Does Time Machine start new archive on OS upgrade?

I've just upgraded a v10.6.8 iMac to 10.7.3. Before I did so, I turned off Time Machine, with the assumption that I could use it for roll-back in case of trouble.
If I now turn it back on, will TM add to the Snow Leopard archive or start a new one?
For this Mac it's not a big deal but for the next one I'll do the build-out and data's more complex and I'd like to be able to quickly roll back if needs be. Perhaps I should instead take a pre-archive, DMG bootable clone of the drive (via CCC or SuperDuper). I've a 2TB Time Capsule happily backing up te iMac and my (work) MBPro. Could I add a new volume to the TM to hold such a snapshot DMG without upsetting the existing TM backup data? If so, what tool do I use to configure the time Machine as it's not a locally atached drive (it's on ethernet connection to my LAN).
Thanks
Mark

You can do a full-system restore from any snapshot, not just the latest one. However, if you want to restore a pre-Lion state, you'll have to partition the internal drive first.
Before installing Lion, I suggest you copy your boot volume to an external drive, boot from that, and install Lion on it. Save a copy of the "Install Mac OS X Lion" application from the App Store, because it will be deleted automatically after the installation. Test. If you don't like Lion, all you have to do is reboot.

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Time Machine starts new "hourly" backup in under an hour

My last backup was completed at 9:44. Time Machine just started a new backup at 10:27! It now says completed at 10:31, next scheduled at 11:25 (still under an hour) Per Genius advice, I just reinstalled Snow Leopard which at least help the backup time drop down to about 3-5 minutes. It used to take 30 minutes to backup 50mb. But even after the reinstall, I am seeing Time Machine kick in under an hour between backups!?!

the next backup time is determined by the start time of the previous backup, not by the finish time. and there are always small variations anyway as the launchd (the mechanism that schedules periodic tasks) doesn't check on them every second. what you see is quite normal.

Time Machine starts new full backups

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Please visit Pondini's Time Machine FAQ for help with all things Time Machine.

Time machine starts new backup...

here is the situation...
i have a macbook pro and a mac mini. both of which are on my wireless network. i bought a 1 tb external hard drive to back it up with. here is what i want to do. i did my first time machine back up through usb of 250gb because it is faster than the way i want to it in the future, which is attaching it to my mac mini and connecting that 1tb drive that is connected to my mac mini through usb over my network with "connect to server.." and backing up wirelessly through that. so i did the first back up wired through usb and now i connected that drive to the mac mini and tried to do a back up and it just attempts to start a complete new backup for 250gb. not just an incremental backup from the big backup done previously through usb.
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Yes, that's correct, unfortunately. Time Machine stores it's backups differently when they're done wirelessly (in a sparse bundle) vs. directly-attached USB or F/W drive (in a Backups.backupdb folder).
You cannot combine or merge the two.

I have just started using Time Machine. I was thinking about deleting old E-Mails on my Mac to clean. Does Time Machine back up the E-Mails , if so how can I find them in Time Machine ??

I have just started using Time Machine. I was thinking about deleting old E-Mails on my Mac to clean. Does Time Machine back up the E-Mails , if so how can I find them in Time Machine ??

If you back up your mac before deleting your emails, Time Machine should back up your e-mails.
I never tried this so i'm not sure to find them in Time Machine. To browse in your backups simply click the Time Machine icon in your dock. In the right bar, you can select an backup. Than you can browse in finder, in your backkup.
EDIT: Just browsed and CT above was right. This topic might help you:
https://discussions.apple.com/message/20154303#20154303

External WD Passport won't recognize after Time Machine start.

I bought a WD passport 500 gb drive and when I initially plugged it in time machine saw it and when I asked it to use it- something happened and now NO icon appears in order to be selected nor does an icon show anywhere to even select. I changed the drive and the new one does the same. Cycles continously and never mounts. Did the usual- changed ports and changed wires. It just isn't recognized no matter what. What to do?

jimmyb12015 wrote:
No. The drive is not reflected in any window. Not on my computer or disk utility. It initially was shown just before Time Machine started. It was then I escaped from time machine and I eventually returned the first drive after reformating it to fat 32 (on a windows machine) and it still wouldn't show up the MAC. The second drive now does the same as the first (doesn't show and cycles) but never showed up in any form on the MAC.
If the MAC has a register then my guess is some information about any external disk has been altered and I should need to to return it to it's original setting. That is because the second drive is doing the same as the first. I just don't know how to do that or even look.
If it uses the MBR (Master Boot Record) partition scheme, for Windoze, TM may have started to reformat it to GUID, but had that interrupted when you cancelled. If DU can't see it at all, there's not much you can do from your Mac. You may need to reformat it on a PC, then do it over on your Mac, via item #5 in the FAQ.
There are reports of problems with some WD drives having not working well on Macs. You might want to check their website support/forums, etc.

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).

Does time machine back up purchased iTunes items?

I just started to use a Mac and time machine. Does Time Machine back up even purchased items, or do I need to burn those to disk?
Thanks,
Dan

My Time Machine backs them up, and when i bought my new iMac, I just migrated everything from the Time Machine backup and all was there.

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

HT201250 Does time machine compress the data in backup?

I have got to replace my internal hard drive so have to back up just everything to an ext drive.
When I use 'time machine' to back up to an external disk, does that disk have to be larger than the file size on my iMac?
Does Time machine compress the data?( eg will 1TB fit on a 500 gig external drive?)
Thanks

No, Time Machine doesn't compress the data. I recently started a new TIme Machine backup, and the first backup required the same amount of space as it was backing up (actually a little bit more during the backup process).

Question: Why does Time Machine hang on cloned drive?

I migrated my Main HD to a faster WD Velociraptor. I used the great utility Carbon Copy Cloner to clone the drive.
After a successful clone, I renamed the orignal HD (old) and duplicated the original HDD name to the new one. I shutdown, and removed the old HDD from my MacPro, and installed the New Main HD clone in it's place and rebooted.
The system came up and all looked fine until Time Machine started to index and then deleting old Backups indication. It did this for 2 hours! I let it run overnight figuring it was cleaning old backups.
This morning it had /!\ as the icon and Failed Backup indicated.
Instead of deleting the old TM backups folder on the specific HDD I use, I just formatted it, and re-assigned it as the TM HDD. It is fine now.
So what happened? How can I prevent this? Is there some file hidden and not cloned that affects TM?

Eddie Ski wrote:
This morning it had /!\ as the icon and Failed Backup indicated.
Most likely, it failed for lack of space for the new backup.
So what happened? How can I prevent this? Is there some file hidden and not cloned that affects TM?
The new drive may have all the same stuff on it as the old one, but it does have a different UUID (Universally Unique IDentifier), and that's what OSX uses to keep track of drives, not their names.
So Time Machine sees a different drive, and its whole role in life is to back up whatever's new or changed, so that's what it does. You cannot prevent it.

HT201250 What does time Machine back-up?

I would like to use Time Machine as a back-up on an external USB hard drive. However, I am not sure what it actually backs up. I want it to back up only the main Mac hard drive and not all the files and folders on the external drive which I will also use as the destination for the TimeMachine back-up. Is there a way to do this or does Time Machine only back-up the main MacHD and not connected "data" drives like the external one I will use for TimeMachine. Also, how do I make a bootable "rescue" drive or disk if my hard drive fails and I want to install a new one? Will a "rescue USB flash drive" -- bootable with the operating system (Mountain Lion) in it -- in conjunction with Time Machine on the external drive restore a new hard drive (MacHD) to what was on the old one? Finally, how does one make a rescue (bootable) USB flash drive with OSX 10.8.2 on it?
Mike

Try going system preferences>time machine.select disk>highlight the disk, click use for back up (make sure the padlock is unlocked. If this has already been done there might be a problem with the disk. Go to utililites>disk utilities highlight the disk click verify disk.

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I have a MacBook that I purchased in late 2007. It's been very good to me over the years. However, I'm been having various minor issues, and tonight I noticed that the screen goes to black at about 45° as I'm closing my laptop. In other situations I'd try to fix this myself, but right now I'm a Peace Corps Volunteer in rural South America and have limited access to the right tools, much less replacement parts. So instead I'm taking it as a sign that my trustworthy companion is about to give up the ghost and I should get a new computer now, instead of completely running this one into the ground and potentially losing important documents, photos, &c.
My question is simple: Does Time Machine and/or Migration Assistant successfully transfer licenses for Microsoft Office 2011 and for Adobe software?
My software installation disks are in a box in a basement in the United States. And since I'm not quite sure which box it is (last summer I did not see the need to label my own boxes), I'm not going to ask some unsuspecting friend or family member to dig through all my posessions to find an alphanumeric code or two, especially if I can just transfer/migrate the license without it.
Many thanks.

Try the combo update on the old machine.
10.6.8 Combo Updater
If the 2 computers have the correct cable connections, try the Target Disk Mode.
Target Disc Mode

Does Time Machine track file movements?

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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 Compare/Verify Files?

I have typically performed manual backups, and have no experience with Time Machine.
Does Time Machine COMPARE / VERIFY that the backup files match the originals?
I used to use Retrospect for Archive/Backup, which logged an alert if there was any mis-match in the backup process. Now I tend to backup files simply using Drag/Drop copying to redundant external storage devices. I have recently encountered errors in this process when backing up larger amounts of data. Hopefully this will not occur using TIme Machine.
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Is Time Machine the most reliable solution for Archive/Backup?
thanks

Time Machine logs to the system.log as process com.apple.backupd, which you can access via Appplications -> Utilities -> Console
Carbon Copy Cloner logs to a CCC.log which you can access from within CCC, or via Applications -> Utilities -> Console.
CCC will popup and error if there is backup problem.
SuperDuper has its own built-in log, that you access via SuperDuper.
SuperDuper will popup an error if there is a backup problem.
CrashPlan has a /Library/Logs/CrashPlan/ directory with backup logs.
CrashPlan can send you an email if there is a backup problem. Even better, it will tell you if a backup has not completed within the last 3 days. I find that very nice in that automatic backups that stop and you haven't noticed it, is more annoying than not having a backup verification.
I also remember Retrospect. And the verify taking longer than the backup is a good excuse to just make another backup using a different utility and media destination.

Does Time Machine start new archive on OS upgrade?

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