I have Mac Pro with with 1.5TB of hd space installed (soon to grow to 2TB), roughly 50% full. So what happens if I designate a 500 GB external drive as my TM? Obviously stuff will get dropped (backup size > TM), so it seems to me that the whole TM idea blows if you have more than 1TB GB hd space installed in you machine (I sure as hell don't want to spend hundreds of $$ for a 2TB external drive just to use it as a TM).
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What size hd needed for TM?
- Thread starter akadmon
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the general recommendation is to use something twice the size of what you're copying for Time Machine. for example I have a 120gb drive in my macbook and I use a 200gb external to back it up.
for your case I would look for a backup solution that's better than time machine. you'll be paying more but if I had that much important data I'd be willing to pay to back it up correctly and securely.
for your case I would look for a backup solution that's better than time machine. you'll be paying more but if I had that much important data I'd be willing to pay to back it up correctly and securely.
Figures. I've been doing backups "the hard way" i.e., manually, using File Synchronization. It's fast (only copies new/changed files), and I have complete control over it, plus it's all in native format (no need to restore from some proprietary backup format).
I'll give it another ago (I thought it was a disk cloner, not a file synchronizer).
Oh well, just another useless new Leopard feature for a poor guy with a Mac Pro, just like Spaces (useless, unless you're on a small screen, which, unfortunately, I do not own 😀)
GSMiller
macrumors 68000
Yea I know what you mean...
I would need a 1TB external drive to back up my iMac with Time Machine.
Digital Skunk
macrumors G3
Actually, you can designate what you want to backup and what you don't want to backup... so Time Machine is just as effective as the superduper and backup apps.
Hard Disk drives are cheap, and you have a Mac Pro. I don't think you have a major problem.
As for the features of Leopard.... I think it's more of an issue with how you use your machine. Spaces can't be useless if users with anything less than a 23" display uses it. The only useless features in Leopard for me is Bootcamp, but others would beg to differ.
Hard Disk drives are cheap, and you have a Mac Pro. I don't think you have a major problem.
As for the features of Leopard.... I think it's more of an issue with how you use your machine. Spaces can't be useless if users with anything less than a 23" display uses it. The only useless features in Leopard for me is Bootcamp, but others would beg to differ.
Well, that's a design flaw, IMHO. It would be much more convenient (for me at least) to have the option of telling TM what to include in the backup, since there are a lot more folders I want to exclude than include.
I agree. No big deal, but still, it irks me that one of the potentially most useful features of the new OS is pretty much useless on a Mac Pro.
I gather you did not read/see my sig 😀
Digital Skunk
macrumors G3
I would consider it more of a "that's the way it is" kind of thing. I have yet to find the perfect backup solution. Super Duper has to remove the old backup before it creates a new one, Backup doesn't do that and neither does Time Machine.
I use backup and it isn't perfect becasue (1) I have to pick what I want to backup and there therefore can't backup everything that is essential, and (2) I can't keep EVERYTHING backed up, just the files that Backup thinks are important. I can't keep my play count in iTunes. Another thing I hate is that Backup addes files to the backup location, each and every time it backs up, and after a while, 70 or so files that are supposed to be my backup of a single location or group of files gets a bit wheary.
When I do get a drive large enough to backup my files I will be using Time Machine. For all of its flaws it's so far the best app for backing up that I have seen, especially since I can just go to wherever my lost file was, and hit the icon. Not that I am trying to persuade you to use Time Machine or anything, I learned not to do that a long time ago. 😀
I wouldn't say that it's useless anywhere, maybe a portable, but certainly not a Mac Pro. One would just have to get external or internal drives large enough to backup their files. When I do get my drives I most likely won't backup my apps and app support folders, since Final Cut Studio and all the other apps take up about 100+ GBs
I did. And I myself don't have much of a need for Spaces either other than novelty use, but I am sure many with smaller screens will find it rather useful.
I'm not sure I agree with the 2x calculation for the TM drive. As long as the TM drive is large enough to hold what you have now and the files that you think you may add later, that should be enough. This assumes that all you are looking for is a current backup of your drive at the time the drive crashes. A larger drive would certainly allow you to go back further in time, but that's not needed if all you want is the current state of your drive, no more than 1 hour old. Who cares if files you deleted off your hard drive a while back, or earlier versions of your documents, get deleted from the TM drive? I'm not looking to recreate my files as they existed three weeks ago, just what they were right before my hard drive crashed.
This is why TM seems to me to be a nice solution to backing up my drive - it's never more than an hour old.
This is why TM seems to me to be a nice solution to backing up my drive - it's never more than an hour old.