely on TM for system reinstallations, though, nice as the feature is. I just use the application backup to get older apps now and then. The latest version of something being broken is happening far too often!

 

[Bear]

...
I also simply run from recovery mode about once a month and take a full drive snapshot via DiskUtility to another external drive. This covers the big stuff with infrequent changes (instruments and other audio, developer tools, games). I basically exclude everything but the plugin locations, /Applications and my user directory from TM. The monthly disk imaging may be more frequent if something big is being installed.

I don't rely on TM for system reinstallations, though, nice as the feature is. I just use the application backup to get older apps now and then. The latest version of something being broken is happening far too often!

In your case I would stioll probably let Time Machine backyp the whole system. That way if you system disk abd Backup Disk voth have issues, you still have a full backup. And backing up everything (after the initial backup) won't affect the time it takes to do an incremental.

 

[gnurf]

I just restore the drive from an image if there is a problem.