Lion and Time Machine: Offline backups and document locks

OS X Lion has tweaked Apple's Time Machine backup app a bit, but the changes are pretty significant. Now, if you're away from your external backup drive or Time Capsule for a few days, Time Machine actually caches a local "backup" of documents and system changes on your boot drive, waiting for an opportunity to transfer the backups to your full-time safety net.

I first encountered this feature when I was using an early development version of Lion and accidentally clicked on the Time Machine icon in the Dock while going for the System Preferences icon. To my surprise, Time Machine showed a history going back a few days. It appears that Time Machine keeps up to a week of local backups, and once connected to an external drive, those changes are synced to the vast library of items on that drive.

The image at the top of this post shows the Time Machine window as of last night, with the local backups going back to Wednesday, July 13. I was able to recover some screenshots that I took on July 15 with just a click.

Of course, this offline backup capability could backfire if Lion's Auto-Save capability accidentally saves over a document you don't want to change. Apple thought of that -- in the preferences for Time Machine, there's a setting to "Lock documents X weeks after last edit" (see below).

The Time Machine local backups aren't going to help you if you're away from your backup drive and your hard drive fails, but in those situations where you're on a trip and accidentally delete a file or two, you're going to thank the unsung engineers at Apple who came up with this feature.

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OS X Lion has tweaked Apple's Time Machine backup app a bit, but the changes are pretty significant. Now, if you're away from your...

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tim

How can I change the backup intervals for Lion's Time Machine?

August 30 2011 at 1:33 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

pelvicwoo1

This the website that can bring your Time Machine backups to the Cloud :)

http://www.dollydrive.com

https://get.dollydrive.com/purchase

August 15 2011 at 10:51 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

pelvicwoo1

I Agree with Leighkess

I been using Dolly Drive too !!!

Ever since my upgrade to LION and I am loving it and i am a serious FAN !!! Its the only offsite time machine backup :)

August 15 2011 at 10:49 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Rexreta

So what exactly does the "Lock documents X weeks after last edit" do?
I wondering which amount I should choose.

August 04 2011 at 1:17 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

dan

I have lion installed and I find that TIme Machine is not keeping local backups?

I have not plugged in to my external drive in 3 days. When I go to time machine, there is only a current snapshot, one from 5 minutes ago, and one from my last actual backup. Am I missing something?

July 22 2011 at 3:11 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Matthew

I've had nothing but trouble with Lions Time Machine. The Western Digital NAS i've used when I has Snow Leopard was perfect, just set and away it goes back up both Apple Laptops, however I can't get Time Machine to work anymore now Lions installed! Keep getting an error saying, ' The network backup disk does not support the required AFP features.' Apparently has something to do with the firmware on the WD drive thats not been updated for Lion?

I'd have thought back-ups should have been at the front of the apple queue when they looked at compatibility !? Don't understand why these vendors hadn't already updated firmware, etc?

July 21 2011 at 5:47 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

1 reply to Matthew's comment

Sonikku

You need to update to the newest version of netatalk (2.2).

July 21 2011 at 1:31 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

AydenArroya

Good feature to be able to exclude the items you want from back up for the auto save. Nice accidental find for the Time Machine!!

July 21 2011 at 12:37 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Chuck

I have a MacBook Pro with two internal hard drives (replaced the optical drive with a second hard drive and mounting bracket from OWC).

It would be great if I could specify in TimeMachine Preference which hard drive to use for the cached local back. If that option existed, I would have the backup cache saved on the non-boot drive that way I don't lose the backup cache if the boot drive crashes.

July 20 2011 at 4:36 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

George

Ouch,

So if I'm away for a few days, and I have a 128G SSD that only had 30G free, I get to see my space go to nothing until I get home and TM backs up? Time to turn off automatic backups and turn on TM when I want to backup I guess. Apple must figure that everyone has 3TB disks! Then again, Apple is now selling 128G SSD's in the MB Airs. Sort of counter intuitive at first glance. But then I guess not losing work is worth the aggravation. It's the long tail principle, 90% of all the users won't notice and will be happy that it 'just works'. 10% of the power users will complain! LOL

July 20 2011 at 2:14 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

1 reply to George's comment

Sasquatch_Steve

I'd imagine that it's making delta backups and wont eat as much space as you're thinking, unless you're doing some serious data acquisition while away or editing some really large files.

July 20 2011 at 2:27 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

leighkess

I use Dolly Drive for my Time Machine Backup. Does it online so I don't have to worry about getting back to my external drive. Even better than the cache.

July 20 2011 at 1:53 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

1 reply to leighkess's comment

withrowsp

Cool thanks for the tip. I didn't know about Dolly Drive. I have been using another online backup service that requires a cumbersome downloading process to replace anything that was lost.

July 20 2011 at 2:05 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply