[dougoftheabaci]

No worries. If you never ask you'll never know after all.

The answer is simply that Time Machine will back up everything by default, even the OS. What it does is it makes a back up of the entire operating system then make incremental backups of only the changes from there on. It does it every hour, keeping every your for the first 24-hours, then one day for the next 7 days, then one per week until the drive is full.

Of course, if there is anything you don't want it to back up you can set it to ignore folders and they'll not be backed up.

[miataman]

I have a question about Time Machine. Can TM only back up the boot drive? My thought was to have my computers (#1 & #2) back up to an external drive on my server (the server has all my photos, music, etc on it). So I would have the server's startup drive, an external for photos, mp3's, etc, and then another external for Time Machine to back up my computer #1 & #2.

Next I would like to use Time Machine on the server to back up the external server drive with the MP3's, photo's, etc and back up the Time Machine drive for computer #1 & #2. I thought I could have two seporate drives that back up the server. This way, I could have one at the server backing up and one that I store somewhere else. Once a month or whatever works, but at least once a month I could swap the drives. That way I would have everything backed up off site. Kinda elaborate for home, but I lost files once & don't want to do that again :)

I am trying to do this with Time Machine because it is so cool, and I would be doing it using only Apple's software.

Any thoughts...clues...tips or tricks?

Thanks,
Tim

[JoeKissell]

miataman said:

I have a question about Time Machine. Can TM only back up the boot drive? My thought was to have my computers (#1 & #2) back up to an external drive on my server (the server has all my photos, music, etc on it). So I would have the server's startup drive, an external for photos, mp3's, etc, and then another external for Time Machine to back up my computer #1 & #2.

Time Machine can back up any local volume to any suitable target volume. You're not restricted to backing up the boot drive.

Quote

Next I would like to use Time Machine on the server to back up the external server drive with the MP3's, photo's, etc and back up the Time Machine drive for computer #1 & #2. I thought I could have two seporate drives that back up the server. This way, I could have one at the server backing up and one that I store somewhere else. Once a month or whatever works, but at least once a month I could swap the drives. That way I would have everything backed up off site. Kinda elaborate for home, but I lost files once & don't want to do that again :)

The one part of this I'd advise against is using Time Machine to back up one Time Machine volume to another. I don't know exactly what would happen, but I can say it would almost certainly not be what you want or expect. If you need to clone a Time Machine volume onto another drive, it's better to use SuperDuper or Disk Utility to do so.

[miataman]

Thanks for the info on both of these :)

Tim

[mac_user21]

Find External Harddrive that work with mac are not so tricky. however, price is often reason people don't bother to try back up. Time Machine does change this. When OS X leopard get out on Oct. I was thinking to wait for month before buy one based that they solve bugs. but I change my mind and go to store (not apple retail) and they has special sale on Seagate External Harddrive 20% discount if buy with OS X leopard. I with my dad bought 2 HD and OS X for cheap. I use it since Oct. and I can find my old file in Oct. It work very good. true that it is not perfect but it is good enough for most people who use computer for general use.