02-28-2012, 10:43 PM
[quote name='Sammy' timestamp='1330453400' post='16273']
And even when running OS 10.7.2 or later, booting from a time machine backup is typically just the beginning of a lengthy restore procedure. In contrast, booting from a clone enables you to continue working immediately.
[/quote]
Time machine is not perfect, but for typical use cases it works well, in particular for non-expert users. It offers insurance against catastrophic data loss. You criticism to me, comes under minor details, if at all. The idea of working on your back-up data after a data loss has occurred, I regard as living dangerous. But that might be me.
The beauty of the time machine is its simplicity and ease of deployment. Got to your local computer shop, by a large USB drive (I would recommend twice the size of the disks in the Mac). Plug it in, if it comes with a Windows format you need to format it for Mac, and tell time machine "this is your disk" and "please encrypt it for me". You better take a good note of your encryption password and keep it on a different storage device from the mac-disk. Wait an hour or two for the mac to do the first backup (that takes a long time) and you are in business. In case of a desktop Mac (e.g. iMac or Mini) you can just keep that disk plugged in forever and forget about it. You only need to remember it when you have to (accidental deletion of a file or worse).
And even when running OS 10.7.2 or later, booting from a time machine backup is typically just the beginning of a lengthy restore procedure. In contrast, booting from a clone enables you to continue working immediately.
[/quote]
Time machine is not perfect, but for typical use cases it works well, in particular for non-expert users. It offers insurance against catastrophic data loss. You criticism to me, comes under minor details, if at all. The idea of working on your back-up data after a data loss has occurred, I regard as living dangerous. But that might be me.
The beauty of the time machine is its simplicity and ease of deployment. Got to your local computer shop, by a large USB drive (I would recommend twice the size of the disks in the Mac). Plug it in, if it comes with a Windows format you need to format it for Mac, and tell time machine "this is your disk" and "please encrypt it for me". You better take a good note of your encryption password and keep it on a different storage device from the mac-disk. Wait an hour or two for the mac to do the first backup (that takes a long time) and you are in business. In case of a desktop Mac (e.g. iMac or Mini) you can just keep that disk plugged in forever and forget about it. You only need to remember it when you have to (accidental deletion of a file or worse).
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