[MikeStevens]

I have a MacBook and would like to use Time Machine to backup, mainly applications and text files.
Can I use an external HDD, which is already used to backup a different PC? If so do I have to partition the HDD?

If I have to acquire another HDD, what size would you recommend?

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

[TETENAL]

The external drive must be partitioned using as "Apple Partition Map" (preferred if you have a PowerPC Mac) or "GUID partition scheme" (preferred if you have an Intel Mac) to work properly. I don't know whether Windows can read GUID partitioned drives, so I can't say whether you could use that to backup your PC as well. Time Machine definitely wouldn't care about an extra Windows volume on the drive.

I would suggest that the backup volume is at least 150% of the size of your boot volume.

[MikeStevens]

Thank you Tetenal. I'll give it a go.

[Macola]

I'd recommend giving Time Machine its own HD, and get as mcuh capacity as you can afford. The more disk space you have, the further back in time you can "go".

[MikeStevens]

Originally Posted by Macola 

I'd recommend giving Time Machine its own HD, and get as mcuh capacity as you can afford. The more disk space you have, the further back in time you can "go".

Thanks also Mac Elite

[MikeStevens]

Originally Posted by Macola 

I'd recommend giving Time Machine its own HD, and get as mcuh capacity as you can afford. The more disk space you have, the further back in time you can "go".

Thanks Macola

[Chongo]

Can you use say, a 4 Gb USB flash drive if you are using time machine to back up the documents folder only?

[Andhee]

Originally Posted by Chongo 

Can you use say, a 4 Gb USB flash drive if you are using time machine to back up the documents folder only?

Yeah but it would have to be formatted in mac format (dont know what it is, but time machine will do it for you). You probably wont be able to go too far back in time though with only 4gb.

[Chongo]

I just threw out that as an example. What is the largest USB flash drive available anyway?

[harbinger75]

64GB is what I was seeing in a search...but at $3899.03, it's a tad bit expensive.

BUSLINK

EDIT:

Hehe, actually found it for $1499.00!!

BUSLINK

[schwa]

Originally Posted by Chongo 

Can you use say, a 4 Gb USB flash drive if you are using time machine to back up the documents folder only?

Cost aside, this would actually be a huge pain, given how the UI works. Time Machine assumes you're backing up everything by default, and you selectively tell it what not to back up. There's no way to just tell it to "back up this directory", AFAIK.

[msuper69]

Originally Posted by schwa 

Cost aside, this would actually be a huge pain, given how the UI works. Time Machine assumes you're backing up everything by default, and you selectively tell it what not to back up. There's no way to just tell it to "back up this directory", AFAIK.

Sure there is. Select a volume, exclude everything except the folder you want to backup up.

[schwa]

If you're excluding a folder at anything other than the top level (including ~/Documents), then yes, it is a pain. It's doable, but it's totally counterintuitive. Try it.

[ttammatty]

Hi Guys,

OK - well unfortunately about 2 weeks ago I had a system fault and decided to rebuild my macbook from the time machine backup... I thought - great - a fantastic chance to see how well it works.

When I booted from the OSX disk - as the OS wouldn't boot from my HDD - and ran through the time machine restore wizard, to my surprise/shock the most recent time machine backup was over 7 days old. Of course I had no other choice but to use it - but I was fairly annoyed at the data I had lost.

Don't get me wrong - I think time machine is great - but i think its disappointing that there is no built in time machine client to view the times/dates that the backup was run. Also, there is no way to configure a specific time for the full system image which is required to restore the system.

What I would really like is a simple time machine app/widget. I would like to receive an email every time the full system is backed up, and i would like easy access to view that the backups are in fact working - and an easy way to track the consistency of the backups. And, although it may be a little annoying, either a popup telling me that time machine is starting a backup, or a menu-bar like time machine icon. The option to run, pause, stop or skip would be nice. This would also help when you need to disconnect a laptop from a USB drive - and not quite sure if a backup is running.

Well - there is my thoughts.

Would love to hear yours.

matt.

[TETENAL]

There is a client to view when the last backups where run. It's the "Time Machine" icon in the Applications folder. You can also view the times of backups in Finder. You see whether a backup is running in the side bar in Finder. That's where you can also cancel a currently running backup. There probably should be an option for a Time Machine menu item.
You don't have to do full backups except of the very first backup. A full restore can done from any of the hourly/daily backups.

I guess you didn't have your external hard drive attached long enough for a backup to complete during the last week. Something like Time Capsule would probably best for you.

[JKT]

The Time Machine app in the /Applications folder just takes you into the finder/TM view and doesn't provide you with much information on when the next back up is due. If you want to find out when your last back up occurred and when the next one is due, look in System Preferences>Time Machine.

However, Apple could improve TM by having an advanced button. The danger there is that it overcomplicates something that is meant to be a "just works" solution thus putting people off using it (which is why I would suggest they create a separate utility app for this in e.g. /Applications/Utilities/ as those who need it would easily find it, those who didn't could ignore it completely).

[ttammatty]

Hey JKT and Tetenal,

Not really the solution i was looking for. And i don't know if you've tried to do a full system restore from booting of the OS X disk - but the only way to do a restore is off a "full daily backup". This was my major issue. I know it had an hourly backup - but TM didn't get a daily backup from the previous few days because (i'm assuming) that i had my comp off over nights.
Also - when i did a restore from the week previously, i found that a lot of the system preferences (especially Adium - which is a real pain) didn't come through - and every application I opened up was running for the first time, loosing my application settings etc. (plus i had to restore my keychain from a previously hourly backup just to get my apps to work correctly)

As for knowing when the TM backup is running - you need to open a finder window and check if the TM icon is running. I don't see why the dock TM icon can't change to a backup state or something - if they can make the ical icon live, i don't see why they couldn't do that.

I agree that TM shouldn't become too complicated - it should be clean and easy for most users to use. However, I don't see any harm showing the user a little more information. i would like a list of the previous backups - and how long they took - and what time they started - and how much data had changed. I don't see including a dashboard widget or a simple "more info" button within the TM sys prefs screen.

As for purchasing a time capsule - this kinda' irks me. TM was always advertised to use an NAS drive, but when it wasn't included in the final build i bit the bullet and purchased a 500GB USB drive. secondly - i have the MB version just before the 802.11n came built in... so purchasing a time capsule wouldn't bee 100% effective.

I'm going to keep using TM - for easy file-by-file restore, however i will be going back to my third party backup software to create daily images as I used to. Not the most ideal situation, but in disaster - definitely the easiest.

cheers.

[JKT]

Not going to disagree with you. The UI could stand to be improved and more advanced features could be added (a pulsing TM icon would be a nice touch in the Dock, perhaps). However, for a 1.0 product it isn't bad (and has already saved me a trip to Pacifist to re-install some Apple software a stupidly deleted).

Also, having more than one back-up strategy is always going to help. However, the purpose of TM is to try and make sure that as many people as possible have at least one back-up strategy instead of none. It isn't perfect and you can still lose data (e.g. if the hour schedule occurs before you created something and the failure happens before the next one is due), but if it lets you recover most of what you had rather than none, then that has to be a bonus.

Fwiw, your TM backups are logged and you can view then in Console - limit the string filter to backupd in the All Messages view and you will see your TM information:



Incidentally, I know precisely when TM is running... noisy(-ish) back-up drive

[eggman]

Originally Posted by ttammatty 

And i don't know if you've tried to do a full system restore from booting of the OS X disk - but the only way to do a restore is off a "full daily backup". This was my major issue. I know it had an hourly backup - but TM didn't get a daily backup from the previous few days because (i'm assuming) that i had my comp off over nights.

I haven't tried a full system restore, so I find this shocking, if true. The reason I'm surprised to hear this is that based on my reading of the technology underlying Time Machine, every backup - hourly, daily, or monthly - they all represent the full state of the volume you're backing up. (Apart from your exclusions and some temporary and cache directories it doesn't back up).

This article goes into how it works in some detail.

The purpose of consolidating daily or monthly backups is to conserve drive space (a bit) and reduce the number of increments to simplify searching though archives. But if you browse through the Time Machine volume in the Finder, an hourly backup looks precisely the same as a daily backup - you can see that everything on your backed-up volume is there... so I can't think of why Time Machine's restore dialog wouldn't allow you to use one of them!

[TETENAL]

Every backup in Time Machine (including the hourlies) is "complete" (will be filled up with hard links to the unchanged files in previous backups). You can see this when you browse the backup directly in Finder. Everything is there in each of the backups. And indeed Time Machine can restore from any of the hourly backups:



It correlates perfectly to all the hourly backups as can be seen in Finder



Just don't be confused by what appears to be a 9 hour difference in the time shown. That seems to be a time zone issue. If you look at the minutes and seconds you see that Time Machine offers to restore from all the latest hourly backups.

[eggman]

Originally Posted by TETENAL 

It's January the 20th and Time Machine offers several of today's hourly backups to restore from. Note however that it is already past 6:00 PM here while the last backup Time Machine offered me to restore from was from 8:40 AM.

I'm wondering if this is more related to Time Zone than Time Machine... if you look at the label of your backup volume, you'll see that the most recent one you listed is 2008-1-20-174026 (namely, 05:40:26 pm) ... but the one listed in your Select A Backup dialog box says "January 20, 2008 8:40:26 AM". It's intriguing that the minute and second of both of these most recent backups correspond. As the minute and seconds of each of the recent backups correspond as you go down the list!

I don't know where you're located, but is it possible that the restore dialog is displaying the time in UTC (or Cupertino time - who knows?) while the Finder is showing local time?

UPDATE: suspicion confirmed.

[0157988944]

My attempt to restore from TM failed... so I'm glad I still had my Mac to restore from. I wouldn't recommend that as a way to transfer info.

[ttammatty]

When i attempted the restore, i only had about 4 restore points available, the most recent being over a week previously - and had been running leopard for more than 3 weeks....

perhaps i didn't get a full backup every hour (which i doubt because i don't take my MB outside my home)... but the fact of the matter is, I didn't know i wasn't getting a successful backup every hour, and there is no function built in to tell me this!

And yes, I did know you can view the status of the backups via the console - but JKT, as you said earlier, TM is meant to be easy to use - and i don't think a trip to the console constitutes that.

I suppose I'm just harping on because there are some pretty simple features missing from a potentially great feature. I just think these subtleties will save a lot of users the frustration when they do need to restore, and find they aren't as successful in their "new backup routine" than they thought.

And I agree - TM isn't the full backup solution I need(mainly now that i don't trust it!) - but yes, it is a cool application, and it looks nice, and will be convenient if I ever delete anything (don't think i've ever done that before tho ) - BUT, there are just some simple things that would make the whole experience that little bit nicer.

[msuper69]

Originally Posted by ttammatty 

...perhaps i didn't get a full backup every hour...

TM only does a full backup the first time. It's incremental from there on out.

[JKT]

Originally Posted by ttammatty 

perhaps i didn't get a full backup every hour (which i doubt because i don't take my MB outside my home)... but the fact of the matter is, I didn't know i wasn't getting a successful backup every hour, and there is no function built in to tell me this!

Ah, perhaps that is the problem right there - is your MB always plugged in or do you use it on its battery? If the latter, then (iirc) TM doesn't perform any back-ups at all until you plug back in (presumably to conserve battery life).

Fwiw, I brought up the console log just so that you could check and see what is happening when TM is meant to run (e.g. what errors do you get, or not) to find out why yours hasn't been backing up. I realise that it could be much more accessible than it is, but until that happens, this is all we have for now.

[ttammatty]

yeah its plugged in to mains and the usb drive about 95% of the time (i basically use my MB as a desktop) - so i don't know why it didn't get a more recent backup... but i had no way to know!

and msuper69 - i understand that... by "full backup" i meant that the incremental backup didn't complete.

[ttammatty]

Looks like Apple are half way there... we've now got a TS icon in the menu bar!