Q: Hard Drive

As a side note people need  to be aware of the fact that a fair number of online backup companies can FIFO your data in and out (FIFO means first in - first out). What this means is that if you have archives A, B, C....N on your system and you have limited storage, when the next backup, which I'll call M comes on, A gets deleted. When O comes along, B gets delted, when P comes along, C gets deleted.

I hope I explained that. The point being know what your getting with online storage. Alot of the commercial firms make it sound like there's limitless storage when there isn't.

ThomasB2010 wrote:

 

As a side note people need  to be aware of the fact that a fair number of online backup companies can FIFO your data in and out

Which ones?

ThomasB2010 wrote:

The point being know what your getting with online storage

Online storage as implied a protected and safe archive of valuable data would never apply.

An online backup of data for convenience for sending data, and traveling and having data access....., and placing data off-site (for protection from fires etc.) yes.

For data that is vital and placing even 1% of trust in ones own data on/in anonymous servers. No and never.

The presumption of ones data being safe on anonymous servers (as the only or main point of storage) gives new and realistic definition to the phrase "dust in the wind"

I can't speak for online storage, but in case anyone didn't know it, Time Machine does the exact same thing. This shouldn't surprise anyone because a backup drive doesn't have infinite space. I'd assume the same occurs with an online backup -  they'd elther have to say "Hey, you're out of storage space" or they they'd have to remove older backups.

I would hope these things would be configurable, and I hope they would warn you before deleting anything. I've never gotten one of my TM backups full enough to erase anything yet. I would hope TM would warn as well.

...that's what I'd hope, guys.

R.K.Orion wrote:

I've never gotten one of my TM backups full enough to erase anything yet. I would hope TM would warn as well.

...that's what I'd hope, guys.

It doesnt warn you.

http://pondini.org/TM/Clones.html

hope is insufficient.

TM is a system backup.    Not a data backup.   Whats the difference? A huge one.

This is an error many make.

Time Machine is a system backup, not a data backup

Important data you “don’t dare lose” should not be considered ultimately safe, or ideally stored (at the very least not as sole copy of same) on your Time Machine backup. Hourly and daily fluctuations of your system OS, applications, and software updates is the perfect focus for the simple user to conduct ‘click it and forget it’ backups of the entire system and files on the Macbook HD.

Bootable clones are the choice of professionals and others in that Time Machine cannot be booted from and requires a working HD to retrieve data from (meaning another computer). Your vital data needs to be and should be ‘frozen’ on some form of media storage, either in a clone, as an archived HD containing important files, or on DVD blank archival media.

A file that is backed up to Time Machine is unsafe in that if that file is deleted off the computer by accident or lost otherwise, that file will likewise vanish from Time Machine as it reflects changes on the internal computer HD/SSD.

Online storage is only as good as its connection. I have Verizon FIOS, and as I just said in another thread, about half the time I try to do an OS upgrade, the downloaded binary is corrupt and it needs to be re-downloaded 2, sometimes 3 times. In my house the connection to the router is hardwired because I want the speed. I never had this problem until I got FIOS, and Verizon's offshored tech support is (as usual) of virtually no help, except for forwarding one problem to another support until you get so ticked off you just hang up.

It's FIOS that's allowing the corruption to occur. I don't know enough about networking to know for sure but there's supposed to be error checking and handshaking going on and on FIOS it's clearly not working reliably.

Now for this thread, picture myself doing a remote copy of some files from my home unit to a remote backup unit using the connection I have. What guarantee is there that the data will not be corrupted in transit, just like FIOS is corrputing software updates from Apple?

You should probably check your network connections. I would think, or at least hope that Apple isn't sending out updates via UDP, which is the only way I would think packets could be corrupt, unless there's something inherently wreckless in FIOS.

I believe (but don't know for sure) that most online solutions do verification. They'd be useless without it.

PlotinusVeritas wrote:

 

 

Time Machine cannot be booted from

Yes it can, please research your data before posting.

That's correct. When I first got Scannerz and was fooling around with it I was using their tool Phoenix to clone volumes, create emergency boot volumes, etc. One of the things I did for kicks was to clone an existing volume from one of the systems we were taking down right onto its TM volume. It worked. Tiime Machine worked.

I don't have a TM volume handy right now but if you're familiar with the "dot" naming conventions used in Unix, all TM backups are in a "dotted" (semi-hidden to the normal user) folder off the "/" partition on the TM volume. Everthing else is outside of that. If you clone  a regular volume onto that, the TM backup will remain entact. The only problem that would exist would be if the source of the clone was either a TM volume itself, or it was already a hybrid (regular volume + TM volume) at which point it would seem to me that all chaos would erupt!!!!!

If I understand it, TM doesn't do a CRC or any other file integrity check when it writes data. I could be wrong, but I don't think it does.

Csound1 wrote:

 

PlotinusVeritas wrote:

 

 

Time Machine cannot be booted from

Yes it can, please research your data before posting.

No, you do not understand.    You can boot TO Time machine.

What cannot be done, unlike the case of a HD clone where you can boot from the clone just like turning on a machine to full working state......., is you cannot boot FROM Time machine to working desktop.

You can boot to recovery in TM, but this is something else entirely.

As is the case, booting to recovery mode, is not booting from time machine (which cannot be done) as one does in the case of a HD clone.

But you cannot connect a time machine to a faulty HD Macbook, and boot from Time Machine to your desktop.

Suggest reading PONDINI's website, and research your data for clarification:

http://pondini.org/TM/Clones.html

Time Machine Disadvantages

  •It’s not bootable.

If your internal HD fails, you can't boot directly from your Time Machine backups.  You must restore them, either to your repaired/replaced internal HD or an external disk.   This is a fairly simple, but of course lengthy, procedure.  You can also transfer the apps, user accounts, and data to another disk or Mac, via Setup Assistant or Migration Assistant.  See How do I set up a new Mac from an old one, its backups, or a PC? for details.

Kappy Tampa, FL and Vancouver, BC 

   No. Time Machine does not make a bootable backup.

Allan Eckert Denver, Colorado 

A Time Machine backup is not bootable

wjosten  Mar 23, 2012 12:47 PM

No, you can't boot from a Time Machine Disk.

R.K.Orion wrote:

 

That's correct. When I first got Scannerz and was fooling around with it I was using their tool Phoenix to clone volumes, create emergency boot volumes, etc. One of the things I did for kicks was to clone an existing volume from one of the systems we were taking down right onto its TM volume. It worked. Tiime Machine worked.

 

 

the TM backup will remain entact.

That is something else entirely different.  Time Machine is a data recovery volume, in recovery mode it can restore your volume.

However time machine is not itself bootable.

What you did was, as you yourself stated, was to create a volume onto the external drive where TM was.

Any volume containing the backups.backupdb (ie Time Machine) image can take on more data, Im doing the same currently myself.

including the volume you copied to it.

However what you did was a modification...

Time Machine itself as it exists without modification, is not bootable.

Yes, the "TM remained intact" from your modification.  

PlotinusVeritas wrote:

 

 

Csound1 wrote:

 

PlotinusVeritas wrote:

 

 

Time Machine cannot be booted from

Yes it can, please research your data before posting.

 

 

 

No, you do not understand.    You can boot TO Time machine.

 

 

What cannot be done, as in the case of a HD clone, is you cannot boot FROM Time machine to working desktop.

 

You can boot to recovery.  

 

 

But you cannot connect a time machine to a faulty HD Macbook, and boot from Time Machine to your desktop.

Yes you can boot from a TM drive, and from there restore or reinstall OSX.

Csound1 wrote:

 

Yes you can boot from a TM drive, and from there restore or reinstall OSX.

This is not correct as per "booting from TM"

You can restore or reinstall OSX via time machine, correct

One can then boot to recovery mode, and as you correctly state restore or reinstall OSX,  

however one cannot boot from a Time Machine volume.. as you can from a bootble HD clone  (ala carbon copy cloner, or SuperDuper)

See Pondini's, the expert on Time Machine, his website, and the statements from Kappy , Wjosten and others for clarification please.

http://pondini.org/TM/Clones.html

"  Time Machine Disadvantages

  •It’s not bootable.    "

Time Machine (since Lion) has had its own Recovery Partition, one that you can boot from. I am sorry that you are unaware of it and suggest that you check Apples documentation, or simply look at the partitions on your own TM drive.

Nobody can boot from a Time Machine volume.

A recovery partition is, as you stated earlier, for "restore or reinstall OSX"

The experts on this board,  Kappy, Wjosten, and the acknowledged authority on Time Machine, Pondini,  state this fact.

Linc Davis 

Time Machine backup volume will boot into Recovery, provided that at least one of the source volumes backed up to it has a valid recovery partition under Mac OS 10.7.2 or later.

One can launch into recovery from Time Machine

But as the experts acknowledge :  "Time Machine does not make a bootable backup." - Kappy

TM backups are not themselves bootable.  You would need an actual system clone for that (as made, say with SuperDuper or CarbonCopyCloner)

If however one states you can "launch (or 'boot') into recovery mode", this is correct.