Time Machine on Yosemite

[triscleeire]

Does anyone know is Apple has introduced a more user friendly TimeMachine with Yosemite?

I found it very annoying that I was not able to set the frequency of backups on Lion. The TimeMachine backup slowed the machine down a lot which was very annoying.

I wish TimeMachine would allow the user to set set frequency of backups (e.g. every hour).

Thanks a lot

 

[vansmith]

No, Apple hasn't introduced this and I doubt they will. Time Machine is designed to be a little fuss as possible and introducing config settings only complicates things.

If you're looking for a more comprehensive backup system, you're best to look for a third party solution. SuperDuper, for instance, can be scheduled.

 

[rshames]

This app allows you to schedule Time Machine Backups

TimeMachineEditor for Mac | MacUpdate

 

[Exodist]

This app allows you to schedule Time Machine Backups

TimeMachineEditor for Mac | MacUpdate

Thats handy for power users like myself.

No, Apple hasn't introduced this and I doubt they will. Time Machine is designed to be a little fuss as possible and introducing config settings only complicates things.

If you're looking for a more comprehensive backup system, you're best to look for a third party solution. SuperDuper, for instance, can be scheduled.

This is also true, most people would not understand the difference between incremental and differential or know when a full backup is important. Even myself I rather not have to worry with it as long as TM does it correctly..

 

[waterug]

Restoring From Time Machine on Yosemite

I haven't been able to find any of my documents, or anything for that matter on my hard drive when I use Time Machine on Yosemite. I have the same problem on both my iMac and MB Pro. I didn't have this problem with Mavericks.

 

[chscag]

As far as I know, Time Machine has not changed. Can you clarify a bit more for us what you mean when you say you can't find your documents? Are you saying you can't find your documents when restoring from Time Machine in Yosemite?

 

[Gandalph]

Well I don't know about anyone else but this is what i get when I open Time Mach Preferences in Yosemite. I am definitely getting 1 hour backups.

 

[MacInWin]

But that's not the problem the OP is posing. The OP wants to have something LONGER than an hour between backups because the backup process slows down the machine. Apple doesn't offer that option, just ON/OFF. The scheduler rshames pointed to allows for the user to set longer intervals between backups. I use TimeMachineEditor that lets me set backups for once every 12 hours at noon and midnight, which is all I need.

 

[chas_m]

The reason why Time Machine is locked in at one-hour increments is Apple doesn't want to hear your moaning when your hard drive goes south and you've lost "hours ... days ... weeks ..." of work. The drive is supposed to be on the entire time the computer is in use, so why *not* back it up every hour? Doing so vastly decreases the amount of stuff it will likely need to change, reducing the backup time to a few seconds rather than a few minutes up to a half-hour (depending on how much stuff changed since your last backup).

That said, I'm not saying "yer doing it wrong." If you understand the consequences of changing the increment of time Time Machine uses, by all means you should do so. As mentioned, Time Machine Editor is an excellent tool for this purpose.

Carbon Copy Cloner and Super Duper are, in my opinion, great *complements* to Time Machine, but not a substitute, since they both take quite a bit more time to do their thing than Time Machine. But if you're really looking for a much more comprehensive backup solution, my suggestion would be ChronoSync. All the options and power you could ever want, super-flexible, and the same cost as CCC.

 

[waterug]

As far as I know, Time Machine has not changed. Can you clarify a bit more for us what you mean when you say you can't find your documents? Are you saying you can't find your documents when restoring from Time Machine in Yosemite?

When I first click on the TM icon in the dock, the current layout in the finder is shown. Then, when I go back to any point in time, whatever was on my screen, disappears. It doesn't matter whether it's Applications; Dropbox; All My Files; whatever NOTHING appears once I settle in on a previous time. If I had All My Files selected in the finder, then go back in time, nothing is showing on my screen. It's as though I had no applications. The same thing happens on my MB Pro as well as my iMac. I thought it might have been a conflict with other backups on the same HD, but that wasn't the case. As I said in my original post, I didn't have this problem with Mavericks.
I should add, for what it's worth, I can't get Carbon Copy Clone to work on my iMac either, even after the update. Super Duper works perfectly. CCC works perfectly on my MB Pro.

 

[MacInWin]

I, too, see some anomalies in TM similar to waterug. I have dates on the right going back to January, but cannot select past February. When I look at the drive, there is a folder in backup.backup that is dated back to January, and it appears have "stuff" in it, but TM won't show it at all except on the right of the desktop. And TM is very, very slow to begin actually showing files in the dated backup. Sometimes I end up staring at an empty screen for several minutes before the TM Finder finally displays anything. I'm not sure TM was really ready for release when Yosemite was. I do have CCC backups, and TM appears to be backing up the files, but it would be more reassuring if it let me see them.

 

[chscag]

Time Machine seems to be working normally here. After Yosemite backups look good and backups pre-Yosemite likewise. I just went through a whole list of files on several selected backups and all appears OK. Time Machine feels to be a bit slower running in Yosemite than it did from Mavericks but that may be due to the larger amount of data to be backed up.

 

[waterug]

I, too, see some anomalies in TM similar to waterug. I have dates on the right going back to January, but cannot select past February. When I look at the drive, there is a folder in backup.backup that is dated back to January, and it appears have "stuff" in it, but TM won't show it at all except on the right of the desktop. And TM is very, very slow to begin actually showing files in the dated backup. Sometimes I end up staring at an empty screen for several minutes before the TM Finder finally displays anything. I'm not sure TM was really ready for release when Yosemite was. I do have CCC backups, and TM appears to be backing up the files, but it would be more reassuring if it let me see them.

You say you stare at a blank screen for several minutes but nothing appears. I presume the same thing happens to you as it does to me: I get a spinning dial (not the beach ball) and TM says "waiting". Waiting for what I don't know. In any case, TM doesn't work on either my iMac or MB Pro.Since the same thing happens on two different computers, I guess it wouldn't do much good to re-download Yosemite. Very puzzling.

 

[MacInWin]

No, I get no spinner. Just a blank finder window. Eventually it populates, up to some dates. Before those dates, I haven't seen it display yet. I may set it to the oldest date and then just wait for a loooooong time to see if it will eventually populate the finder display. I can see that the backup is there in backups.backupdb folder, so there is something in the process of finding the data that is awry.

 

[chas_m]

Just for the record, I would expect that at least CCC and SuperDuper, maybe ChronoSync, all need to be updated to work in Yosemite. They may already have done, but I haven't heard anything new lately.

Time Machine sports an entirely new look and works properly here.

 

[MacInWin]

CCC did update for Yosemite, is working fine. TM is behaving differently than it used to. In previous versions, if it didn't have space for a new backup it warned that it was going to delete older backups and when it did that, the date of the backup disappeared from the list on the right edge of the TM display. What's happening now is that I cannot open the older backups, although the folder with the older date appears on the TM drive in the backups.backupsdb folder and it appears to have entries in it, it will NOT display in TM, no matter how long I let it wait (up to overnight, anyway). Not a tragic flaw, but a flaw nevertheless. The drive is 1TB, TM has used 660GB so far, so it shouldn't be deleting yet, so I have no idea why I cannot open those 5 oldest backups from January 2014.

 

[chscag]

Like I mentioned in a previous post Jake, I have no problem opening those older backups even after installing Yosemite. Time Machine does have a somewhat different look and seems to me to be a bit slower, but other than that, it's working as it should.

 

[vansmith]

Just for the record, I would expect that at least CCC and SuperDuper, maybe ChronoSync, all need to be updated to work in Yosemite. They may already have done, but I haven't heard anything new lately.

Time Machine sports an entirely new look and works properly here.

SuperDuper is fine - I cloned my pre-release Yosemite install with it and I remember the developer issuing a Yosemite related update.

 

[MacInWin]

chscag, I'm not worried, I'll probably never need those oldest backups, but it's just curious that it shows the dates, they exist on the drive and yet TM won't open them. Strange, but I can live with it.

 

[gballey]

Time machine GUI fails when certain folders are selected

I just tried to use the Time Machine GUI for the first time since I upgraded to Yosemite a week or so ago (just applied the OS X 10.10.1 update last night). When I start Time Machine from its icon in the menu bar, with my Downloads folder window frontmost in the Finder, all it shows me in the stacked history windows is just the current contents in the top window -- none of the windows stacked behind the current Downloads folder window is selectable, those windows are not titled, and their red CLOSE buttons are not illuminated). The history markers on the right side of the screen show I have backups back to Dec 2013, when I purchased the iMac 27", and the markers animate when I roll over them, but selecting any of them does nothing. The up/down arrows to the right of the stacked folder windows are not selectable.

If I open my user folder, or have no Finder windows open on the desktop and select Time Machine the same way, the GUI operates just as I would expect it to -- all of the stacked windows are selectable, as are the up/down arrows, and the history markers on the right side of the screen produce the expected behavior when clicked.

Just to check, I drilled down into Backups.backupdb on my TM volume using the Finder, and I can see all the dated history folders and their contents.

Can someone tell me what's going on here? Thanks.