How is Time Machine working for those that use it?

[Jem]

Also, having not used it yet I was windering hw it would work with a laptop that is not normally connected to an external drive most of the time.

Does it save up the syncs until it is periodically connected to the Time Machine External drive? Or should one repartition the internal drive to *2* partitions.

Will poke around the Apple site to see if these topics are covered... but in the meantime was hoping to hear how this feature was working out for people in the real world.

My personal experience with Spotlight (in 10.4) has been less than stellar, so I'm think hard about whether Time Machine is a reliable substitution for SuperDuper backups.

Thanks!

[Chupa Chupa]

Works fine for me so far. It would be fine/ a laptop as long as you realize the second you connect your TM drive it's going to start syncing, so you'd only want to connect when you wanted to update the backup.

[modelamac]

I have a G4 with Leopard. I have the Time Machine backup drive in a FW case. I have Time Machine off in Sys. Prefs., but have the TM app icon in the Dock.

When I want to do a TM backup, I connect the FW drive, and right-click on the Dock icon for "backup now" It does its thing in about 5 minutes (longer =greater amount of changes) and I eject the FW drive. Done.

I do this at least once a day, and more often if I'm working with documents or movies.

I don't need or want the hourly backups. I have a bootable backup drive that I clone once a month, and verify bootability.

Your needs and mileage may vary.

[pinkoos]

[quote Jem]Or should one repartition the internal drive to *2* partitions.
I guess two partitions is fine if your main intention is to have files backed up in case you inadvertently delete one or make changes that you didn't want to, etc.

However, if your main intention is to prevent loss of data in case of a catastrophic hard drive failure, then, AFAIK, when your hard drive fails, the whole drive fails, not just one partition.

Someone please correct me if this is an incorrect assumption.

-p

[Jem]

Pinkoos,

Yeah, it didn't seem to me a good idea to have your backup on the same physical drive. That plus, it would obviously shrink your usable internal drive space by 50%.

As you point out, the only real advantage is real time retrieval of earlier versions of files, etc.

Modelamac,

That's helpful info, as it seems it does save up syncs until a connection with the external drive is made. Which raises the question, "Will it only have as many *restore points* as the number of times you connect and sync the drive?"

In the demos I've seen of it you could flip back day by day. But if you only sync once a week I don't see how that would be possible unless TM somehow buffers and caches the changes between the times when physical syncs are carried out.

Cheers,

Jem