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Steve Bosell · Oct 17, 2007, 08:38 PM

Does anyone know what to expect in terms of iPhoto and Time Machine integration? I have a ton of old pictures, it would be nice if iPhoto would only keep say the last 6 months of pictures on the local hard drive and archive the rest to the external Time Machine drive. I use a MBP as my primary computer and I am out of hard drive space, It would be cool if only the thumb nails of the old pictures were saved in iPhoto locally, to free up space, and iPhoto requested the backup drive when needed.

0157988944 · Oct 17, 2007, 08:46 PM

Well, Time Machine will back up, so once they are backed up you can delete the files that are older than 6 months and if you need them again, go into Time Machine.

Steve Bosell · Oct 17, 2007, 10:14 PM

Sure, however, I am hoping Apple does more with it, it should see the Time Machine as an archive, it is an pretty obvious feature, I hope they don't spoon feed us features and make us wait till iLife 09.

Art Vandelay · Oct 17, 2007, 10:23 PM

That defeats the purpose of Time Machine, which is to backup files. When you delete the originals and rely on Time Machine to be the sole source, then you no longer have a backup. You've essentially just moved the files. If your Time Machine volume dies, you're screwed.

I wouldn't expect such a "feature" to ever be implemented in Time Machine.

analogika · Oct 18, 2007, 04:39 AM

Hard disks die.

I tell my customers:

"If it's important, you have a duplicate.
If you didn't keep a duplicate, it wasn't important."

That gets 'em on the right track.

TETENAL · Oct 18, 2007, 05:30 AM

Originally Posted by Steve Bosell

Does anyone know what to expect in terms of iPhoto and Time Machine integration? I have a ton of old pictures, it would be nice if iPhoto would only keep say the last 6 months of pictures on the local hard drive and archive the rest to the external Time Machine drive. I use a MBP as my primary computer and I am out of hard drive space, It would be cool if only the thumb nails of the old pictures were saved in iPhoto locally, to free up space, and iPhoto requested the backup drive when needed.

No, you can not do that. Time Machine is not a permanent backup! You can go back in time, but as the backup disk becomes full Time Machine will start deleting the oldest stuff. Eventually you will lose your older pictures.

If you want to archive your old pictures, burn DVDs.

MartiNZ · Oct 18, 2007, 05:46 AM

I find the concept of this integration interesting - given that iPhoto has its own 'trash' inside the app, that it forms a really nasty folder tree in Finder, and that from what I've seen, Time Machine is all about navigating the Finder folder tree, I could see it being really annoying trying to recover photos in that fashion. I'm likely missing something.

TETENAL · Oct 18, 2007, 06:32 AM

You're missing something: you are not supposed to look at the Finder to find and organize your photos. You do that exclusively from within iPhoto. How iPhoto organizes the files on disk is irrelevant. In fact in the new iPhoto wraps the photo library into a bundle that is not (readily) navigable. You also use iPhoto to restore your photos, not the Finder:

Apple - QuickTime - WWDC 2006

Demo starts at the 40th minute.

mdc · Oct 18, 2007, 08:42 AM

MartiNZ, everything is stored on your drive somewhere, but certain applications make viewing said data easier. iTunes for your music, iPhoto for your photos, AddressBook for your contacts, etc.

Technically you could click on the Time Machine icon while in Finder, browse to your AddressBook folder and restore files, or iTunes folder and restore music, but Time Machine works a lot easier when you click the Time Machine icon from inside the application that's missing data.
That application will float into the Time Machine UI and you can choose what to restore.

Like TETENAL said, the iPhoto Library became a bundle recently, and honestly, I'm surprised iTunes's Library isn't one yet.
People who know what they're doing can control click on it, Show Package Contents, and muck about in there, but for everyone else, it will stop you from accidentally renaming/moving/deleting files you need. Double clicking the bundle opens the appropriate application. Makes sense to me.

Steve Bosell · Oct 18, 2007, 10:27 AM

I guess it is less of a time machine feature and more of an iPhoto feature. I want the thumb nails to remain in iPhoto, but the hundreds of 2.5 meg image files archived away to an external hard drive, the same one I currently use for backups and will become my time machine drive. Like I said, when a laptop is your primary computer, you do not have tons of hard drive space available, I currently have less that 7 gigs of a 120 gig hard drive, the photos, music, boot camp partition, ect. they all add up fast.

analogika · Oct 18, 2007, 10:47 AM

Move your iPhoto Library to the external drive (hold down the Option key when starting up iPhoto).

mdc · Oct 18, 2007, 10:50 AM

I agree with you Steve. My PowerBook has a 120gb drive and I have almost 40gb of photos. They're all backed up religeously.

Here's my dilemma. I have a laptop because I enjoy the freedom of taking my computer anywhere I want to. I feel that storing data on external drives defeats the purpose of a laptop since carrying an external drive around with me is not an option, and often when I take my laptop I want all my photos.

In my opinion the only fix is to get a bigger hard drive.

peeb · Oct 18, 2007, 11:55 AM

Originally Posted by adamfishercox

Well, Time Machine will back up, so once they are backed up you can delete the files that are older than 6 months and if you need them again, go into Time Machine.

Only for a while though - eventually they will drop off the other end, right?

Big Mac · Oct 18, 2007, 12:07 PM

If iPhoto doesn't already have special Time Machine support like Address Book does, I think we'll see it in an update. However, as others have said Time Machine is not a proper archival solution like traditional stored backups are.

Art Vandelay · Oct 18, 2007, 12:15 PM

Originally Posted by peeb

Only for a while though - eventually they will drop off the other end, right?

Only if you run out of space on the TM volume or have it set to delete backups of a certain age.

peeb · Oct 18, 2007, 12:18 PM

Well, yes. And with Time Machine, the way I understand it, eventually everyone will run out of space, since it backs up hourly by default - no?

Art Vandelay · Oct 18, 2007, 12:21 PM

Yes, but it doesn't keep each hourly backup.

Apple - Mac OS X Leopard - Features - Time Machine

Timing is everything.
Every hour, every day, an incremental backup of your Mac is made automatically as long as your backup drive is attached to your Mac. Time Machine saves the hourly backups for the past 24 hours, daily backups for the past month, and weekly backups for everything older than a month. Only files created and then deleted before the next hourly backup will not be included in the long term. Put another way: You’re well covered.

Apple's Time Machine page has a lot of details in it.

mdc · Oct 18, 2007, 12:22 PM

It will only back up changed files every hour.
Your first backup will be an entire image of your drive, excluding any folders you choose. My download folder will be excluded. Then every hour a small backup will be sent to the Time Machine drive consisting only of files that have changed.

So yeah, everyone will eventually run out of space.

Chuckit · Oct 18, 2007, 12:50 PM

Originally Posted by mdc

It will only back up changed files every hour.
Your first backup will be an entire image of your drive, excluding any folders you choose. My download folder will be excluded. Then every hour a small backup will be sent to the Time Machine drive consisting only of files that have changed.

So yeah, everyone will eventually run out of space.

I don't have Leopard here to check, but I thought it dropped backups past a certain point. Is that not right?

Art Vandelay · Oct 18, 2007, 12:55 PM

Folks, if you read the Time Machine feature page on apple.com you'll have answers to several of your questions.

One day, no matter how large your backup drive is, it will run out of space. And Time Machine has an action plan. It alerts you that it will start deleting previous backups, oldest first. Before it deletes any backup, Time Machine copies files that might be needed to fully restore your disk for every remaining backup. (Moral of the story: The larger the drive, the farther back in time you can back up.)

peeb · Oct 18, 2007, 12:59 PM

Originally Posted by Art Vandelay

Folks, if you read the Time Machine feature page on apple.com you'll have answers to several of your questions.

So we're agreed that TM is not an archive solution - it's a limited time backup of your files that eventually deletes older files?

Art Vandelay · Oct 18, 2007, 01:03 PM

It only deletes older files if you've already deleted them yourself at some point.

peeb · Oct 18, 2007, 01:10 PM

Yes. The OP was asking about those.

Art Vandelay · Oct 18, 2007, 01:14 PM

And wasn't it already answered?

peeb · Oct 18, 2007, 01:17 PM

It looked like it was answered erroneously, but perhaps I misunderstood.

Steve Bosell · Oct 18, 2007, 01:40 PM

Originally Posted by Art Vandelay

And wasn't it already answered?

No, I want it to archive my iPhoto's on the same external hard drive as the Time Machine backup.

peeb · Oct 18, 2007, 01:55 PM

I wish iPhoto would manage multiple volumes better - and iTunes for that matter. Being able to move seldom used photos onto an external drive would be wonderful. Not having to switch libraries would be great too.

Art Vandelay · Oct 18, 2007, 02:10 PM

Originally Posted by Steve Bosell

No, I want it to archive my iPhoto's on the same external hard drive as the Time Machine backup.

It's not an archive solution, it's a backup solution. So, it's not going to do what you're wanting.