Time Machine ? I'm suspecting that there are fellow UHH members who use Time Machine with their Macs. I have done that too in the past. Here's my questions? Has anyone actually...

elliott937 Loc: St. Louis

I'm suspecting that there are fellow UHH members who use Time Machine with their Macs. I have done that too in the past. Here's my questions? Has anyone actually recovered any files, perhaps image files, perhaps programs, -from- their Time Machine and returned it to the Desk Top or other location?

In advance, I thank you for your feedback.

Bill

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

I've often wondered about that. It seems like a very good system for backing up the computer, but I've never had to use it.

Tigger1 Loc: Surrey, BC Canada

elliott937 wrote:

I'm suspecting that there are fellow UHH members who use Time Machine with their Macs. I have done that too in the past. Here's my questions? Has anyone actually recovered any files, perhaps image files, perhaps programs, -from- their Time Machine and returned it to the Desk Top or other location?

In advance, I thank you for your feedback.

Bill

Hello Bill, yesI use Time Machine to backup my iMac and my wife’s MacBook Pro but have never needed to recover any files etc from TM. As a further backup to the TM, I backup both computers to separate external hard drives each Saturday night and keep the hard drives in my fire/water proof safe. Additionally I backup to iCloud any really important files or photos every Sunday night. Have never had a reason to recover any files from TM, the external hard drives or iCloud. As an additional safety procedure every two years I upgrade the SSD drives in each of the two computers and the old SSD drives become archives of data and programs contained therein.
Have you had a problem requiring recovery of data from your TM?
All the best, Garth

Martino Loc: Northwest Florida

Yes, but not often. There have been a few times when I have inadvertently deleted something and I have gone back in time, so to speak, and have reinstalled the file. It works very well.

I keep time machine running, and back up to Backblaze. The latter came in very useful following a hard drive failure some time ago. With hard drives it is not a case of if they will fail, it’s when they will fail.

Time machine is a very useful feature.

JohnSwanda Loc: San Francisco

I did have an old Mac desktop die on me, and I was able to transfer everything I had on that computer from my backup hard drive to my new computer with no trouble. I have also had to go back and get files I accidentally deleted or lost.

JD750 Loc: SoCal

elliott937 wrote:

I'm suspecting that there are fellow UHH members who use Time Machine with their Macs. I have done that too in the past. Here's my questions? Has anyone actually recovered any files, perhaps image files, perhaps programs, -from- their Time Machine and returned it to the Desk Top or other location?

In advance, I thank you for your feedback.

Bill

Yes I have used TM to pull my butt from the fire several times because it turns out "I am the greatest danger to my own data".

TM restores files to their original location, not to the DeskTop (unless the file was on the desktop originally).

With any backup system a simple test is suggested: (1) Create a file, use a text editor or some other way, (2) Name it "TEST" or some other name you can remember, (3) Back up your system, (4) Delete TEST, (5) Use your backup system to restore TEST.

If you do that you will gain an understanding of how the system works.

Depending on your interface, Time Machine can take some time to load, don't be impatient. Give it some time when you see TEST appear. Then you can restore it.

cytafex Loc: Clarksburg MA

I've used Time machine from full restore to individual files from the past and is handy. I also back up boot boot drive and images separately on hard drives too. Time Machine should be on separate drive.

elliott937 Loc: St. Louis

While I'm using two 4-TB externals for all images and word file, I have a 1-TB that I could use as Time Machine. My iMac is only 5 months old. Can any of you see a problem if I connect the 1-TB to use as my Time Machine? (My computer has a 1-TB internal.)

Brucej67 Loc: Cary, NC

The problem with backups is unless you try to restore from a backup you don't know if they were successfully backed up. I spent 43 years in the computer industry and on one company's payroll we had to restore the master file from tape backup as the disk drive went bad, unbeknown to us every tape backup for 11 generations was bad.

Dngallagher Loc: Wilmington De.

elliott937 wrote:

I'm suspecting that there are fellow UHH members who use Time Machine with their Macs. I have done that too in the past. Here's my questions? Has anyone actually recovered any files, perhaps image files, perhaps programs, -from- their Time Machine and returned it to the Desk Top or other location?

In advance, I thank you for your feedback.

Bill

Yes, have used Time Machine for years with my iMacs. Currently have a 4 TB Time Machine external disk in use. Easy to recover files, I just restore them where they were.

Dngallagher Loc: Wilmington De.

elliott937 wrote:

While I'm using two 4-TB externals for all images and word file, I have a 1-TB that I could use as Time Machine. My iMac is only 5 months old. Can any of you see a problem if I connect the 1-TB to use as my Time Machine? (My computer has a 1-TB internal.)

It will work, but 1 TB will fill up quickly depending on how much data is actually backed up. The default is to back up everything on your internal and nothing on your externals, unless you configure it to do so. Obviously, if you are using 800 GB on your internal, your 1TB Time Machine will be almost filled after the first backup, and if your 4TB externals have 3 TB of data stored, they would never fit.

Time Machine takes an initial full backup, then incremental backups of changed files ever hour, so at any point in time you end up with what the disk looked like at that date and time, in other words if you had a file that changed every hour you could restore it to any hourly backup point provided you had sufficient TM disk space for all the versions

Dngallagher Loc: Wilmington De.

cytafex wrote:

I've used Time machine from full restore to individual files from the past and is handy. I also back up boot boot drive and images separately on hard drives too. Time Machine should be on separate drive.

elliott937 Loc: St. Louis

Thank you guys, it's about time for me to hook up the 1-TB external. Let me share this. I've had an external HD on my last iMac, and the one before that. On a couple of occasions, I tried to recover a file from the TM drive, but could never find the way to do that. I'd enjoy an instruction book on Time Machine.

And another question. When I hook up the 1-TB for TM, does it also load itself up with the actual software itself, as in Microsoft Word, and all other software?

Dngallagher Loc: Wilmington De.

elliott937 wrote:

Thank you guys, it's about time for me to hook up the 1-TB external. Let me share this. I've had an external HD on my last iMac, and the one before that. On a couple of occasions, I tried to recover a file from the TM drive, but could never find the way to do that. I'd enjoy an instruction book on Time Machine.

And another question. When I hook up the 1-TB for TM, does it also load itself up with the actual software itself, as in Microsoft Word, and all other software?

When you connect an external drive it should ask if you wish to use it for Time Machine... once you tell it yes it will configure it for TM use. It will then be configured to backup everything on your internal drive... EVERYTHING....be aware, the initial backup takes a while...because it copies everything, subsequent backups will be quick though, as only changed & new files get copied.

Recovering is easy, just enter time machine from the top status bar icon and it will display every backup set it knows about... to restore, select the file & click restore...

https://www.wikihow.com/Use-Time-Machine-on-a-Mac - instructions/explanation and video.

elliott937 Loc: St. Louis

I think I have one final question, to which I think I know the answer. But I'd enjoy your confirm my suspicion. I'll hook up the 1-TB in a few minutes, after I hear back from you. While I have two 4-TB externals that I use for photo and word files, the 1-TB time machine external will back up ONLY what is on the computer, and not touch the two externals, right?

BTW, I've saved absolutely no image files or Word files on the hard drive. Only software is on the computer.