my Time Machine is switched on
from AntBlog701

my Time Machine is switched on

After getting my copy of Leopard on the 26th last month, I finally got time to prepare an external HDD for one of the exciting new feature in Mac OS X Leopard, Time Machine.

I bought a Seagate 500GB HDD from Orange IT (a PC retailer) yesterday. Taking out my old Western Digital 200GB HDD from an external HDD case (I name it NexStarBlack). I did not get a new external HDD case as I don't like the Western Digital one as I can see some noise from time to time.

(More continues...)

First thing first. I backed up all files on NexStarBlack to other HDDs, and formated the new HDD. The 500GB HDD after format becomes 465.8GB. I called the new partition TimeMachine.

Before any Mac-hater about to bash Apple's file system on losing storage space, "500GB" is measured in 500 x 10003 byte, and the 465.8 GB is measured in 465.8 x 10243 byte. They are the same. This is a common practice in HDD size manufacturers.

Mac OS X Leopard will ask you the first time users attach an external drive to the computer.

The Preference panel of Time Machine:

Users can easily select preferred drive for Time Machine backup, and specify files, folders or drives to be excluded from backing up.

My suggestions on folders should be excluded are:
EyeTV Archive (TV recordings), Parallels' guest OS folder, VMware's guest OS folder, etc, those folders generally contain very large files, and if you access your virtual machines often, Time Machine's backing up does not a good sense.

Just like the first time running Mac OS X v10.5 Leopard, initial Spotlight indexing takes time, especially when you have a large collections of files.

Will Time Machine slow down system? The short answer is no. The extended answer is hardly noticeable (except initial backing up). During Leopard Tech Talk I attended, Time Machine only backs up files that has been changed, and keeping a smart link to it.

How good is Time Machine's performing? Well, I only installed it today, and haven't had a chance to restore files with Time Machine. I think I'd better leave this for next time. However, I can tell you that from the live demo during Leopard Tech Talk (still beta then), it works very well. And just like all other Mac OS X software, very easy to use.

Time Machine can use any disk attached to user's Mac that can be used to store backups. This includes any internal hard disks except the Mac OS X startup disk, and a disk on a network (running Leopard). Time Machine won't work on iPod's disk space, iDisk (requires .Mac membership) and AirPort Disk (external HDD connected to AirPort Extreme) yet.

For more detail about Apple's Time Machine, please refer to Time Machine web page.

As many of you can see, I do have quite a few external HDDs connected to my iMac. I will though disconnect ExtHD230 later.

Related blog entries:
my little Leopard review (30 October 2007)
Leopard has arrived! (26 October 2007)
my Leopard is secured (23 October 2007)
Leopard Tech Talk and Dick Cheney (22 February 2007)