Alex, First of all you would have to initiate the restoration process. If you are working on a document of such importance you would hopefully not leave it just to TIme Machine. Chris gave a much more involved description which was very useful and I am sure it helped. You would always be wise to put something of great importance on a flash drive or some other storage media that you could lock away in a safe location or at least have it elsewhere. I use TIme Machine for all the Macs here, but I also have two additional copies of my data and both live in a safe. Ideally I would also add an off-sight plan to the mix and I am checking into this. I of course want to find a service that would let me backup a couple of machines perhaps without bankrupting me in the process. :) Of course one thing I did not add to the conversation is the fact you can exclude certain things from your TIme Machine backup and I assume this is also possible with something like Carbonite or any of these other backup solutions. In this way you can keep only the really critical stuff backed up.
On Feb 3, 2012, at 3:54 PM, Alex Hall wrote: > Thanks for the responses. Regarding my last question: > 1. You create a novel in Text Edit, saving it as a single document. > 2. You back up your mac, which, of course, backs up your novel in the > process. Let us say this was done on January 1. > 3. You come back to the novel a week later, making extensive > modifications. Unfortunately, your mac goes crazy and you restore from > your January 1 backup. > What happens to your novel? Do you retain the January 8 version, or is > that overwritten with the January 1 version? I have Carbonite on > Windows, but before I had that I tended to save to my hard drive and > make backups every month or so. In the above example, then, I would > not have backed up every itteration of the novel, and would probably > have done a backup a few weeks later. The restore, then, would happen > between my backups, so what would happen to the file in question? I > hope that makes sense. > > On 2/3/12, Scott Howell <scottn3...@gmail.com> wrote: >> Alex answers follow below: >> >> On Feb 3, 2012, at 1:50 PM, Alex Hall wrote: >>> 1. Will any external hard drive work? >> ALex you may use any external drive you like. However, you should ensure you >> have of course sufficient capacity and in fact you may consider having a >> drive that is at least twice the capacity of the drive you are backing up. >> THis is not a requirement, but a consideration. >> >> >>> 2. Do I need to format it in a special way? If so, can I make a >>> partition on it to use for backups and leave the rest readable by >>> Windows computers? >> >> I do not recall whether it matters, but the TIme Machine utility takes care >> of this if I recall correctly. You could split the drive into multiple >> partitions and choose where you want TIme Machine to place the backups. >> >>> 3. Is time machine fully accessible? >> I have not had any problems using TIme Machine. >> >> >>> 4. Are time machine backups readable? That is, if I wanted a file off >>> an old backup but did not want to restore the whole thing, could I >>> just browse to that file and copy it like normal? >> Yes. >> >>> 5. Is anything not backed up? >> >> The only files that come to mind which are not backed up are those that have >> no impact on operation of your Mac. In other words these are files you do >> not have direct access to and are only used by the current instance of the >> OS. So if you restored the entire machine or cloned the drive you would not >> want these files. >> >>> 6. If I had to restore, and I had newer files than in the backup, what >>> happens? In other words, is there a way to restore only system folders >>> so that files modified since the backup are not overwritten with older >>> versions? >> Interesting question since I'm not sure how this condition would occur >> really. I'm trying to invision a scenario that might apply in this case. >> >> hth, >> >> >>> Thanks in advance. >>> -- >>> Have a great day, >>> Alex (msg sent from GMail website) >>> mehg...@gmail.com; http://www.facebook.com/mehgcap >>> >>> -- >>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups >>> "MacVisionaries" group. >>> To post to this group, send email to macvisionaries@googlegroups.com. >>> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to >>> macvisionaries+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. >>> For more options, visit this group at >>> http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries?hl=en. >>> >> >> -- >> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups >> "MacVisionaries" group. >> To post to this group, send email to macvisionaries@googlegroups.com. >> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to >> macvisionaries+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. >> For more options, visit this group at >> http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries?hl=en. >> >> > > > -- > Have a great day, > Alex (msg sent from GMail website) > mehg...@gmail.com; http://www.facebook.com/mehgcap > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "MacVisionaries" group. > To post to this group, send email to macvisionaries@googlegroups.com. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > macvisionaries+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries?hl=en. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MacVisionaries" group. To post to this group, send email to macvisionaries@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to macvisionaries+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries?hl=en.
