Does Time Machine keep my programs?

I am wondering if I restore my Mac to an earlier date (about a week) if it will make my programs unable to run. Will I have to register them again if I bought them? Will they all be properly installed and running?
Please only answer if your sure! Sensetive information. Thanks
-Dr. Jac.

if you do a full system restore from TM it will give you *an exact copy* of your whole system as it was at the backup time. so whatever worked then at the backup time will work when you restore. to do a full system restore you boot from the Snow leopard install dvd and select "restore system from backup" from utilities menu.

Similar Messages

  • Does Time Machine keep backups of my emails?

    I was wondering if Time Machine keeps a backup of all my stored emails and the folders I created in Mail.
    Anyone know about this?
    Thanks

    I gave up on TM as a worthwhile backup solution, but dee if the gree demo of BackInTime can help...
    http://www.tri-edre.com/english/backintime.html
    Have you looked through Pondini's extensive TM help site?
    http://Pondini.org/TM/FAQ.html

  • Does Time Machine Keep My Old Emails?

    If I ran a backup of my MacBook Pro (full backup onto a Time Capsule) two months ago and now run a backup again, will it overwrite all my old Mail messages? Ie. say I ran the backup last December 6, will all the emails of Dec.6 (inbox, Sent, all my accounts) and before still be there after I run a new backup today? My computer crashed about a month ago and I had to have it repaired, but I had to recreate all my old Mail accounts and start over with empty Inbox, Sent etc. -- and I could never figure out how to get my Mail emails off Time Capsule and onto my repaired MacBook).
    The reason is that I would kind of like to still have all those emails, but I do want to run a backup. Can I just exclude Mail from the new backup? That way, all my Dec. 6th emails would still be on the Time Capsule, where maybe one day I will figure out how to retrieve them (it's devilishly difficult) and I would still have all my post-Dec. 6 emails on this computer.
    Sorry, I hope this makes sense.
    Thanks in advance!
    Nick

    If I ran a backup of my MacBook Pro (full backup onto a Time Capsule) two months ago and now run a backup again, will it overwrite all my old Mail messages?
    It shouldn't unless the drive runs out of space.
    If you want to recover the old e-mails, in Finder hold down the option/alt key while selecting the Go menu item. Select Library/Mail. Enter Time Machine and go to the old backup.
    If you want to make your user library permanently visible, run the below command in Applications/Utilities/Terminal.
    chflags nohidden ~/Library/
    You will need to do that after any updates.

  • How does time machine back up separate but computers on the same drive

    Thinking about hooking up a hard drive to APBS to use as a time machine for several  macs /iPads, how does time machine keep these different devices separate? How does it keep the backup info separate? Thanks

    APBS is usually called AEBS or Airport Extreme Base Station.
    You can only do Time Machine to the newest one.. it is not supported on earlier models.
    See http://pondini.org/TM/Home.html
    Look for Gory details about airdisk.
    Also it is going to help you to actually read how Time Machine works on network drives.
    What you are asking has all the answers there.
    http://pondini.org/TM/Works.html
    ipads do not backup like macs.. there is no time machine.
    ipads backup to itunes or to icloud. The backup to local itunes can then be backed up by TM to the disk you are using.
    Please note even though Apple now says it works.. I have seen reports where the old problem has come back.. it works for 6-8weeks and then the backup corrupts itself and you have to start over.

  • My Time Machine keeps backing up and won't stop.

    My Time Machine keeps backing up and won't stop.  The problem started when it said I was out if space.  It is supposed to delete the oldest backup.  Now I cannot even backup at all.  It just keep going and never stops, although it really does not work at all.  I have used the disk utilities and iI have Zeroed out. The TC is a 1 TB and is about 13 months old. Right now it says "79.9 MB of 104.9 MB" and "backing up 961,837 items". I do not have the check mark in "Notify after old backups are deleted." It will stay stuck like this for hours and hours.  The TC is plugged into a U-verse router and the 27" MAC is plugged into the TC.

    So you already wiped the old backup and started again??
    If that is the case it did a fresh full backup ok?
    How much free space is on the TC now?
    Do you happen to have multiple network links? Meaning do you have TC bridged to the U-verse router.. with both ethernet and wireless working at the same time. I discovered this one all by my loansome.. having multiple paths does not seem to worry most things on the computer.. but it totally kills TM.
    I had the same sort of thing happening in testing a TC I am fixing. So I have multiple ethernet and wireless. The incremental backups became extremely slow.. by turning off wireless and one ethernet so there is only one route to the TC.. it flys again.

  • Does Time Machine track file movements?

    If I have a file on my desktop, have Time Machine back up the desktop, and then move the file to my "Documents" folder and back up again, does Time Machine back up two copies of the file in each respective location or does it know that the file was moved (without being changed) and only keep one copy on the backup drive and just make a new hard link to the file in the new location (in this case the "Documents" folder)?

    if you move a file to another location, TM will think that it's a new file provided that it sees the moved file during a regular backup.
    If you move a file around BETWEEN backups, it will NOT find the intermediate locations.
    - gws

  • Does Time Machine Ever Delete All Traces of a File?

    I have a question.  I have read up on Time Machine on various articles, posts, and documents across the web and I am having a hard time understanding exactly how time machine deletes files.
    When a disk is full, does Time Machine ever make the decision to delete the last copy or version of a file, therefore completely erasing it off the disk forever?  I know that Time Machine deletes older versions of files, but will it ever completely delete the last, final backup of a file to make space?  If so, I can't imagine using Time Machine as a true piece of backup software.  It seems like it would be useful in restoring your computer in an emergency, but as far as backing up files, it seems that it would be catastrophic, because it may choose to delete the last remaing version of a file to make space and you end up losing that file for ever.
    Here is an example:
    I create a file X.doc
    Time Machine backs it up.
    I modify X.doc
    Time Machine backs up the copy, keeping both the original and the new copy on the backup drive.
    I modify X.doc yet again.
    Time Machine drive runs out of space. Time Machine deletes the oldest version of X.doc and backs up the new copy.
    I create 10 more files unrelated to X.doc
    Will Time Macine remove all remaining versions of X.doc to make space for the 10 new files???
    I hope I am making sense.

    Derek Doublin1 wrote:
    Will Time Macine remove all remaining versions of X.doc to make space for the 10 new files???
    The worst TM can do is delete all your older copies of files, not the most recent version.
    If the drive is full, then it can't accept any more files period.
    If you had a full 100GB boot drive and a 100GB TM drive, the TM drive would be a copy of the boot drive with no room for saved states.
    If you changed a file on the full boot drive, then TM updates that file on it's full drive, there will be no copy of the previous version of that file.
    TimeMachine makes for a poor pernament backup system, because lets say you do a major files addition to your boot drive, TM backs that up and can go ahead and delete files you realized you accidentially deleted just a few short days ago.
    It's better than nothing and works ok for newbies, but more seasoned types use many backup methods in addition to TM, because corruption creep is possible with TM as well as malware as it's hooked up so often, in a lot of cases all the time.
    Most commonly used backup methods

  • How does Time Machine handle large files?

    I'm relatively new at the whole Time Capsule / Time Machine process and have learned that large files (eg aperture library) are backed up each time there is a change and this can lead to the TC filling up quicker than normal.
    How does this work with daily and weekly backups?
    For example, if my aperture library is, say 1Gb and I import a load of photos from my camera and this goes up to 2Gb. I've learned that I should disable time machine while I'm in Aperture (or at least before 10.6...not sure now). So given I've done that, imported the files to Aperture but want to edit them later and ultimately move them into iPhoto to keep the Aperture album small.
    When I turn back on Time Machine, the next hourly backup will know the library has changed and will back it up, this will go on until a day backup has been taken - this deletes the 24 hourly backups? or does it merge them?
    If I then do the editing the following week, then export the photos and the library is now back to 1Gb again....backed up hourly/daily/weekly etc what am I left with??
    Do I have an original, the 2GB version and the new 1Gb version...ie 4Gb......is there a cunning way I can work to change the files within a week so only one of the changes is in the backup?

    Orpheus999 wrote:
    When I turn back on Time Machine, the next hourly backup will know the library has changed and will back it up, this will go on until a day backup has been taken - this deletes the 24 hourly backups? or does it merge them?
    The Time Machine panel of System Preferences says this:
    Time Machine keeps
    - Hourly backup for the past 24 hours
    - Daily backups for the past month
    - Weekly backups until your backup disk is full
    Each time Time Machine runs it creates what appears to be an entirely new backup set, although it does this in a way that doesn't require it to copy files that have already been copied. So merging isn't necessary. Another effect of how it operates is that each unique version of a file (as opposed to packages of files) only exists on the backup volume once.
    According to the contents of my Time Machine backup file, hourly backups are literally kept for 24 hours, not until the next "daily" backup. For a "daily" backup, it seems to keep the oldest "hourly" backup for a day.
    If I then do the editing the following week, then export the photos and the library is now back to 1Gb again....backed up hourly/daily/weekly etc what am I left with??
    Do I have an original, the 2GB version and the new 1Gb version...ie 4Gb......is there a cunning way I can work to change the files within a week so only one of the changes is in the backup?
    You might be able to exclude those files from being backed up at certain times, but I can't be sure this would result in older copied of those files being retained.

  • How does time machine handle deleted files

    I've recently grown into a 1.5TB external hard drive where I back up my iMac through Time Machine. I'm a photography hobbyist who does a lot of processing work on my photos in Photoshop, therefore I'm regularly generating sizable data to back up.
    My question is, using some hypothetical numbers:
    Pretend I create 50GB of new data by importing a lot of photos onto my iMac, then Time Machine does it's thing before I can decide what photos I want to keep or trash. I later go back and edit my photo catalog and decide I only want to keep 1/2 of photos from that previous import, reducing that data to only 25GB. Will Time Machine keep those old pictures on my external drive, even though I deleted them from my iMac? Will Time Machine ever recognize I threw away those files, assume I don't want them, and overwrite them? Or is Time Machine going to keep using my my external drive to back up everything until I used up all of the externals space?
    Message was edited by: Michael Streubert

    Understanding how TM deletes things can be difficult, but I'll try to summarize it:
    -TM will back up your system every hour.
    -After 24 hours, TM will delete all but one of the 24 previous hourly backups. The one it decides to keep will become your "daily" backup. You have no control over which of those 24 backups it will select to keep as the daily.
    -After 30 days, TM will start to delete the old daily backups too. It will keep 4 of the last 30 backups, one for each week.
    -After your TM disk fills up, it will start to delete old backups to make room for new ones.
    So, after you delete them from your main HD, the length of time that they kept on the TM drive can vary. If the files existed for only a few hours, then there is a good chance that they will be purged from the backups the following day. Or they might be kept for weeks or months, depending on if TM decided to keep those backups as the daily or weekly. It's kind of a crap shoot.
    If the files existed on your main hard drive for between one and seven days, then they will remain on your TM backup drive for at least a month. After that they are at risk of being purged out.
    If the files existed for more than a week, they will stay on your TM drive until it fills up. After that, they are at risk of being deleted.
    I hope this helps.

  • HT201250 Does Time Machine delete files in back-ups that are deleted on my Mac?

    Does Time Machine delete files in back-ups that are deleted on my Mac?  IOW....if I need to restore a whole back-up, I don't want to restore previously deleted files.

    Does Time Machine delete files in back-ups that are deleted on my Mac?
    Not immediately. When space starts to get tight, Time Machine will start to delete the oldest file(s) to make more room, but this won't occur for some time.
    if I need to restore a whole back-up, I don't want to restore previously deleted files.
    You won't if you choose to restore from a backup that occurred after the date that you deleted the file.
    If you absolutely do not want to keep the file in your Time Machine backups at all, you do have the option to go into Time Machine, find the file, and manually delete all versions of the file from past dates.

  • Does time machine backup iPhoto in an optimized way?

    Question:
    When TM backs up iPhoto, does it save a whole new copy of the library each time, or does it somehow sort of record the changes only?
    I'm concerned about filling up TM too fast with a bunch of copies of my iPhoto library, since it is fairly large
    Thanks!

    Hi Xroox!
    It is good to hear that your are taking Time Machine backups, as it is important to always have your content securely on another place.
    When it comes to iPhoto backups only changes will be backed up, as the pictures is not a part of the App iPhoto.
    When it comes to your storage you can take a look at this article.
    Time Machine keeps hourly backups for the past 24 hours, daily backups for the past month, and weekly backups. The oldest backups are deleted when your backup drive becomes full.
    Mac Basics: Time Machine backs up your Mac - Apple Support

  • How Does Time Machine Help If... iCal Data Lost?

    Hi,
    How does Time Machine help if, say, your iCal database gets messed up? Or, how does it help if you accidentally delete all your playlists from iTunes? I'd be interested to know.

    That's a very good question (although probably better directed at Apple than us). Because Time Machine is new and Apple's in house programs handle data in different ways, there are a range of different means of recovering data for different applications. Not very user friendly and iCal is one of the least user friendly ones.
    As an experiment, because I don't make much use of iCal and have no real idea how it works, I tried to find out how to restore its data. Starting with working with the application: nope, not TM aware at present. OK, where does it restore its data? Next step Spotlight where, as it happens, the obvious search "Calendars" brings up a folder in ~/Library labelled that with a whole lot of mysterious stuff in it. I'm pretty sure that restoring that folder would do the trick. No doubt, if you could figure out which Calendar belongs to what in the above folder you could restore a single calendar that was causing problems. Still, Apple's clearly got some work to do to make this more transparent. Roll on iCal4!
    (By the way Mail also restores from within the program).

  • How does time machine use the external disk space??

    does time machine back up only the changed or new stuff or does it back up everything?  does this mean that if on "day one" it backed up 600 gb worth of data, the next back up on "day 2" would be 600gb+a few more things, or would it be 600gb+600gb+the few more things?  Does it back up "day one" in a whole package and "day two" in another package, or does it back up "day one", plus only the different things made from "day one" to "day two""?
    similarly, does it keep stuff from the first back up ever, plus anything new or modified in the following back ups, then when it is full, does it let just the oldest files drop off?  or does it drop off everything from the initial backup?  that is, if I had 20mb of changes would it erase only 20mb of data to make the new data fit, or would it erase all 600gb from say "day one"?
    thanks for the answer!
    iMac, Mac OS X (10.6.8)
    <Email Edited by Host>

    See Pondini's TM FAQs for starters.

  • Does Time Machine awake an iMac from Sleep?

    I'm just curious as to whether Time Machine backups awaken an iMac from sleep? Or does Time Machine sleep too? I'm not talking about display sleep, but system sleep.

    Hi:
    Short answer, no
    Time Machine will, however, keep track of when the next backup is due after the Mac wakes.
    Barry

  • Does time machine erase contents on external hardrive?

    does time machine erase contents on external hardrive? is there a way to keep old information on the external hard drive and also use it for time machine?

    sorry. still a bit confused. i've been using the hard drive on my old macbook, and then i transferred information to the new macbook using the hard drive. does it still need to be formatted? is it a special time machine formatting? i didn't transfer all the information on it and i'd like to keep it on the external hard drive as "old macbook" and also use it for the time machine. possible or pipe-dream? thanks.

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