Thanks,

James

For the curious: I use TM to backup up my SSD drive to the internal HD on my iMac. In addition, I use a sym link from my desktop to a “working” directory on the HD (I don’t want my every day files to start filling up the SSD), and hoped that TM would back up that working directory too. Not surprising, but unfortunate: it faithfully backed up the sym link, but that’s it — meaning that the TM backup process doesn’t FOLLOW the sym link and backup the files & directories it finds there. (Of course, I can’t use a hard link since it’s across file systems.) So an rsync solution such as described here is something I’m considering for that “working” directory.

Similarly, I’ll probably develop an rsync solution to fully backup the HD to an external device, for that rare day when the HD decides to croak. Yes, I could use TM itself, manually switching it from the SSD to work instead with the HD, then switching back after its done (yuck) — or fool with the TM plist to do the switching. Much to do, much to learn….

(and has to be formatted first)
-> Depends; I ALWAYS buy Western Digital drives in the Studio range; preformatted for mac. My choice. If you choose another; formatting takes about 3 minutes.

That drive has to be formatted in HFS+, hence, without any (commercial) third-party plugins it’s not readable on Windows or Linux systems
-> We’re backing up a Mac, what’s wrong with using a Mac file system? Second; the better linux distros can read HFS+ without any trouble. It’s Windows that sucks big time.

You have to leave your drive on all the time to make sure Time Machine makes backups
-> Well, I’d like you to show me ANY ONE backup that can backup to a disk that is not on.

You can’t make a list of things you want to have backed up, you can only exclude folders from your complete hard disk
-> Which serves it’s purpose very well; that way you cant forget to include newly created files/folders.

Time Machine makes an exact copy of your hard drive
-> As opposed to ….. what, exactly? What is wrong with having a full copy of your drive? I don’t want to spend hours reinstalling my OS, then my Apps and then my files after a crash. I used to have to do that with WIndows and I’m sick and tired of that. With Time Machine, i place a new drive, boot from the OS CD and recover my drive. Easy as that.

I really like your approach with rSync, but your reasoning is flawed.

@Anonymous #16; As a new Apple user – this is another example of an OS not allowing it’s users any flexibility.
-> OSX _IS_ giving it’s users all the flexibility it can give; Use Time Machine for a full backup with revisioning, or use rSync (shipped with it) for the more complex tasks. Compared to windows; no backup software to speak of, no revisioning, no rsync.
On a Mac, there is NO reason whatsoever to not backing up your harddisk. On Windows there is, well, windows IS the biggest reason but that’s beyond the scope of this topic.

@Kranki #8
I do not share your (bad) experience with Time Machine. I’ve restored not many machines but a few and all of them restored without any problem whatsoever (including our mac mini server that lost a drive due to a power outage)

Backup via Time Machine could be useful if it was written in such a way as to allow the user to choose what is backed up and schedule it accordingly.

I know, Apple people will bleat loudly, but the OS has some significant drawbacks for users that know what the are doing and, don’t want be nannied.

This seems originally to be a move to force people to upgrade from Win98 to win2000 and NTFS if they want large disk support. Most external hardrives are formatted as FAT32 using the manufacturers own version of a formatting tool with no 4GB limits at all

There are utilities that will format a FAT32 volume in excess of 4GB that can be found with a simple web search

Just thought you should know the RSYNC that shops with osx does NOT backup OSX File Metadata efficiently!

This sucks. Read this for more info..

http://www.bombich.com/mactips/rsync.html