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Does Time Machine back up disk information in addition to all files?

Hi

I want to know if Time Machine back up disk information of my current Apple computer.

These information may include GUID/Apple Partition Map (such as partition names and layout). I check my backups in the Time Capsule, and it seems that only files in the hard drive have been backed up. I kind of know Partition Map doesn't reside in files, but hidden in the hard drive, so I wander if Time Machine does back up them? If so, where are they?

Thank you in advance!

Posted on Jun 15, 2014 6:30 PM

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Posted on Jun 15, 2014 6:33 PM

No, it does not.


Disk configuration data are stored on the disk itself. They are accessed and displayed by Disk Utility. There is nothing to backup.

4 replies

Jun 16, 2014 7:06 AM in response to DavidCQ

You can (and will) trivially recreate the metadata of the GPT and even the contents of the recovery partition when you reload the files from your backup. That metadata can and variously will differ from your current configuration, as well — you might be restoring onto a bigger disk or with different-sized partitions, for instance.


Now if you have your own partition in the GPT and that's not mounted and known to OS X, then you will want to consider backing that up through whatever OS-specific means are appropriate, or by using Disk Utility or dd or some other tool to block-copy the partition or block-copy the whole disk spindle to backup.

Jul 8, 2014 9:55 AM in response to DavidCQ

DavidCQ wrote:


Thank you for your information! It seems that Time Machine can only do with Apple OS, and for other OS such as Windows , we need use other tools.


If it's Windows as a guest in a virtual machine, the backing file will get archived. That's certainly a backup, but a woefully inefficient one as it'll drag the whole backing file out each time. Most folks will thus disable that file in Time Machine.


If it's Windows via Boot Camp or Linux in a GPT partition, that'll require using Windows- or Linux-focused tools.


One of the few available OS-agnostic approaches for backing up data is a disk image. Time Machine is not an OS-agnostic backup tool.


As for Windows or Linux or OS X or most any other operating system, each has its own tools and requirements for performing an operating system backup and for recovering and restoring, and it's very rare for any other operating system around really has any clue what those requirements are for a given OS.

Does Time Machine back up disk information in addition to all files?

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