[Macworld]

Post your comments for Enable local Time Machine snapshots on a desktop Mac here

[whitedog]

Thanks for the info. Though I don’t need to use local backups on my Mac Pro, I was unsure how the process worked. I assume the local backups are purged once the Time Machine drive has been connected and updated. Otherwise they would be a serious threat to free space on a laptops relatively small drive, even more so on an SSD equipped Mac.

[Hairby]

Does this mean that when an external disk is reattached it will revert to backing up on the external disk and remove the snapshots on the internal harddisk?

[LexFriedman]

Hairby, on 17 January 2012 - 05:28 AM, said:

Does this mean that when an external disk is reattached it will revert to backing up on the external disk and remove the snapshots on the internal harddisk?

Nope! They live in tandem, hence the discussion of how Tme Machine users colors to distinguish between local and external backups.

[worksafe]

I believe and you can correct me if I am wrong, that if you display the Hidden Files feature and you look at your "Devices" you will see the "Mobile Backups" that TimeMachine creates when not connected to a external disk.

[RobLewis]

Wow, I had no idea there was such a thing as local snapshots. Where are they stored?

I just checked my MacBook Pro and found something odd: I have both a purple AND a gray bar for most of the recent hourly backups. Does this mean it's doing both normal AND local backups? My backup drive is a FireWire drive that is almost always connected and powered on--what's going on here???

[Hairby]

LexFriedman, on 17 January 2012 - 05:30 AM, said:

Hairby, on 17 January 2012 - 05:28 AM, said:

Does this mean that when an external disk is reattached it will revert to backing up on the external disk and remove the snapshots on the internal harddisk?

Nope! They live in tandem, hence the discussion of how Tme Machine users colors to distinguish between local and external backups.

As Whitedog says is that not going to fill up your laptop drive? I like the idea of it i think but not so sure about it on a Macbook Air for instance

[mretondo]

This could be just the thing that would fill out my sons backup work flow I created for him. He has a MB Pro but that's backed up to a TC. The bottom line, the time it takes to backup every hour over Wi-Fi is just too long as compared to my iMac over Ethernet.

So I have him setup to only back up once a day. His Mac wakes up at 4:49 a.m. and backs up to the TC at 5 for the whole previous day's work. The down side of course he has no hourly backups he can go to during the day if he needs too.

If I can turn on local backups during the day and then switch to TM backups right before 5 I would have the best of both. Now, to figure out how to create that workflow.

[mretondo]

LexFriedman, on 17 January 2012 - 05:30 AM, said:

Hairby, on 17 January 2012 - 05:28 AM, said:

Does this mean that when an external disk is reattached it will revert to backing up on the external disk and remove the snapshots on the internal harddisk?

Nope! They live in tandem, hence the discussion of how Tme Machine users colors to distinguish between local and external backups.

I thought I read somewhere, that one of the purposes of this feature was so user of laptops could take their Macs on the road and when they get back it would sync their local backups with TimeMachine, no?

[talmy]

There is a common misunderstanding that local backups are moved to the Time Machine drive when the TM drive is connected. That is not the case -- the local backups stay around. Local backups are deleted as necessary to make room for files, but this doesn't always work reasonably well. You can delete all the local backups by turning off and then back on Time Machine (the big on-off switch in the preference pane).

[flowney]

What I want to do is take a snapshot of my home desktop machine and then use it to update my laptop. As well, I want to be able to do likewise to my office desktop. Ideally, I would confine this updating to my user folder and a folder called "Data" where I keep all of my downloads and work files.
Can this be done w/o incurring the wrath of permission issues?

[MarkS]

When I look at my Time Machine backups for a particular file (actually a package), the modified dates seem to be recorded differently between the local and disk backups. Sometimes the file on a local backup shows a modified date *later* than the local backup time. Anyone else see this?

Mark

[DrKarl]

Tried this on my Mac Pro and got an error for "tmutil snapshot":

Failed to send message because a remote port for 'com.apple.mtmd' couldn't be created. (error 255)

Can't find anything related to this in a search. Disk permissions are OK. Only thing unusual about my system is that my boot drive is an SSD and my User folders are on a different HD.