Does Time Machine make Backup obsolete?

I am a relative novice to the world of Macs, but I have been a big fan of Backup. Now that I have Time Machine, I am wondering whether or not I even need Backup anymore. Any advice/guidance would certainly be appreciated.
Thanks.

If you use a .Mac account then Backup is useful for backing up certain elements of your user account to your iDisk. The iDisk is not useful as a backup device for TM. TM also does not eliminate the need for creating bootable clones because TM does not create a bootable clone.
TM is best seen as an elemental backup solution easy enough for anyone to use in order to encourage more users to create backups in order to avoid data loss.

Similar Messages

Does Time Machine make back-ups when nobody is logged on?

Hello,
Does Time Machine make back-ups when nobody is logged on and does it continue to back-up when I log off?
I'm using an directly connected external hard drive to back-up my data with Time Machine, the back-ups are encrypted.
Thanks in advance.

I had the same problem with Time Machine and solved it by enabling "Enable Power Nap" in Energy Saver:
System Preferences...
Energy Saver
Restore Defaults
Check "Enable Power Nap: While sleeping, your Mac can back up using Time Machine and periodically check for new email, calendar, and other iCloud updates."
2013 21.5 iMac
OSX Mavericks
Seagate 1 TB slim USB 3.0 (power is drawn from USB port), formatted to Mac Journaling File System

Why does time machine make a second/different backup after new installing a hard drive?

Hi all,
Long time reader, first time poster...
after having to install a new hard drive on my MacBook Pro, the new Time Machine backups are not recognising the original/older backups on the external hard drive connected via network router and has created a new/second backup caller 'xxx Mac Book Pro 1' instead of updating/reading the orginal 'xxx Mac Book Pro backup'?
Does anyone know why it did this? and more importantly how do i make it recgonise the original and stop making the secondary copy?
Thanks!

Hi gb69,
If you are having issues with Time Machine backups after a recent hardware change, you may find the following article helpful:
Time Machine: Troubleshooting backup issues
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht3275
Regards,
- Brenden

Does Time Machine make bootable backups?

I used a beautiful backup program called Backup Simplicity in Tiger that made a bootable Exact duplicate of my HD into my external drive. That's really I want to do.
This morning I tried Time Machine for the first time. It only put a backup folder on my external drive. That's not what I want to do.
So here's my question, if I totally erase my external drive will Time Machine make a bootable duplicate of my HD on my external drive also?
Also, is there a way to schedule Time Machine for backups manually?

No, TimeMachine doesn't create a bootable backup, nor can it be controlled manually. The purpose of TimeMachine is to work behind the scenes backing up changed files. Later, when you realize something is amiss, you can 'go back in time' and fix the problem. Admittedly, I'm a little shaky on the details of just how flexible the retrieval system is since I've not yet played with that feature yet. But as I understand it, if you installed a new program and your computer suddenly started going nuts, you'll be able to use TimeMachine to restore your computer to the point before you installed that program. Or, if you realize you improperly edited a file, you'll be able to retrieve the file prior to that editing session.
Apple's team realized three things: 1) most of us don't take the time to perform backups even though we know we should be doing it. 2) most of us don't really understand how to develop a good backup strategy. 3) computers today are so powerful that most of the time the CPU isn't working hard at all and those extra cycles might as well be put to use doing something useful. Hence, TimeMachine's design.
As you noticed, TimeMachine makes a folder and does its incremental backups inside. Since I have an external drive that is much larger than my boot/data drive, I'll continue to clone my boot drive to this external once a week, just as I've been doing. If disaster strikes and I need to use the computer right now, I can do so and at worst my data will be one week out of date. (I should then be able to use TimeMachine to retrieve the missing data but the important thing is that I'm up and running again as soon as I've rebooted.) Later (or if I have the time right away) I'll use TimeMachine to restore/replace my boot drive.

HT201250 How does Time Machine allocate backup data.

I have over 150GB to back up with time machine and only 256GB HD to use, does Time Machine back up all files each time or only files updated after the last backup?

Time Machine first makes a full backup, and then, it makes incremental backups backing up only the files that have changed since the last backup. When the Time Machine drive gets full, Time Machine will start deleting old backups in order to be able to make new backups. If you want more information about Time Machine, see > http://pondini.org

Does Time Machine bundle backup sets when it deletes a month's daily sets?

I'm asking this question to find out if I can delete the all but the last week in a month, each month, in order to extend the useful capacity of my backup drive.
In some backup systems, a periodic "bundle" is made when previous sets are deleted, so for instance, the last backup of the month has the cumulative hourly changes of that month. In this way, transient files which appear and disappear within the month are retained in the monthly backup.
Is this true of Time Machine? Exactly what does Time Machine do? Does it simply wipe out the daily sets and chose the last one to be the "weekly backup?" Or something more sophisticated and useful?
Thanks for any insight!

I've devised a little experiment to discover Time Machine's behavior in this regard:
On my Time Machine's backup schedule, August 27 corresponds with the end of a week. So, on August 26 at 9:15AM, I created the following [folder]/file structure:
[Time Machine Test -Transient Roll-up]
   [Time Machine Test - 1. Hourly Transience
      A one hour lifetime file.rtf
   [Time Machine Test - 2. Daily Transience
      A one day lifetime file.rtf
   [Time Machine Test - 3. Weekly Transience
      A one week lifetime file.rtf
At 10:10AM of that day I removed
[Time Machine Test - 1. Hourly Transience
      A one hour lifetime file.rtf
At 10:10 the next day, August 27, I removed
   [Time Machine Test - 2. Daily Transience
      A one day lifetime file.rtf
On August 28 at 10:30AM, acheck today of the earliest backup of this structure reveals only the following:
[Time Machine Test -Transient Roll-up]
   [Time Machine Test - 3. Weekly Transience
      A one week lifetime file.rtf
I draw the conclusion that transient files within a time period are not subject to a "roll-up" mechanism that displays all changes after out-of-date files are deleted by Time Machine. Thus, for instance, any file that appeared and disappears during an hour will be lost in Time Machine's daily history. Similarly, files that only persist for a day will be lost in the weekly history. And, presumably, if one wanted to choose a week which represented an accumulation of transient changes during the month it would be impossible to do so.
Even so, if one wants to manage only one backup volume, rather than accumulating a stack of them over the years, one might well think about selectively deleting all but one week per month in the earliest backups available, as the projected remaining time approaches less than a few weeks. BackupLoupe's Statistics gives an estimate of remaining time left for backups on a volume, and I would suggest using that as a forecast, unless others have experience to the contrary.
Hope this is useful. It certainly is to me.

Does Time Machine make complete backups of Virtual Machines?

I am new to the forums, so forgive me if this has been asked before.
I have a MacBook Pro and have VMWare Fusion 3 installed.
I have Windows 7 and XP installed as virtual machines, and use an external hard drive to back up into using Time Machine. I have been given conflicting information regarding the backups being created by Time Machine.
I have been told that I should use a Windows backup program such as Acronis to back up the Windows installations separately from the Mac backups on the separate hard drive.
Someone else has told me that if I use Time Machine, then the Windows installations will be backed up automatically, as the Windows installations are effectively folders and files within the Mac software.
Just to confuse things, I have read somewhere that Time Machine cannot back up Boot partitions of Windows installations, but I can't remember where I read this.
I don't want to lose my Windows installations through not understanding the backup capabilities of Time Machine, so I am hoping that someone here can advise me as to what the best course of action would be please.
Can I trust Time Machine to back everything up and to be able to restore my whole machine, including Windows installations, from a Time Machine backup, or do I need to back up the Windows virtual machines separately by using Acronis.
Thanks
Kevin

1. TM will not backup a Boot Camp Windows volume.
2. TM will backup a VM disc image every time it changes unless you have excluded it via TM's Exclude list.
3. If the VMs change often then TM will backup each change thus consuming large amounts of space on the backup drive which is not recommended. Thus, it's best to backup VMs separately from within Windows using a Windows backup utility.
4. TM will not backup individual files and folders of a VM disc image. It will only backup the entire disc image.

Does Time Machine Make My Book Studio Sleep to Prevent Wear & Tear?

Hi. I don't use the WD SmartWare from Western Digital and have deleted it on my My Book Studio external backup for Time Machine. With just this external Firewire hardisk and Time Machine, does it make it do some kind of "sleep" so it won't have as much wear & tear or regardless of software or hadisks have this sleep feature built-in them? Thank you in advance.
Gbu.

Hard disk sleep is controlled by the Energy Saver preference pane. It doesn't always work with external hard drives.
About Energy Saver sleep and idle modes in Mac OS X

Does Time machine not backup iCal data?

My MacBook Pro battery charger has failed, so I did a latest Time-Machine backup, and then connected the backup drive to my Mac Mini.
Imagine my delight when I found that the backup disk, with ten backups on it, contains none of the iCal filels, e.g. Home.ics or Work.ics
What am I supposed to do?

Hi John,
Thanks again for your thoughts.
Once again, this seems to behave in an anomalous way; the heading "Original:' doesn't appear in the 'More info' box. I made an alias of a file taken at random on the Mini drive, and sure enough there, in the 'More info' was the 'Original:' heading followed by the address of the file for which I'd just made the alias. The icon for the alias has a little arrow pointing North-east, just like the one in my backup file.
I don't know whether it may be indicative, but the headings in the 'Calendars Info panel are:
Kind: Alias
Size: 4 KB on disk (464 bytes)
Where: /Volumes/My Passport/Backups.backupdb/User's MacBook Pro/2011-05-03-103202/Macintosh HD/Users/tonyjackson/Library
Created: Thursday 9 September 20010 22:58
Modified: Thursday 9 September 20010 22:58
This in the backup folder called:
2011-05-03-103202
Which seems a bit peculiar?
Best regards, Tony J.

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 fully backup iPhoto 09 photos, events, faces, etc.? Mtn Lion

I'm going to the Apple store this afternoon. I believe I'll end up reinstalling the system and need to be sure everything is backed up.
Problem is iPhoto 09 (yep, I have an OLD version). It's going nuts - making sounds like a fast, loud, constant drumbeat, flashing, won't let me do anything except force quit.
I backup to Time Machine /external drive automatically and it seems to be backing up iPhoto. I don't want to open the iPhoto program from Time Machine to check since I'm afraid it might be something in the computer that could screw it up. I have thousands of phtoos in iPhoto and don't want to lose them.
Since the external drive I'm using wth Time Machine shows a backup today including iPhoto, should I feel comfortable that iPhoto is backed up appropriately, or do I need to back it up in some other way?

Besides Time Machine, you could use a cloning program.
Clone - Carbon Copy Cloner
Clone - SuperDuper

Why does Time Machine make two copies when backing up

I use Time Machine to back up to an external harddrive and it is duplicating files, how can I fix this?

Daisy Duke is a third party software app I bought on App Store that helps to find easily find files that you no longer want or need and delete to create more HD space. I don't believe that I reformatted the source volume, is there a way to check for that. I have been doing some research that talks about multiple users, DD did show me the files under two different users and I wonder if it showing me the file but is not really on there twice. As you can probably tell by now I can get around a computer for personal use but do not have much hardware or software experience.

Since installing Lion why does Time Machine shows backup was delayed?

Ever since we stalled Lion after we backup with Time Machine the display quickly changes to the alert symbol that backup was delayed how can I change this. I have backed up four times.

It's a 'new feature' .. check out this post here https://discussions.apple.com/message/16148789#16148789 .. if you don't agree with this new feature, please join us in raising it as a bug for Apple to fix.

Does Time Machine support backups via SMB (NAS mounted volumes) on Lion 10.7.2

I am trying to run a backup on a NetApp file share connecting to my MBP via SMB. Is this supported and if so how can this be accomplished?

Time Machine will not back up to servers over the SMB protocol.

Does Time Machine verify backup

Do you know if there's a way to get Time Machine to verify backups? I've always used backup programs in the past which verify the backup after it's done. But Time Machine seems to stop once a backup is completed.
Also, after the first backup, is there a way to find out what's been backed up in the subsequent backups? When I clicked on the folders for the hourly backups, all the usual subfolders were there. I was wondering if there's a way to get Time Machine to create a log so I wouldn't have to click through the subfolders to find out which ones had new files added.
Thanks,
Elllen

Elllen wrote:
Do you know if there's a way to get Time Machine to verify backups? I've always used backup programs in the past which verify the backup after it's done. But Time Machine seems to stop once a backup is completed.
There is no way.
But generally, if it doesn't throw any errors at you, it's fine.
Also, after the first backup, is there a way to find out what's been backed up in the subsequent backups? When I clicked on the folders for the hourly backups, all the usual subfolders were there. I was wondering if there's a way to get Time Machine to create a log so I wouldn't have to click through the subfolders to find out which ones had new files added.
No, AFAIK.

Does Time Machine make Backup obsolete?

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