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You are here: MacNN Forums > Software - Troubleshooting and Discussion > macOS > Time Machine: worth it?

Time Machine: worth it?
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jeff k
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Oct 18, 2012, 09:40 PM
 
I just started using Time Machine in the last year or so. Very very rare it comes in handy or saves the day.

I've heard that it takes resources, but this beach-ball today, was ridiculous. Had to unplug the time machine hard-rive to get an excel file up.

Any opinions?
     
Spheric Harlot
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Oct 18, 2012, 10:07 PM
 
If your data isn't worth the effort, then no, i guess.
     
eyadams
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Oct 19, 2012, 08:26 AM
 
More than once Time Machine has saved my bacon. First, being able to go back in time on a single file made it possible for me to recover my kid's homework, after he had accidentally saved over it.

And I had a hard-drive crash. But all my data was safely on my Time Machine backup, so after I got a new drive installed I could restore from the backup and everything was exactly like it was.

Some kind of backup regime is good. If you don't like Time Machine, a lot of people use other applications to clone their internal drives.
     
anthology123
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Oct 19, 2012, 09:06 AM
 
If a backup is starting to slow down, you could just reformat the drive and start again. A true backup is only as good as the latest backup, so I would
just start clean again. My wife uses Time Machine on a Retina MacBook Pro with a USB3 Seagate drive, and it runs just fine.
     
osiris
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Oct 19, 2012, 09:10 AM
 
Hell yes. It works and can save your butt.

If the hourly backup schedule bothers you, you can google TimeMachineEditor and use it to set the backups to a specific time/day/whatever.
It bugged me that Apple sets TM to run every hour, which is a pain in the ass if you use photoshop or are editing video or doing anything big.
good luck
"Faster, faster! 'Till the thrill of speed overcomes the fear of death." - HST
     
Spheric Harlot
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Oct 19, 2012, 09:29 AM
 
I use time machine, but trigger the back up manually from the menu bar item.
     
jeff k  (op)
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Oct 19, 2012, 09:42 AM
 
Thanks, I'm in then! I think the hardrive too may have been getting old. But great comments.
     
mduell
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Oct 19, 2012, 02:19 PM
 
A backup strategy is worth it.

Time Machine is one option for backup. It's easy, but has issues like this.
     
Hg2491
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Oct 29, 2012, 08:48 PM
 
Time Machine has saved my day too many times. I'm studying Architecture and at 3 in the morning, over-caffeinated, I tend not to think, resulting in files being overwritten.

I have Time Machine backup my whole system and use Dropbox to backup my documents, as well.
     
cgc
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Nov 2, 2012, 01:02 PM
 
I deleted a file from DropBox then went to the DropBox trash and deleted it forever because I had an older version I was more interested in keeping I later decided the changes in the file I deleted from DropBox were needed but I was screwed...it was gone. I thought maybe Time Machine had a copy in my documents folder (I thought I temp saved it there prior to moving it to DropBox) but it wasn't there...I saw a DropBox folder in Time Machine and restored it from there.

I never thought Time Machine would back up DropBox.

Time Machine has saved my butt a few times and I love it...can't speak highly enough of Time Machine. Any Mac user not using Time Machine should have a good reason not to...but I'd suggest off site backups as well (e.g. Carbonite, Back Blaze, Mozy, etc.).
     
   
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