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Why Hate on Time Machine?

Fishrrman said:
TM makes "backup" look easy when it ain't.

And that's what's wrong with it.
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Two choices then.
1. Buy a new Snow Leopard CD. £25.
2. Ask a friend to pirate a Snow Leopard CD. Technically not illegal if it came with your mac. Free.

Easy.
 
Fishrrman said:
TM makes "backup" look easy when it ain't.
And that's what's wrong with it.
Click to expand...

Remember, Apple created Time Machine because its research found that 92% of users were not backing up regularly (20% didn't even know they should back up). Yes, there are easier ways to restore from a catastrophic failure, but TM has saved me many times when I needed to restore a specific file from a specific period in time.

The point is that there are far fewer people now who rarely backup, not how they do it.
 
OnAirNow said:
Can I ask, do you mean you do a full, bootable, clone of your HD and then subsequently backup only what's changed?
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Yes, exactly. Not only do you get incremental backups (only what's changed since the last backup), but your backup is bootable. If your internal hard drive crashed, you could put your external drive in your Mac and boot up without missing anything. In fact, one of my backup drives is exactly the same model and size as my internal drive (although that's not required).
 
GGJstudios said:
Yes, exactly. Not only do you get incremental backups (only what's changed since the last backup), but your backup is bootable. If your internal hard drive crashed, you could put your external drive in your Mac and boot up without missing anything. .
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Apart from the stuff that happened since you last backup, which if you are the average user, will be, errm, never,and even if you arent, might be days to weeks ago.

I don't understand why people make it an either / or, I do infrequent incremental CCC's to create a bootable, AND also use TM for regular backups, since most often its user error (mine) I need to recover from, and that wont get me back a file I deleted that that isn't on the incremental.

The super users who complain about TM and its inability to get you back in minutes instead of hours, arent thinking about the most common scenario, for the most common user, which is that no one is taking backups, ever and even if you explained about the advantage of incremental regular bootable backups until you were blue in the face they would still never get round to doing it

TM does what its designed to do superbly with no fuss or muss, which is make backups automatic and simple and ensure they occur. The lack of a bootable clone is irrelevant compared to the fact that it ensures backups are actually made. Whats the use of having a cloned bootable you can recover from instantly that's years old, which would be the case with most people?
 
Tumbleweed666 said:
The lack of a bootable clone is irrelevant compared to the fact that it ensures backups are actually made. Whats the use of having a cloned bootable you can recover from instantly that's years old, which would be the case with most people?
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You don't have to have one or the other. With CCC, you can have automatic backups, just like you do in TM, and also have a bootable clone:
Carbon Copy Cloner offers hourly, daily, weekly, and monthly scheduling. If your workstyle is too hectic for scheduling, you can also schedule a task to run whenever your backup hard drive is attached to your computer.
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GGJstudios said:
You don't have to have one or the other. With CCC, you can have automatic backups, just like you do in TM, and also have a bootable clone:
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Just curious as I haven't used CCC in quite a while, and when I did I only used it to make a direct backup copy either at set intervals or whenever I felt like it.

Does it now allow for file revisions on a single volume like TM, so I could say tell it to backup daily to a drive, then go onto the drive and say view the changes I've made to a file over a few days?
 
Dark Dragoon said:
Just curious as I haven't used CCC in quite a while, and when I did I only used it to make a direct backup copy either at set intervals or whenever I felt like it.

Does it now allow for file revisions on a single volume like TM, so I could say tell it to backup daily to a drive, then go onto the drive and say view the changes I've made to a file over a few days?
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No, in that respect, it's not like TM. It simply replaces a modified file with the newest version each time you back up. It doesn't have the "roll back" history that TM does, but also doesn't eat up disc space the way TM does. If you need that particular feature, use TM.
 
I hate how many people still don't use Time Machine. 🙄

It's a great tool alongside bootable clones. What ever happened to all those fancy boot versioning Snow Leopard had as a feature? Is that server side only?
 
GGJstudios said:
Why does it matter who does and doesn't use TM? I don't, and I have all the backups I need. It's a good tool, but certainly not the only effective option.
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I should have been clearer. There are plenty of backup options. It's just amazing how many people you encounter that don't have any and more so given how practical Time Machine is.

I've ended up in a quite a few threads where the first response is to restore from Time Machine. Oops...
 
Dark Dragoon said:
Just curious as I haven't used CCC in quite a while, and when I did I only used it to make a direct backup copy either at set intervals or whenever I felt like it.

Does it now allow for file revisions on a single volume like TM, so I could say tell it to backup daily to a drive, then go onto the drive and say view the changes I've made to a file over a few days?
Click to expand...

GGJstudios said:
No, in that respect, it's not like TM. It simply replaces a modified file with the newest version each time you back up. It doesn't have the "roll back" history that TM does, but also doesn't eat up disc space the way TM does. If you need that particular feature, use TM.
Click to expand...

You can set CCC to archive any files changed or deleted since the last incremental backup. This is how I have set my nightly CCC backups to run.

Any such files are archived to a top level folder on the target drive called _CCC Archives, within which the original directory structure is replicated.

It's not a true "versioning" system, nor as visually attractive as the TM system , but it will preserve as many revisions of as many files as you've got space on the backup drive. You also retain the ability to boot from the backup.

But TM still has its benefits, particularly if you're prone to accidentally deleting a file or saving changes too soon. As others have said, there's no reason you can't use both.
 
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