MAC Assistance Required (Time Machine)

Hi

We've got an iMac (Intel). Got to back the bugger up, so plan to use Apple's Time Machine.

I plan to back it up to an external HDD drive, there is about 140Gb of data on the Mac. Up to this point - no backups have been done.

Anyone have a view on how long it takes to backup, how reliable Time Machine is and whether to get USB2, or Firewire External HDD ? If the iMac HDD is 320Gb, what would be an ideal size external HDD to buy for backups ?

Hope this all makes sense and thanks in advance.

cheers
Aaron

AaronDay said:

Hi

We've got an iMac (Intel). Got to back the bugger up, so plan to use Apple's Time Machine.

I plan to back it up to an external HDD drive, there is about 140Gb of data on the Mac. Up to this point - no backups have been done.

Anyone have a view on how long it takes to backup, how reliable Time Machine is and whether to get USB2, or Firewire External HDD ? If the iMac HDD is 320Gb, what would be an ideal size external HDD to buy for backups ?

Hope this all makes sense and thanks in advance.

cheers
Aaron

Click to expand...

Been using Time Machine since it was introduced on my work Mac and its been totally reliable, nver had to restore of course as its a Mac but I do check them regularly and they are all there.

Either USB or Firewire IMPO, not preference.

HDD size I'd go for a 1TB as they are relatively cheap these days, just connect, configure and forget it.

Hi

Yes time machine is recommended.

What version of OS X are you on - 10.6 (aka Snow Leopard) apparently has a faster Time Machine operation than previous versions.

Time wise - it will probably take a couple of hours to do the first backup to the disk, after that it will be quite quick as it maintains protection in an 'incremental' style by backing up only things that change - and then allowing the equivalent of a full backup to be restored if needs be.

If your MAC stores large files that you don't really need a backup of (i.e. video files from the internet) then put them in a folder on their own and exclude the folder - which will speed things up.

It also maintains multiple versions of files so you can go back a version (using a Timeline)

Size wise for the USB HDD I think they recommend 2-3 times more than you are currently using. Note if the disk fills up and you continue to target it for backups then old versions of files will be automatically removed to provide space - obviously it will always keep 1 copy of any file still present on your system.

In theory firewire is quicker than USB2 - but as I don't own a firewire disk I don't have a comparison.

Thank you

many thanks chaps.

That's that sorted now. Another job for tomorrow.

once in a blue moon delete some of the old copies helps disc life.

only a suggestion up to you if you do it or not.

i have 2 drives backing up 2 macs using Time Machine. one uses firewire and the other is USB. can't say i can tell the difference as far as speed goes. being an incremental system means it doesn't have that heavy a workload once the initial backup is done.

i also back up both macs to a third drive using SuperDuper which is a more basic imaging tool.
Time Machine works pretty well, and gives no problems other than occasionally failing to re start the firewire drive from sleep. i have restored from a TM backup once & it's a time consuming process, but it does work.
you have to do an OS reinstall, and then point it at the TM drive to gather the required info to recreate your computer as was. takes several hours IME.

in case of failure, SuperDuper just boots from the USB drive, then overwrites the mac HDD with the image. shouldn't take long at all, but i've not actually done it.

cookie said:

i have restored from a TM backup once & it's a time consuming process, but it does work.
you have to do an OS reinstall, and then point it at the TM drive to gather the required info to recreate your computer as was. takes several hours IME.

Click to expand...

In Leopard and Snow Leopard you boot off the OS install CD and then select an option to do a Time Machine restore which should bypass having to reinstall the complete OS for a DR.

EggChaser said:

In Leopard and Snow Leopard you boot off the OS install CD and then select an option to do a Time Machine restore which should bypass having to reinstall the complete OS for a DR.

Click to expand...

i must have missed that option