Time Machine -Game, Set & Match!

mathepac

I had to type some correspondence today and selected letters which I knew had formats, addressees and addresses much as I needed to use as templates (note to self: make REAL templates soon, dumbo!).

I did my typing and went to get coffee when to my horror I discovered that the new content had been saved into the old documents, erasing the original contents. I have auto-save documents set to "On" with a short time-interval between saves.

Quick as a flash, I quit Pages and in the Finder duplicated the files concerned, giving the copies appropriate names to reflect their new content.

From the Menubar I selected "Enter Time Machine", selected the files I wanted to restore, selected a date in the past from the time-line display on the right and clicked "Restore".

Feeling like Capt Picard in the control-room of the StarShip Enterprise, the Time Machine animation took me into the past, selected the files I needed from the back-ups and rolled forward to today with the files in their original state. The single coolest experience I've ever had with an app / utility / OS.

OK so I might be a trifle more Mac savvy than the regualr Joe or Jane but I'd read no Time Machne instructions other than to set it up shortly after Christmas and had never attempted a restore. It just seemed intuitively "right" for Time Machine to work that way and it did! No books read, no Help System consulted, no web-site visited, it just did what I wanted as I expected it to.

Well done Apple, you saved my bacon by doing what you are peerless at: designing and building user-friendly technology that behaves as we would expect it to, simply and effectively.

If there were no other compelling reasons for using OS X except Time Machine (and there are) my experience with it would be enough for me to pick OS X every time over anything else.

Stainless_Steel

There is a lot to be said for making an extremely complex system work and look simple.

dmeehan

I havent had the need to use time machine yet, but it is reassuring to learn that it is easy enough to use. I would never have thought of using it to restore previous version of documents, thanks for that handy tip.

Mars Bar

I ditched time machine when it told me there wasn't enough space on my 500gB external hardrive.

f1dan

Mars Bar wrote: »

I ditched time machine when it told me there wasn't enough space on my 500gB external hardrive.

Did you set it to overwrite old backups?

cython

f1dan wrote: »

Did you set it to overwrite old backups?

Also, what size was the hard drive you were backing up, and how full was it?

mathepac

Stainless_Steel wrote: »

There is a lot to be said for making an extremely complex system work and look simple.

Very true. It's some achievement to build something that makes a super-klutz like me appear to be in control.

Just for the record Mac mini, Mountain Lion, 500GB HD, 3 X 1TB partitions on an external drive (1 dedicated to Time Machine), dual AOC monitors, 3 printers (Canon dye-sub photo printer, HP DeskJet, Dymo LabelPrinter) and various cameras, scanners,phones and tablets attached from time-to-time, 16GB RAM, WiFi to interweb via Nokia phone, shared via AirPort to MacBook and another Mac mini & a HP printer upstairs, Windows XP Pro run under VMWare Fusion (one of 434 applications installed)

nialler

Matt

If you were to use Pages instead of Word it saves versions in Mountain Lion, thus protecting you from that little debacle. used it for the first time today and it's exactly like the time machine, browse all versions and away ya go in time.

Pretty cool.

N

Mars Bar

f1dan wrote: »

Did you set it to overwrite old backups?

I can't recall to be honest.

cython wrote: »

Also, what size was the hard drive you were backing up, and how full was it?

500GB and it was only the backups that were on it and 4GB of music.

mathepac

nialler wrote: »

... If you were to use Pages instead of Word it saves versions in Mountain Lion, thus protecting you from that little debacle. used it for the first time today and it's exactly like the time machine, browse all versions and away ya go in time. ..

Yeah I forgot about File Menu Revert To... in Pages / Numbers / Keynote.

cython

Mars Bar wrote: »

I can't recall to be honest.



500GB and it was only the backups that were on it and 4GB of music.

Not the HDD you were backing up to, but the one that you were running time machine backups of, i.e. the HDD in the Mac?

Mars Bar

cython wrote: »

Not the HDD you were backing up to, but the one that you were running time machine backups of, i.e. the HDD in the Mac?

Oh, it's 750GB. I've used 300GB.

ZENER

Quicktime, what a brilliant application ! Was trying to figure out how to record video from a site where the streams can't be downloaded. Tried a few hacks and apps that required some adjustments to achieve their goal due to the streams being encrypted. But failed.

In the end screen recording from within Safari via Quicktime worked perfectly !! For the audio I used Hijack and merged the video and audio with iMovie !

Gotta love Mac OS

Ken

squonk

Yup, it's the beauty and simplicity of the OS that I love. the trully great thing about Time Machine is that 95% of the time you don't care about it, it's practically useless but when that time comes when you overwrite something or delete something or even your HD ups and dies, you're so glad to have your backups there ready to go and for regular file restores, you're back in business in seconds. Time Machine is worth the 30 quid for the OS alone.

mathepac

OK so I'm getting more adventurous, now that I'm the Ultimate Master of the Powers of Time Machine.

I was messing with my AddressBook contents yesterday. I know lads, the app is called "Contacts" but the folders, the data-base etc are all still called "AddressBook something or other". I wanted to eliminate duplicates and to create unique identifiers for all my pals called "Sean Murphy", "Tom Ryan" and "John Smith". Anyhow. somewhere between AppleScript and FileMaker I broke the AddressBook db badly.

I fired up Time Machine, selected the folder to restore, Users/<mathepac>/Library/Applications Support/AddressBook and let her rip. I was asked did I want to replace the folder and clicked yes or ok and that was it.

I eventually identified 3 duplicates out of 1,400+ contacts and deleted them. (An app called AddressBook Cleaner in demo mode showed me the duplicates, but wouldn't delete them - I managed to do that without messing up again)

Cool out, as they say somewhere or other.