TIme Machine (Leopard) not working

[mikebeckmotu]

Cool! It even makes duplicates of your forum posts!


But seriously, I haven't looked at Leopard all that hard yet, so I'm wondering if Time Machine offers distinct advantages over a dedicated third-party backup app. And does Time Machine have any processing overhead to worry about (on a DAW Mac, that is).
I've been noticing your trials with installing and experimenting with Leopard, and I want to thank you for listing your experiences with it here.

[MIDI Life Crisis]

Cool! It even makes duplicates of your forum posts!


But seriously, I haven't looked at Leopard all that hard yet, so I'm wondering if Time Machine offers distinct advantages over a dedicated third-party backup app. And does Time Machine have any processing overhead to worry about (on a DAW Mac, that is).
I've been noticing your trials with installing and experimenting with Leopard, and I want to thank you for listing your experiences with it here.

I'm not so impressed with Time Machine includes as what it will exclude and how easy it is to change (add or delete) files, folders and drives form backups.

Except for seeing a tiny circle of two arrows (spinning next to the destination disk name in a Finder window) I haven't seen any indication of processor overhead. In fact, a backup completed a minute or so ago and I had to check to see when the last one was to answer you.

As far as advantages over other backup programs, I've only used Carbon Copy Cloner. The Time Machine interface is amazing and I can select a single file, folder or device to restore from any time since the first backup. My backup drive doesn't seem to be getting bloated at all and I recently added my Applications folder to the archive without any issues.

MM

[mikebeckmotu]

Thank you. That helps a lot.
I'll be reading more as I get closer to thinking about moving up to Leopard.
I'll also keep a watch on your thread postings!
Good luck with the new OS!

[blue]

the author gets a little preachy when talking about the user interface

Maybe, but he makes some good points about usability being sacrificed by questionable aesthetic decisions. I don't have 10.5 yet, but that was one of my first thoughts when I saw Jobs demo the new dock and folder icons at the keynote. If you're going to change things like the dock appearance, don't do it arbitrarily or just to make it look prettier (which, imo, it does not). Do it to make it work better. Seems like some of the design decisions in Leopard came from boredom with the old rather than inspiration with the new.

It's hard not to think that some of these graphical additions to the UI came as a result of some sort of paranoid reaction to Vista's new bells and whistles, even though Vista's appearance is clearly gratuitous and a poor imitation of OSX. I'd like to think Jobs is a bit more secure in Apple's long-standing interface supremacy, but it's hard to think that when you see a freakin transparent menu bar!

[stephentayler]

Obviously not using Leopard for my audio work yet, but in preparation for future workflows I have a question about Time Machine.

I normally do all my audio work to an external drive. Time Machine backs up my internal drive fine, but is there a way to include external drives in the backup? Can't figure this one out. All very well that my photos, iTunes, email and letters get updated, but the professional audio work is the most crucial backup.

Thanks

Stephen

[MIDI Life Crisis]

Obviously not using Leopard for my audio work yet, but in preparation for future workflows I have a question about Time Machine.

I normally do all my audio work to an external drive. Time Machine backs up my internal drive fine, but is there a way to include external drives in the backup? Can't figure this one out. All very well that my photos, iTunes, email and letters get updated, but the professional audio work is the most crucial backup.

Thanks

Stephen

I had a similar question. Basically, Time Machine backs up your MACHINE, not just your drive. By default, the backup drive is excluded (and cannot be included) in the backup as that would create an endless loop.

All connected (and powered up) drives should also get backed up. You can exclude any drive, device, folder or file (and you probably should if the file won't change and is already backed up to disk - or is an Entourage file, etc).

In the Time Machine preference pane you can determine what devices and files to exclude and/or add. If your target disk isn't large enough, the backup will fail.