I thought Time Machine kept local snapshots when your backup drive wasn't plugged in? I unplugged my external hard drive and now Time Machine says the backup was delayed because my backup disk is unavailable and the Time Machine icon in the menu bar has a ! in it. Shouldn't Time Machine be backing up regardless of whether or not my backup drive is available?
Anyone care to shed some light on this?
TimeMachine is only backing up to the volume that is configured in the system preferences.
It would also make not much sense to do local backups on the same hard drive that contains your data as the backup would also be lost in case of a hard drive failure. Threrefore an external HD is a must and if it is not connected, TM will delay the backup.
If you have a laptop, and if your OSX disk isn't too full, Time Machine should be making Local snapshots.
See #30 in Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions.
I have 117GB free, and I'm using a MacBook Pro. On the link you posted it says that if the dialogue box mentions local snapshots it means they are turned on. My dialogue box does mention them, but the Time Machine icon still has a ! in it.
That refers to your "real" backups only.
Local snapshots should continue hourly, whether your TM disk is available or not.
Oh right. Just checked in Time Machine and it has been keeping backups whilst my backup drive is unavailable.
Thanks Pondini!
Still think Apple shouldn't put a ! though to avoid confusion.
Agreed. It used to only do that after 10 days.
In testing, we asked for that to be reinstated, to no available.
Add your voice here: http://www.apple.com/feedback/timemachine.html
Hi, is there a way of switching local snapshots off? if I use the Terminal command sudo tmutil disable local this only holds until I reboot, After that it comes back with a vengeance. Also performance (CPU / Memory use) is quite bad although I have indexed a few week ago. Anything I can do to improve that?
I have a MBP with Lion 2,4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 4 GB RAM an 500 GB HD (with FileVault enabled) and a TM.
Thank you for your suggestions.
EF
Time Machine not keeping local snapshots?
