Time Machine - again

[french frank]

When notified that the Time Machine HD is full, and advised to install a new one to avoid the earliest data being deleted, does anyone here bother? I have no idea what might be stored that long ago and I generally only use TM to restore something that I've deleted quite recently. Do people have shelves of full HDs stored?

[Don Petter]

When notified that the Time Machine HD is full, and advised to install a new one to avoid the earliest data being deleted, does anyone here bother? I have no idea what might be stored that long ago and I generally only use TM to restore something that I've deleted quite recently. Do people have shelves of full HDs stored?

Can't you just use the sonic screwdriver?

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

"HD"? What is this, please (I presume not "High Definition").

[french frank]

"HD"? What is this, please (I presume not "High Definition").

Please, Sir - I know the answer to that - Hard Drive :-)

But I don't understand the joke (?) about the sonic screwdriver - Is it something to do with Star Wars?

But I meant external drive

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Please, Sir - I know the answer to that - Hard Drive :-)

- I think: some people have a time-travelling Hard Drive? (Actually, I might be one of them - it would explain a lot!)

But I don't understand the joke (?) about the sonic screwdriver - Is it something to do with Star Wars?

I think things have come to a very sorry pass if the onlie begetter of this Forum is reduced to making fun and ridiculing the deepest held beliefs of some of its members!


Well, alright: "deepest held beliefs of one of its members"! Pick on the minorities, why don't we!

[Don Petter]

But I don't understand the joke (?) about the sonic screwdriver - Is it something to do with Star Wars?

In my day time machines were blue with a light on top, and the said equipment could fix anything. I saw it all from behind the sofa ...

[french frank]

I think things have come to a very sorry pass if the onlie begetter of this Forum is reduced to making fun and ridiculing the deepest held beliefs of some of its members!
Pick on the minorities, why don't we!

Thank you both - a moment of mental aberration (still trying to cope with Quantum Mechanics).

All right: "deepest held beliefs of one of its members"! I shall this Christmas be seeing my eldest nephew who makes his entire living out of the deepest held beliefs of some of these members and has done so for a number of years. We are very proud of him

[MrGongGong]

After a few near misses I stopped trusting Time Machine.
I would recommend a bootable clone (with maybe a Time Machine backup as well?)
Carbon Copy Cloner is the way to go IMV

[Dave2002]

When notified that the Time Machine HD is full, and advised to install a new one to avoid the earliest data being deleted, does anyone here bother? I have no idea what might be stored that long ago and I generally only use TM to restore something that I've deleted quite recently. Do people have shelves of full HDs stored?

Funny you should mention this today - I'm just considering the strategies for backup over several machines. Hard drives are now quite cheap - for example a 2 Terabyte Seagate drive can be had for about £60 - http://www.amazon.co.uk/Seagate-STBV.../dp/B0084LZI5Y and Argos and Tesco also have that for about the same price.

I raised essentially the same point as you have just done some while ago. If you have a spare drive I'd suggest disconnecting the TM drive, and then doing a complete backup at this stage if you are unsure, of what's on the drive, perhaps using a tool such as Super Duper - http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDup...scription.html.

I may be wrong, but I feel it is a major deficiency of TM that when this situation arises, there is no notification or adequate control over which files get deleted. Working on a "probability" that the oldest files are not of interest is a bad idea - it may only be 80% workable, and you might lose really important material.

Sorry to put it like that, but until you get that sorted you won't be sure about the value of the files which remain archived, and whether they are the most important ones.

I'd get on to this sooner, rather than later. You might find it helps to use the larger drive for the TM backup, but you'll still need one or more drives with a capacity exceeding that of your biggest main hard drive (or drives if you backup multiple drives or multiple machines) for the backups.

It's actually quite a complicated question. At some point you may have to make a decision as to what data to "let go", but it would be better for you to be in control of that, rather than a haphazard decision made by a software algorithm. Imagine if the data was a scanned copy of your insurance policy, taken out years ago, and the events for the policy were activated, but that got deleted and for some reason the original document had been mislaid or distroyed.
That data may be the oldest, but would be more important under some circumstances, than most of the other files. OTOH, if you have a large number of copies of files (multiple copies of images) or different working copies of files, then many of them can be deleted with little fear of problems. Video files can often be deleted with few worries - but again it does depend what they are. The system won't distinguish between say a film of Star Wars, which you can probably replace with a new DVD or Blu Ray, or the videos of weddings of people you care about.

Note though, that if you delete files wiih TM running, it will actually store copies of the deleted files, so it might be good to tidy up first, then start a new TM drive, and keep the old one for safety's sake. It all depends how certain, and/or paranoid you are.

[Dave2002]

After a few near misses I stopped trusting Time Machine.
I would recommend a bootable clone (with maybe a Time Machine backup as well?)
Carbon Copy Cloner is the way to go IMV

I agree with much of what you have written here. TM is convenient, easy to use, but not by any means reliable. It's impossible to get 100% security, but if data files are important then multiple storage devices and backups are the way to go, and a proper backup management scheme (not just software, but a management strategy) put in place.

Hardly any of us do that, IMO.

[french frank]

I've got an ultrasonic rat & mouse repeller so I should think a sonic screwdriver is a bit like that

You are making fun and ridiculing the onlie begetter of this Forum, I hope I realise

Dave, I use SuperDuper! for the Smart Updates on two separate external HDs - I have never had to do more than check the updates are there. Everything I value is on the computer HD, so in the event of a crash it will still be on the two externals - the LaCie is about half full after six years. I don't have music, videos or photos anyway. If it all went up in smoke I'd probably be quite relieved and go off to live on the Costa Brava .

[Dave2002]

You are making fun and ridiculing the onlie begetter of this Forum, I hope I realise

Dave, I use SuperDuper! for the Smart Updates on two separate external HDs - I have never had to do more than check the updates are there. Everything I value is on the computer HD, so in the event of a crash it will still be on the two externals - the LaCie is about half full after six years. I don't have music, videos or photos anyway. If it all went up in smoke I'd probably be quite relieved and go off to live on the Costa Brava .

Sounds as though you are more or less there. You perhaps ought to do a full backup occasionally, rather than just an update - though in honesty I've never quite got round to using Super Duper. I assume that the updates are incremental backups, and some systems work better with a full backup from time to time.

People like me do have problems, as we may have material which gets swapped out, and which would not fit on the main HD on any of the machines. This applies for video, audio etc. If all the files you (or others like you) fit on the main HD, then "all" that's required is to keep up to date backups, which you seem to be doing. In that case you might just let TM start over again, maybe even erase the drive so it has a new starting point. I don't know how big your HD is, again - if you are as paranoid as I might be on occasions - you could just invest in a new large HD for TM - but this issue will come back from time to time. In that case, just stick your existing TM backup drive in a cupboard, and forget about it for a few years. Just using a large TM HD doesn't stop the problem, as it's the throughput on the main HD which is significant.

If you don't keep email, but email is being tracked by TM, then that can help to fill up the TM backup drive because there's perhaps a high throughput, particularly of spam.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

All right: "deepest held beliefs of one of its members"! I shall this Christmas be seeing my eldest nephew who makes his entire living out of the deepest held beliefs of some of these members and has done so for a number of years. We are very proud of him

[amateur51]

You are making fun and ridiculing the onlie begetter of this Forum, I hope I realise

Dave, I use SuperDuper! for the Smart Updates on two separate external HDs - I have never had to do more than check the updates are there. Everything I value is on the computer HD, so in the event of a crash it will still be on the two externals - the LaCie is about half full after six years. I don't have music, videos or photos anyway. If it all went up in smoke I'd probably be quite relieved and go off to live on the Costa Brava .

Brava! Now we know why frenchie has the exclusive use of the executive washroom

[french frank]

Brava! Now we know why frenchie has the exclusive use of the executive washroom

Costa living is cheaper on the Costa Brava, you know.