A while back, I wrote some articles (here, here, and here) on how to back up your Mac in case of disaster. As our Macs collect more and more important stuff (like photos, music, movies, e-mail, contacts, and the list goes on and on), keeping all this safe in case of catastrophe becomes even more important. Fortunately for us, Apple has made this drop dead simple in the new OS X 10.5.
In this article, we’ll talk a bit about just how this new backup system (dubbed “Time Machine”) works and some of the implications.
Of course, to back up your stuff, you have to have a place to put that stuff. You’re generally trying to protect yourself from your computer dying or being stolen. You may also be protecting yourself from yourself. You accidentally threw away aunt Gertrude’s recipe for wiener schnitzel and now your relatives from Germany are on their way over. Oh boy!
These days, your best bet is to find an external hard drive. They’re reasonably inexpensive, fast, and hold lots of data. This is the model Apple had in mind when they designed Time Machine. I’m personally a fan of La Cie hard drives, but nearly any drive will work. Drives with “Fire Wire” connections tend to be faster than those with USB, but the latter will work just fine with any Mac that can run OS X 10.5.
If you just picked up a new drive, it will probably be formatted to work best with a PC. It will still work on a Mac, but not ideally. And Time Machine will probably complain and ask you to reformat it. It’s easy to do and I’ve got instructions here.
Setting up Time Machine
Once you plug in the drive, Time Machine will ask you if you’d like to use it for backup. If you answer yes, you’re done.
Yup, you read that right. You’re done. No more configuring, checking, testing. Just let Time Machine work it’s magic.
The first backup will take a LONG time. It has to back up everything on your computer, including any other external drives you may have. It’s pretty smart and very thorough. But this can take a couple of hours, depending on how much stuff you have.
Once you’re done with that, future runs are very quick and happen entirely in the background.
What about restoring?
Backing up is nice and all, but what’s it like when the rubber meets the road? In true Apple style, they’ve taken something that’s usually painful and made it almost fun.
If you just lost a file or two, open the folder (in the Finder) where those files once were. Then click on the Time Machine icon in your dock, and you’ll see the same folder, as well as many iterations of that same folder going back in time. There are two big arrows letting you go backwards or forwards through the iterations until you find the one that you wanted.
Apple added some other nice touches too. If you’re not sure where the file was, you can enter a search into that little search box at the top of each window and then enter Time Machine. The search results will change based on the point in time you’re looking at.
You can even do this within applications, such as iPhoto or Address Book. Did you delete a phone number and now need it back? Go to that address book card, then enter Time Machine. Go backwards until the missing phone number shows itself and click Restore.
Major Trouble
If your computer had a major meltdown, or worse, someone stole it, Apple has that one covered too. If you’ve gotten your Mac repaired, you can boot from a 10.5 install DVD and launch Time Machine from there. Make sure your backup drive is connected, and it can make your Mac look just like it did on any given date you choose.
Did you have to go out and buy a new Mac? The built in Migration Assistant (in the “Applications/Utilities” folder) can pull all your old data and applications from your backup drive and situate them on your new Mac just like they were on your old one. Presto! This can be really handy even if you’re just moving to a new Mac from your old one. (Assuming your old one was running 10.5)
Some Caveats
Nothing is ever perfect. Here’s some fine print about Time Machine that I’ve discovered.
If you’re using Apple’s Time Capsule or their Airport Extreme products, you can back up wirelesses. Great idea, but keep in mind that it’s much slower than using a directly attached hard drive. That first big backup will take a long time–longer than otherwise. Also the interface for restoring files will be less fluid.
If you shut down your Mac, the first backup when you turn it on will take a little longer than normal. OS X keeps track of which files need to be backed up while it’s running. When it’s shut down, it has no way of knowing if that list is correct, so it has to go through and rebuild it. It’s not too terrible, but you might hear your hard drive crunching away the first time.
Laptop users (or high security users) who use File Vault to encrypt all their personal data will have some extra hurdles to jump through. For Time Machine to backup your encrypted home folder, you have to log out first. There’s just no other way around it.
There are some very valid technical reasons for this, and hopefully it’s something Apple will be able to engineer around in future OS X releases. But for now, you have to log out with the drive attached, and you have to be plugged into an electrical outlet. It won’t do the backup if your laptop is running on batteries.
You also don’t get to use the schnazzy interface to restore single files if you’re a File Vault user. When Time Machine backs up your home folder, the backup is also encrypted. (And this, if you think about it, is a very good thing.) So it’s not easily browsable, unless you know your secret password.
You can, however, manually browse your backup by date (in the Finder) and find your encrypted home folder from the date you want. You’ll have double click on the image to mount it, supplying your password to decrypt it. You can then manually drag and drop any files you were missing.
Is it as cool as the regular Time Machine interface? No. But as a user of File Vault, I’m much more impressed that my backup is also encrypted. If someone breaks into my office and steals my backup drive, I don’t have to worry about my data being swiped.
Overall, I have to say that Time Machine alone has made the upgrade to Leopard worth it. The fact that there are so many other smaller but significant improvements in 10.5 only adds to the value.
And if you’re not backing up, go get yourself a drive and get to it. There’s just no good reason to loose valuable files any more.
