FINALLY doing a time machine backup

[nadinbrzezinski]

long story short, my backup drive died months ago and could not afford to get one

[mt13]

1. I have been using Time Machine

since my brand new iMac decided to crash its hard drive! Time Machine was a pain initially as it wouldn't backup properly or at all. Apple finally fixed all the problems and it runs beautifully now. I don't even think about it any more! Good luck and enjoy it!

[NoQuarter]

2. Time Machine saved my life.

My start-up drive went into convulsions just as I was nearing completion of a commissioned multi-movement orchestral score (not to mention editing of thousands of pic from a momentous 2008).

The Mac Grey Screen of (un-bootable) Death.

FREAK OUT!!!

Never thought I'd be restoring a complete system from TM; it has been useful going in for a previous version of a file, or retrieving something that was inadvertently tossed with the trash.

So hyperventilating all the way, I put the install disc in and chose the "Restore From Time Machine" option. It did take quite a bit of time - erasing the entire HD then installing the OS then the files, but I was back to work just where I left off (mostly) in a matter of hours.

I've never had a problem with TM working on my G5 iSight iMac. But as soon as I can afford another backup drive, the first order of business is a bootable clone

[Stinky The Clown]

3. It has saved me twice

Here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=233x6445

And I posted someplace but can't find it ..... I hosed my entire boot drive - somehow. Time Machine restored it all.

[klook]

4. I've been using Synk

for a couple of years now -- from Decimus software. It's excellent, and since I'm still on Tiger it's my backup solution. (When I first got an iMac a few years ago I bought Retrospect -- huge mistake! It was ridiculously complex and for me, unuseable.) Fortunately Synk is easy and reliable, and was cheap to buy. One thing I like about it is that it just makes copies of your files to backup media, instead of using some weird proprietary compression scheme.

I'm wondering -- do you consider Time Machine good enough to justify the Leopard upgrade? (I know there are other good aspects of Leopard, but the integrated backup capability would be a key for me.)

[struggle4progress]

5. It still has some bugs. I got regular back-up failures until I figured out that

I had to manually turn off Spotlight indexing for the external drive hosting the Time Machine data

I still regularly (though not frequently) get back-up error messages: in every case, Time Machine failed to complete a backup and left an in-progress folder on the back-up drive, though in all recent cases immediately re-attempting produced a successful back-up with removal of the dead folder. I don't know whether that's a Time Machine problem or an issue with my relatively new hard drive -- but the Spotlight experience suggests to me that Time Machine may not work perfectly on Leopard yet

[klook]

6. Thanks for the tip.

Think I will stick with Synk for now.

[struggle4progress]

7. In fairness, I should add that it worked when I needed it: I got busy "correcting"

a piece of code a while back and in a few minutes had it thoroughly FUBAR. I didn't -- and don't -- have any idea what I had f'd up, but it was a beaut. After staring dumbly at the wreckage for a while, I slapped my forehead and replaced that one file with a version from an hour or two earlier and went back to work