BW: Portability and Time Machine Don't Mix
BW: Portability and Time Machine Don't Mix
by , 12:45 PM EST, November 8th, 2007
Arik Hesseldahl at BusinessWeek on Thursday said he's delighted that Apple created Time Machine, but it has one glaring weakness. It's not so great for people on the move.
Time Machine "...is probably the most talked-about and eagerly anticipated feature in Leopard. I'm probably not alone in having struggled with the finer points of backing up important data. I can't begin to count the money I've spent on external hard drives and various software applications that promise to automate the backup process," Mr. Hesseldahl lamented.
However, now that he's started using Time Machine, and while he's delighted with it, using it with a notebook, constantly on the go, is somewhat of a problem. "Of the 7 million Macs sold in the fiscal year that ended in September, 4.3 million were notebooks. And if your Mac of choice is one of these notebooks, using Time Machine is a slightly more arduous process....you'll need to carry an external hard drive with you," the author noted.
The problem is that Time Machine is not yet compatible with networked drives. "After first hearing about Time Machine I had visions of setting up one huge networked drive that could store a terabyte of data and letting Time Machine make convenient backups to it from my MacBook Pro via Wi-Fi," The noted Mac observer wrote. "Until and unless Time Machine supports network drives, it will remain just a vision."
Mr. Hesseldalh had some other minor complaints, but he remained enthusiastic. "In short, I love Leopard, though not without reservations. And I am confident that Apple can fix the system's shortcoming fairly easily," he said.
Observer Comments
Fri Nov 09, 2007 3:13 am Subject: A portable external drive isn't that big of a deal
I have installed Leopard and TM to play with, but until my CAD software catches up, I still work on another partition in Tiger. I did install TM on a third partition on my iMac's internal drive, and it works just fine.
Macbook and MB Pro users could do the same, then clone the TM partition to an external when they get back to wherever "Base" is.
I haven't used Leopard yet, but I've heard that Time Machine gracefully works with drives being connected and disconnected. So you could set it up with an external drive at home, and hook it up once a day (or week, or whenever is convenient) and let Time Machine do its thing then. It's not quite the same as having it available all the time, but it's still an easy, automatic backup routine.
I have an external drive connected to my iMac that I'm using for Time Machine. I also have a new MB Pro. It took a little bit of hassle at the beginning, but now I've got the laptop backing up to the same drive when I'm connected to my home wireless network in the evenings. During the day, when I'm in the office, Time Machine just sits quietly, biding its time. There have been a few hiccups along the way, but you certainly *can* use TM over a network. No weird hacks required, either.
QuoteGuest wrote:
There have been a few hiccups along the way, but you certainly *can* use TM over a network. No weird hacks required, either.
What you can't do (yet) is use Time Machine with an USB drive directly connected to an Airport Extreme base station. I don't know if you can use it with a drive that's connected via Ethernet.
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