First Real Use of Time Machine a Success!

I finally got to try it in a real-life situation.

I use ecto to compose and post entries on my various WordPress blog-based sites, including this one. One of the things I like about ecto is that is stores all of my posts on my computer, so I don’t need to be online to read something I wrote. This is especially useful when I’m using a laptop out on the road. I can write a blog entry offline and even include links to other existing entries on any of my sites and then post it when I have an Internet connection.

I recently upgraded from ecto 2 to ecto 3, which is still in beta (but looking good). Because of some problems with the updater trying to update the old version of ecto, I decided to delete it and its database of entries and stick to ecto 3. I did that one day last week — I think it was Wednesday.

This morning, I woke remembering that the old version of ecto had, in its post database, a post I’d written but never published. It was a lengthy post with images that I really wanted to save for future publication or other use. But with ecto and its database deleted, the post was gone.

Or was it?

I’d bought a 500GB external hard disk and had set it up for use with Time Machine when I installed Leopard on my iMac last fall. Time Machine is designed precisely for situations like this — when you realize that you’ve deleted something you shouldn’t have.

In my situation, I needed to recover the ecto 2 application file and the folder containing the blog post database. I started with the application. I opened the Applications folder on my computer and clicked the Time Machine icon in the Dock. The cool (but rather silly) interface kicked in. I used the timeline on the right side of the screen to scroll back a few days. The ecto file did not appear. I scrolled back a few more days to the middle of last week. When the screen refreshed, the file was there. I selected it and clicked the Restore button. Time Machine closed and the file was copied to my current Applications folder.

I repeated this process for the ecto folder in the Application Support folder.

Then I double-clicked the ecto application, re-entered my registration information, and recovered the “lost” blog post.

Based on this experience, I’m thrilled with Time Machine.

Got any stories about how Time Machine saved your files? Use the Comments link or form for this post. I’m sure others would like to read about them.

Additional Information

You can learn more about Time Machine on pages 126-130 of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard: Visual QuickStart Guide.