[MW Forums]

It's no mistake that the same cluster of stars appearing on the box that contains Leopard appear throughout its Time Machine feature. OS X 10.5's built-in backup system is the signature addition in this operating system update. Rob Griffiths takes Time Machine out for a spin and determines whether this new feature is worth your while. more

[MacCheetah3]

Hi
I haven't yet seen storage requirements, does it use any kind of compression for the 'snapshots'?
Note to Rob, as your comment...

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Time Machine only seems to work with external hard drives attached directly to your Mac, and perhaps file servers running Leopard Server. But you cant use any old remote server, and you cant attach Time Machine to your AirPort Extremes shared volume, either.

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While it won't work with USB drives connected to an Airport Extreme, it indeed does work when the USB / FireWire drive is hosted from any Mac running Leopard...
Taken from Apple - Mac OS X Leopard - Features - Time Machine

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Time Machine can also back up to another Mac running Leopard with Personal File Sharing, Leopard Server, or Xsan storage devices.

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[Jason Snell]

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I haven't yet seen storage requirements, does it use any kind of compression for the 'snapshots'?

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No compression. It's all just files on HFS+.

[MacCheetah3]

Hi
So...A backup drive of double capacity or more of your original drive is probably recommended...Eh?
I'm just trying to find out how much of my FW RAID I should put aside for each system.

[paulburd]

Will Time Machine backup other external drives attached to your Mac, or does it only backup your internal drive? I can't find mention of this in any of the specs.

[drdreric]

The ability to rebuild from Time Machine using Migration Assistant is good, but seems like using a bootable clone as backup still has some advantages. If my main drive fails, I am running again in minutes. I expect rebuilding from Time Machine will be a many hour process.
On the other hand the ability to pick and choose a particular file to recover via a slick interface is valuable as well.
Any thoughts? Maybe some way of using both to get the best of both worlds?

[jay81]

I'm angry. I bought an Airport Extreme recently in anticipation of using Time Machine with an Airport Disk. I still have other reasons to own it, but Time Machine was a major factor in my decision. If I would have known, I probably would have bought a cheaper router for a better value. Thanks, Apple. /forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/mad.gif

[MacCheetah3]

Hi
One never knows what the future holds. /forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

[edmetric]

Did you say whether Time Machine saves files using the original file extension linked to the program that created it or is it an Apple proprietary file system?
The implication is I could search for all the pdf files backed up by Time Machine and pull a copy of one for use on a flash drive for transfer to another computer.
Did you say we could key word search all the files in Time Machine?

[aestival]

In the immortal words of Dan Quayle, "it's a question of whether we're going to go forward into the future, or past... to the back." ... or in this case, to the backup :-)

[griffman]

It depends on how much stuff you want to save. I have an 80gb drive in my test machine, and an 80gb TM drive. As of today, the internal drive has about 30GB of space used, and my TM drive has 65GB on it, and it goes back to early October.
TM has a pretty nice system for freeing up space when the drive fills, as it first dumps older hourly, then daily, then weekly backups.
Your drive space will go further, too, if you tell TM not to back up system files and applications (by dragging the System folder onto its exclusions list).
So really, it's a question of how much stuff you want it to back up, and how long you want to be able to get that stuff. Even a 1-to-1 ratio will get you a pretty good backup solution. 2-to-1 would be better, etc.
-rob.

[griffman]

It's mainly intended to back up to external drives -- only Mac Pros and PowerMac G5s support more than one internal drive. So you can use FW or USB2 external disks, either locally or on a networked machine.
-rob.

[jfschultz]

The inability to use the Airport Extreme to host the Time Machine drive for me means:
1) Forget Time Machine (and 10.5?)
2) Anchor my MacBook to a desk
3) Buy another Mac.
/forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/frown.gif

[griffman]

"I expect rebuilding from Time Machine will be a many hour process."
I didn't find that to be the case at all when I tested it. I wiped out my boot disk, ran the installer, then chose the option to restore from the TM drive. You do need to go through a basic OS X install, but then when the migration assistant appears, you tell it to use the TM backup, and it does the rest.
Now I don't have a huge drive in my test machine, and it's only about 30GB full. But really, the time taken should be equal to this: time to restore a clone + about 15 to 20 minutes for the OS X install. So yes, it's slower. But it's not a question of hours vs. minutes.
-rob.