TimeMachine Articles on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog

Review: ioSafe SoloPRO fireproof external hard drive

by Michael Grothaus (Oct 15th, 2011)

If there's one thing I always tell people who work with valuable, irreplaceable data it's "back up your files!" Thankfully most of us do back up our data. We usually use an external hard drive. Or sometimes, we only rely on cloud-based storage, like Dropbox or Apple's soon to be defunct iDisk. ...

Dolly Drive brings the Time Machine cloud closer to European customers

by Steven Sande (Aug 16th, 2011)

Everyone's favorite sheep-shaped online backup point, Dolly Drive, has opened a data center in Rome, Italy to give European Mac users faster Time Machine backups to the cloud. The new facility is part of a planned grid of data centers for the relatively new (less than a year old) and ...

Time Machine hand-holding: How do you say goodbye to data?

by Erica Sadun (Jul 23rd, 2011)

I've been good this past year. Very good. I have rigorously adhered to the TiNo philosophy, which states that so long as your TiVo, EyeTV, or other recording device has captured a program, it is your prerogative to delete that program whenever you feel like it. Whether you watched it or ...

Lion and Time Machine: Offline backups and document locks

by Steven Sande (Jul 20th, 2011)

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 ...

Western Digital's 3 TB MyBook Studio perfect for pre-Lion backups

by Steven Sande (Jul 16th, 2011)

Are you about to upgrade your Mac to OS X Lion? One recommendation from the TUAW staff is that you do a complete backup of your Snow Leopard installation before you start. With many Mac internal drives nearing the 1 to 2 TB range in size, how do you back up the drive and still have a hard disk ...

Dolly Drive 1.2 expands to 2 terabytes, adds seeding program

by Dave Caolo (May 17th, 2011)

We met Dolly Drive when it was barely a week old. This week, version 1.2 became available with increased storage capacity, increased upload speed and incremental cloning. Dolly Drive is a cloud-based backup solution that works with Apple's Time Machine. Once configured, Time Machine treats it as ...

Terminal Tip: Find out which files won't be backed up

by Samuel Gibbs (Apr 12th, 2011)

Backing up is one of the most important things you can do on a Mac, and thankfully, it's a pretty trivial affair with Time Machine built right in. Of course, when you're looking at what needs backing up, people often overlook what doesn't need backing up (or isn't, but should be). A good ...

Apple wins appeal in Time Machine, Cover Flow patent ruling

by Kelly Hodgkins (Apr 5th, 2011)

US District Judge Leonard Davis threw out a US$625.5 million patent infringement verdict against Apple involving its Cover Flow, Time Machine and Spotlight technology for the Mac. In 2008, Mirror Worlds filed a patent infringement lawsuit accusing Apple of infringing on four of the company's ...

World Backup Day: Turn, turn, turn + more giveaways

by Michael Rose (Mar 31st, 2011)

Happy World Backup Day! We can't really emphasize this strongly enough: you need good backups, and you need them now. That's why we've joined the cause for data saving with tips, techniques and giveaways all day today. For Mac users running Leopard or Snow Leopard (10.5 or 10.6), the good news ...

Macworld 2011: Dolly Drive syncs Time Machine to the cloud, creates bootable backup

by Dave Caolo (Jan 28th, 2011)

We're finding many useful solutions here at Macworld Expo, and among them is Dolly Drive. This new solution (they just launched this week) offers encrypted Time Machine sync to the cloud and even creates a bootable version of the local drive you've been using for Time Machine thus far. I spoke with ...

Mac Plus reused as a Time Machine server

by David Quilty (Jan 19th, 2011)

Showing us that there is, in fact, a much more useful application for an old Mac Plus than a DJ using it as a helmet, Macenstein reader Dean Gray has turned his 1986 Mac Plus 1 MB into a Time Machine Server. By using an Intel Atom motherboard and replacing the screen with a 10" digital picture ...

Time Machine holds a place in my heart, and it should in yours too

by Erica Sadun (Jan 7th, 2011)

One of my TUAW colleagues who shall remain nameless revealed to us yesterday that he doesn't use Time Machine. "Don't talk to me about Time Machine," he said. "I hate it!" My goodness, I thought. Is that even possible? I cannot recount the number of times that Time Machine has saved me from ...

Mac 101: Backup basics with Time Machine and more

by Steven Sande (Dec 28th, 2010)

Did you get a new Mac for Christmas? Before you go too far in loading your Mac with software and files, make sure that you have a backup strategy. As a certified Mac consultant, I can tell you that there are two kinds of computer users: those who have lost data through error, hardware failure, or ...

Apple awarded patents for RF synchronization, Time Machine, and more

by Steven Sande (Dec 15th, 2010)

Yesterday was a busy day for the gnomes at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, as they awarded 19 patents to Apple for intellectual property ranging from "RF Pulse Synchronization for Data Acquisition Operations" to a couple of ideas that are implemented in Time Machine. All were reported on by ...

Ouch! Apple dinged for $208.5 million in patent infringement case

by Steven Sande (Oct 4th, 2010)

You know that nice Cover Flow interface (above) that Apple uses on iDevices, in iTunes, and in Mac OS X? An East Texas Federal Court has ruled that Apple infringed on patents held by Mirror Worlds, a software business started by Yale University computer science professor and Unabomber victim David ...