Using Time Machine – #13 Noob2Pro 14
Noob2Pro
Hey
Sorry for the lack of a Noob2Pro series yesterday, I had some server troubles and I wasn’t feeling brilliant (I slept on my arm last night, and now I can’t feel my left arm). Anyway life must go on and today I am going to discuss Time Machine, the fantastic back up app designed to work with your Mac. I think this application should be compulsory use for anyone who doesn’t have a major back up program.
There is a lot of different opinions about Time Machine. Some people love it because it is simple to use, does it job and works. Some people hate it because its not a proper back up app. I personally think it is great. Time Machine is designed to backup the important stuff personal to you. For example your applications, documents, pictures and music to say the least. I don’t think it backs up your system files, such as logs and caches (hence the disapproval among some people), when restoring your Mac, your install disk is combined with a Time Machine backup. I’m not 100% sure since I have never tried it out. However Time Machine is good for looking after your personal documents and for most people it does that job well.
Time Machine, when set up, will save everything to an external disk, when you make a change to a file or folder it records this change. At a given time in the day, usually every hour, it will write these files to disk. Then when needs be, you can fly back in time and look for either the latest file or a previous iteration. Meaning you can either pick up the latest backup of a file, or one a month ago when you have just realised you have deleted something important.
Setting up Time Machine is dead simple. First you need an External Hard Drive. You can pick pretty much any one up. The bigger the better. It doesn’t need to have any fancy features just a USB cable. When you have bought it and plugged it in you are ready to roll. I can’t fully remember how the process goes (there may be an automatic option when you first plugin your drive), however if you go to System Preferences > Time Machine, you can set it up from there.
The first step is to select “Change Disk”, here you can select the disk you want to backup. Select the one you have just added. When you click OK, the back up can begin. If it is a new disk it will take a long while as it has to create a lot of files and copy them across.
As a pro tip I recommend looking through the options. Here you can add folders and files to exclude. If you have large folders of files you know you wont use its a good idea to add them to the list. For example I would add your main temporary folder, or anything you use for development where the final copy gets saved somewhere else. This is done to save space and allow you to add more files that are important.
Using Time Machine is simple as well. Simply access Time Machine from the Applications folder. Here you can navigate the Finder window as normal. When you have gone back in time and found the file you want, press restore and it will restore it in the current Finder folder. Easy.
Time Machine is useful, set it up. However if you want a more “Professional” backup system, try SuperDuper, as this can create a fully bootable backup system. Its a great fail safe system, however it does cost and not as flexible as Time Machine.
There isn’t many Pro tips for using Time Machine. The best one I can offer is to actually set it up. You only ever need a backup when you don’t have one. So make sure you have Time Machine in place.
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Where To Next?
14 Responses to “Using Time Machine – #13 Noob2Pro”
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Hey,
if i had a harddisk of 250 GB installed, what size do you recommend for the backup hdd? (How fast is the backup growing?)
thanks for infos!
Comment By phx on July 22nd, at 8:38 pm
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As a relatively new mac owner, I like these noob posts. However, I have a hard time reading them with so many grammatical mistakes in the posts.
“There is a lot of different opinions…”
“Its not a proper backup…”
“Time Machine is designed to backup the important stuff personal to your.”
Comment By HTyrone on July 22nd, at 8:44 pm
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@phx, 250Gb will be fine.
@HTyrone, sorry about the errors. The first two you pointed out seem ok to me. I’ve changed the last one.
Comment By admin on July 22nd, at 9:16 pm
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4
@HTyrone & @admin
The second one should be “It is” or “It’s”. Other than that, the first one is proper unless the rest of the included sentence is included.
As for the article, you may want to include that you can also use FireWire 400/800 or a Network Drive via Time Capsule or a hard-drive that is connected and shared via your router.
Comment By Chris Wanja on July 23rd, at 12:52 am
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I forgot about firewire. I’ve had problems with Router hard drive connections. One day it just wiped all of my Time Machine data.
Comment By admin on July 23rd, at 1:07 am
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I have yet to actually set up a network drive. I am wanting to get a large hard-drive rack set up with 2TB of space and connect it to my airport extreme. From hearing your milage, I am not in much of a rush to get it set up.
Comment By Chris Wanja on July 23rd, at 1:30 am
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7
In case anyone cares (not trying to be obnoxious here):
Regarding “There is a lot of different opinions… ”
Verbs and nouns have to match. If you have multiple nouns, you have to use the matching plural form of the verb. We wouldn’t say “there are a lot of chair over there” because “are” is the plural form of the verb and “chair” is only one thing.
In the same vain, “different opinions” (plural opinions) require that we use the plural “are” of the verb. Nouns and verbs have to match.
Comment By HTyrone on July 25th, at 4:11 am
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I have personally used time machine to move apps/files/settings/etc.. to a new Macbook pro. My old Mac only had firewire 400 and my new one only had firewire 800. Not having the right adapter/cable to connect the two Macs I realized my external drive (which had my time machine backup) had both firewire 400 and 800 connections. I fired up the new Mac, connected my external drive with my time machine backup and 20 minutes later I was up and running. Everything worked like my old Mac – the only thing that didn’t show up was my printers. An easy fix though.
Comment By Chip on July 29th, at 5:38 am
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I have to agree with HTyrone about the grammar errors. No personal offense meant to the blog author, but it really is very distracting to constantly have to adjust your sentences internally to read them. A short brush up on basics is good for everyone, especially those who write in a broad public forum. Even the best information, if not presented clearly, becomes less than helpful.
Comment By NJHeart2Heart on July 29th, at 3:47 pm
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10
HTyrone,
If we are going to nitpick, I believe it should be “In the same vein” not, “In the same vain”.
Comment By arlenkp on July 30th, at 8:26 pm
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11
Thanks arlenkp.
Comment By Htyrone on July 31st, at 5:14 pm
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12
mrowr, little grammar catfight, grow the fuck up
Comment By friggle on August 4th, at 2:03 am
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Time Machine saved my life. I somehow mislabeled 2 hard drives (both partration, so I have leopard and snow leopard) and I delete the newer one. I used time machine with the installer and it was back in an hour and a half…
Comment By Dylan Weber on September 18th, at 1:05 am
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14
I have an external HD with some data already on it. I would like to back up my computer’s HD onto the external one without erasing the current files on the external HD. Is this possible if I use Time Machine?
Comment By himopolio on December 3rd, at 6:12 pm