Help us learn more about how Time Machine really works.
Most Leopard users have at least a vague understanding about how Leopard’s Time Machine feature is supposed to work. My understanding is that it churns away in the background, copying changes to your hard disk’s contents to a backup volume. I’ve successfully used it to retrieve a file I deleted in error — just like Apple said I could.
That’s my experience. I’d like to know yours.
Have you actively used Time Machine to back up and restore files? Did it work as expected? Have you ever tried it to restore an entire disk? Or your System Folder? Or go back to a pre-update version of Mac OS (for example 10.5.2 to 10.5.1)?
If the answer is yes to any of these things, can you please take a moment to use the Comments for this post to share your experiences with the rest of us?
I’m trying to understand the strengths and weaknesses of Time Machine as a stand-alone backup program. The real-life experiences of users will help me and other readers determine just how much they can depend on Time Machine to keep their data and system files safe.
Postscript: Just moments after hitting the Post button for this post, I discovered that Miraz Jordan blogged about this topic yesterday. You can read her post here.
On November 18, 2008 at 3:11 pm, 
On November 18, 2008 at 2:59 pm, 
On November 14, 2008 at 10:17 am, 
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1 response so far ↓
1 Don // Mar 4, 2008 at 5:55 pm
I purchased an external hard drive right after Leopard came out. I attached it to my G4 1.67 GHz PowerBook and turned on Time Machine. Immediately, I noticed…nothing. Well, the light on my external hard drive came on showing that something was going on, but other than that, I noticed no change.
About a month later, my computer started to act funny. Applications wouldn’t open. Files wouldn’t save. And then I crashed and had to restart. Only, it wouldn’t. From the Leopard disk I tried disk tools, but it couldn’t repair it. I went out and bought the latest version of DiskWarrior. It couldn’t repair it either. I called the makers of DiskWarrior and asked what the message the application gave me meant. It was what I had feared. My hard disk was dead.
I went to the repair shop and had a new drive installed. I took it home and when the install of Leopard asked if I wanted to get everything from Time Machine, I checked yes. I hoped for the best.
About an hour and a half later, my Mac was up and running. Everything was exactly as it was before my hard drive failed. My desktop looked the same. My keychain was the same. My bookmarks in Safari were all there. All of me email was in place. It was as if nothing had happened at all.
So am I a fan of Time Machine? Do I think it works? It freakin’ saved my life! I think it’s great.
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