:: Time Machine, Sounds Awesome! ::
:::May 27, 2008:::
Is Mac OS X Leopard's "Time Machine" feature a step forward or a step back in backup and recovery technology? It's easy to take either side of that debate, so it's probably a very aptly-named feature. Some prospects of Time Machine are very forward-thinking and futuristic, while others represent the "dark ages" in the past of backup technology.On the positive side, it is easily set up, does a fairly fine task of backing up a system to a 2nd drive, and has an interface that looks fairly simple to work with. It will probably make more people to back up their Macs than any other feature Apple has added to the Macintosh since 1984. On the other hand, Time Machine is a huge step backwards in backup technology in a surprising number of ways: - Compression: In order to get the most out of disk space, most backup utilities compress backup data so it doesn't take too much space. Time Machine does NOT compress backup data! - Encryption: Most modern backup utilities have some form of encryption to ensure that the backup data is safe (in case if it gets stolen or someone gets access to the backup data...). Time Machine does NOT have any encryption option! - Delta Storage: Most backup utilities will detect the segments of a file that have been changed since the last backup so the program will only backup the portion that has been changed. For example if you have a 600 word document and you have only changed the first page, the backup utility will only backup the first page because it has the other 599 pages not the whole document... but guess what? Time Machine does NOT! And sadly this lack of feature will waste an incredible amount of disk space and time to copy the huge files over and over AGAIN! - Data Aging: Most modern backup utilities have something called Date Aging which means that the program will delete the oldest copies of a file to open up some more space on the hard drive and most of the time, you can specify how many shadow backup you want. So for example you can configure your backup utility to have 5 copies of the same folder with all the files inside it and so on. Time Machine on the other hand does not have this feature which means eventually it will run out of space and the user has to delete the oldest shadow backups manually in order to open up some space... - File Vault: File Vault doesn't "play nicely" with Time Machine. To back up a File Vault account, you'll have to create an unencrypted account and then log in to that to create a Time Machine archive, according to Tech.co.uk. - Sensitivity to Disk Formats: Since Time Machine is file and directory based rather than delta-based, it would seem to think that as long as the backup disk is formatted using a scheme that Mac OS X supports for reading and writing files that this would be enough. Unfortunately, Time Machine has problems with disks that have a Master Boot Record on them, iDisks and iPods can't be used for backups, and non-HFS+ disks can't be used for backups. Yes, I know! FUN! - Applications in Backups are Executable: Because Time Machine doesn't make any effort to encrypt or compress the backup data, applications are stored in executable form on the Time Machine drive. If you delete an application from the system for any reason, it's possible that Leopard will launch the copy from the backup without warning when you click on a relevant file. - Naming Issues: If the computer name contains non English alphabet letters and numbers 0 to 9, past backups may not be visible in Time Machine. That is very interesting! Well if the name has been accepted in the Preferences Pane, why Time Machine can't? - Aperture Database Corruption: According to Apple, "running Time Machine backup or restore operations while Aperture is running may lead to inconsistencies in the Aperture database." It's getting even more interesting! I can see Leopard screwing up backing up a third-party application but let me get this straight. OS X is made by Apple, Aperture is made by Apple and Time Machine is also made by Apple. So that means their own product can't work with each other? Does actually anybody test these programs before they release it? I guess that's what they say about their awesome compatibility! - Missing Feature: As pointed out in the Mac TidBITS site, Steve Jobs announced at the WWDC in June 2007 that Time Machine would support disks attached to Airport Base Stations. When Leopard actually shipped in October, that feature was eliminated. Apple had also previously claimed that Time Machine would support encryption (it doesn't). - Bootable Backups: Most modern backup utilities support the option for making backups that are bootable. Well you guessed it right! Not Time Machine. - Multiple Media: Good backup strategy dictates that you backup your system to more than one media set, especially when you're using a technology like hard disks which can fail and take your backup with them. It's considered good practice to backup to more than one disk, switching between them on a regular basis. Time Machine doesn't support this common practice. - Intelligent Filtering: Most modern backup utilities will automatically filter out files that it doesn't make sense to backup, such as swap files, cache files, and the like which are created dynamically at startup and contain no user data. Time Machine allows for manual exceptions to be setup, but doesn't apply any intelligent filtering. It just backs up everything whether it's useful or good to back it up or not. - .Mac Sync and iDisk Sync Issue: According to TidBITS, synchronizing files with .Mac Sync and iDisk Sync causes them to be marked as changed and therefore as requiring backup. This means Time Machine will spend a considerable amount of time backing up files that haven't actually changed. In addition, it will backup your entire mail database every time you get a new message. |
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