How 'smart' is Time Machine?

[Cassady]

Hi all,

Quick question - after what happened this week, I'm paying a bit more attention to my TM backups.

Firstly, I need to get a bigger drive. 1TB doesn't exactly give one an extensive range of backup days.

Secondly, I have it backing up both my main SSD drive, and my secondary HDD. The former, with programmes (OS X) and primary data, the latter with iOS backups, iTunes, Photos, iMovie etc.

What I'm wondering about:

If I ever need to restore from my TM backup - is it simply a case of plug and play, so to speak? In other words, will it 'find' the two original drives, and 'know' to put what used to be on the primary, back there, and the rest on the secondary? Surely if things get really messed up - how would it know what goes where, especially if the drive names somehow get corrupted?

Hope I'm making sense. Just curious as to what the procedure might be?

 

[SauRoNZA]

Generally you choose what needs to go where when restoring.

I've never done a double drive setup like yours but it should be as simply as pointing it where you want it to go.

But testing should really be part of your backup strategy if it concerns you.

So fire up a restore and run through the wizard without letting it finish just for your own education.

 

[bwana]

Firstly, I need to get a bigger drive. 1TB doesn't exactly give one an extensive range of backup days.

I don't use Time Machine so maybe you can clear this up - How many backup sets do you actually need? Are you regularly deleting something you shouldn't have? Are you constantly finding you need to go back to a much earlier version of something?

I use SuperDuper to clone my drive - that way if something goes wrong I'm not faf'ing around reinstalling the OS - I just clone my data back to the replacement, or directly to a different machine - and I'm back up and running in a fraction of the time.

 

[noxibox]

With multiple drives in the machine it will detect and backup both. A Time Machine backup can be easily browsed in Finder (or whatever alternative you use) or through the Time Machine viewer if you want to see what is there. I found that having a backup drive 50-100% bigger than the drives you're backing up allowed months of history. I've rarely needed it, but when I have it's a lifesaver. Be warned though that whether backing up one drive or several Time Machine sometimes goes wrong. I've had it, albeit rarely, suddenly decide to stop backing up some files. No particular reason I could find as the other Time Machine backup was fine. I always have at least two Time Machine backup drives plus at least one cloned one (I use Carbon Copy Cloner). That way I'm covered against backup drive failures and Time Machine going wrong. Normally if I need to use a backup in a hurry I'll go for the clone first because I can just plug it in and boot.