“When you click the Time Machine icon [from Apple’s new Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard’s] Dock, you’re brought to one of the most beautiful interfaces you have ever seen on an operating system. Once there, you’re given a view of the computer at this instant and can work your way through the hourly backups by clicking the arrow to the right of the view, or by clicking each of the windows to get a specific time. If that’s not good enough for you, you can also use the time tracker to your right, which allows you to choose the specific backup time and go right to it,” Don Reisinger blogs for CNET.
“Simply put, this interface is perfect and I honestly don’t know how Apple could actually improve on it,” Reisinger writes.
“My only issue with Time Machine is the utter lack of options. I understand Apple was going with a ‘fire and forget’ mentality with this program, but I still would have liked to force the system to ignore some files and folders from backing up. That said, Apple wasn’t going for that kind of customization and if you’re not either, then don’t worry about,” Reisinger writes.
Reisinger gives Time Machine an overall grade of 9.5 out of a possible 10.
Full article here.
@petey, there’s plenty of files on your computer you don’t want to backup. Caches and temporary files to name a couple. Hopefully Time Machine automatically ignores those.
Can anyone tell me if Time Machine backs up all drives or just the system drive?
Furthermore, how much space doe Time Machine backups use?
@JackH
Maybe this will give you an idea. My system drive is a RAID consisting of 2 250GB drives, and it currently has 218GB used. In Time Machine I have set about 30GB’s worth of folders to be ignored for the backup, leaving around 190GB to be backed. My backup drive currently has 136GB out of 372GB used, and TS has been doing incremental backups to it for 2 days now. I’m assuming that the unaccounted for space is what TS automatically ignores, such as all system related files which are not backed up. I guess Apple figures that these files can be recovered from your install disk if need be.
This is my question:
My TM backup drive is an external Firewire drive connected to my Quad G5. I have a Macbook that I connect to the Quad via ethernet when it’s on my desk. Can I use the FW drive on the Quad as a Time Machine backup for the Macbook via ethernet?
@Wingsy – yes you can.
have today installed Leopard…Time machine is running for its first back up and I’m happy, really happy!
I have to agree that although I do find Time Machine useful, and I have been using it, I am not going to keep it plugged in all the time. Even though I use a laptop I’ve been plugging my external at night and once Time Machine has done it’s thing, I unplug the external and my MBP goes to sleep for the night. Is this the best method, no, but it works for me and my needs.
@Citsacras
The difference between a moron and a fool is that the moron can’t help it. In the future, Citsacras should try commenting on something that he (I’m sure it’s a he) has taken the time to learn about.
For the rest of us, if we want to know more about Time Machine, it’s as simple as typing “Time Machine” in the little search box in the Help menu.
There’s lots of good information there.
Whoever this guy is, he’s an Apple hack! They are all over the internet ya know!
http://fakesteveballmer.blogspot.com
Thanks, Wingsy.
Does anyone know if you can use Time Machine to restore your stuff to a different Mac?
It really is breathtaking.
How do you actually delete something though?
to delete an item entirely from Time Machine: find it in the Time Machine window, highlight it, and bring up the “Action Menu”. There is an option in there to delete all copies from Time Machine.