Time Machine Backups...

[ChristopherCoy]

How long do they normally take?

I've never backed up any of my computers before, but I just enabled Time Machine, since I hooked up the HD. The backup of my system is only 46gb's but its taking F-O-R-E-V-E-R!! I'm at least 30 minutes in and its only backed up appx 7 gigs.

[Rson]

THat is about right, the first is the longest......afterthat fast.

[ChristopherCoy]

Gees! Its still only at appx 10gb backed up and 30 some odd more to go!

[picman]

I really like the Time Machine Backups, it's great to go back to a specific day and get that earlier version of a file. But it is not bootable. I use SuperDuper on yet another drive to mirror my main drive. My not perfect backup system has me updating my SuperDuper drive about once a week then storing if off site. If the worst happens I can slap that drive into another computer and be back up in minutes. The free version lets you do total backups while the paid version has a few other features like incremental backup.

[oldfotopro]

I tried Carbonite back up.
It took a week to back up my hard drive.
It wouldn't back up any external hard drives.
It was always running because it was so slow.
It slowed down my system so much I had to disable it.

I'd be interested in what others are having success with.

Didnt't realize TimeMachine was an Apple product.
Anybody had good experience with PC backup?

[ChristopherCoy]

My question is... is this thing taking up significant HD space each time its backs up? The original backup was 46gb... is that what its adding every time it backs up? Or does it just rewrite any files that have changed on the original backup?

I was reading a little about it late last night and it said that it backs up hourly, which seems like an awful lot of backing up to me.

[peeker]

Hey Chris,

It is just adding the changes to the files, not a separate file.
It will fill an entire hard drive eventually before it starts deleting data.

So it does back up a little every hour (only the changed files), before it changes to back up an entire day, then an entire week. The incrementals don't take very long at all.

I like it because if I am not plugged in for a few days, the minute I reconnect the drive, it backs all of the changes up in the next session.

The recommendation is to have a "time machine" backup hard drive equalling 2x the drive you are backing up (min).

Lastly, I exclude files like the Aperture database from the Time Machine backups because TM sees it as one big file and tries to back the entire file up every time. I use the Aperture archive function and manual backup's to individual projects to three different drives for all of my images.

PM me if you have questions.

[ChristopherCoy]

Here is another question... how do you keep the thing from going to 'sleep'.

I went into the settings and turned the 'sleep timer' to NEVER, because it kept going to sleep after 10 minutes of inactivity.

What's happening is the drive is going to sleep, and then when I come back to my computer, it isn't showing up as a connected drive. The WD Smartware application is there, but the drive itself isn't. I have to end up turning the drive off, then back on for the computer to recognize it.

[picman]

If unchecking "put drives to sleep whenever possible" in the Energy Saver control panel doesn't work with your drive - try this applet:

Apple - Downloads - System/Disk Utilities - Keep Drive Spinning

[movingex]

I use an application that comes free with LaCie drives called Silver Keeper. It does incremental, timed, and full backups. Very easy to use and works great. It works with any type of drive. You can save as many different backup sets as you need.