backup with Time Machine

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cameragirl

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I recently started to use my Mac's Time Machine. I still backup catalog when I open Lightroom. Is this necessary or is this already done by Time Machine?
 
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[quote author=cameragirl link=topic=7554.msg51671#msg51671 date=125'35525']
I recently started to use my Mac's Time Machine. I still backup catalog when I open Lightroom. Is this necessary or is this already done by Time Machine?
[/quote]Think of the Time Machine backup as insurance against catastrophic failure of your HD. The Catalog backup done in LR is insurance against corruption of the Database. While the latter is strictly not needed if you have a Time Machine backup handy and available, but it does not hurt to have a LR backup of the database Just like the current US Health Care debate, you can never have too much insurance. Time Machine is 'Major Medical' and the LR backup is 'Prescription Drugs'
 
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I am not totally sure but there were problems with time machine and LR catalogues. If you had one open then time machine would back it up but it wouldn't work if brought back. Not sure if it is still the case. I have time machine set to ignore the LR catalogue
 
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Yeah, there was some question over whether TM could corrupt a catalog if it tried to back up while LR was open, and for that reason Aperture's own catalog is excluded by default. I'd probably exclude the current catalog, let LR run its backups, and then let TM back up those backup catalogs to be on the safe size.
 
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i back the catalogs manually to a drobo and then back the drobo to other hard drives to store off site. I just use time machine to back up the basics and clone the Mac to an external hard drive on a monthly basis using carbon copy cloner so i can be up and running in minutes rather than hours
 
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I use Time Machine and LR to backup the catalogue. Time machine will not corrupt your catalogue but the backup it makes may be corrupted if LR is running. I have LR shut down quite a bit so I will still get good backups in Time Machine at some point which is always handy. LR excludes the Aperture catalogue while Aperture is open but will back it up if Aperture is shutdown.

In short.. there is no reason to exclude the LR catalogue from Time Machine.
 
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Since XP, Microsoft has offered a feature called Volume Shadow Copy (VSC) to permit backups on open files like the LR DB. Nothing gets corrupted. Is there not a similar feature in OSX? All the backup software applications that I have used take advantage of VSC. [quote author=sizzlingbadger link=topic=7554.msg51766#msg51766 date=125'476825]
I use Time Machine and LR to backup the catalogue. Time machine will not corrupt your catalogue but the backup it makes may be corrupted if LR is running. I have LR shut down quite a bit so I will still get good backups in Time Machine at some point which is always handy. LR excludes the Aperture catalogue while Aperture is open but will back it up if Aperture is shutdown.

In short.. there is no reason to exclude the LR catalogue from Time Machine.
[/quote]
 
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I stopped using Time Machine when one of my drives corrupted (the one with my image archive, not the catalogue) and I could do squat with it until the drive was repaired or replaced - it took 3 weeks for repair (Seagate return) and I wasn't in a position to shell out for a new drive. Problem was that I NEEDED access to those pics, which left me screwed to some degree (I had another external backup but it wasn't as current). I now have 2 backups using SuperDuper, which allow me instant access to the data should anything screw up again, though these days I'm not as reliant on access. I've switched TM off.
 
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@stasber: you have instant access with Time machine also. I don't see the difference.

@Cletus: VSC is a form of raid, it is just a mirror image of the data that can be frozen. Many products use it and if you have the disk space it's fine. It's great for local recovery but it is not a backup that you can remove from your site.
 
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[quote author=sizzlingbadger link=topic=7554.msg51817#msg51817 date=125'535186]@Cletus: VSC is a form of raid, it is just a mirror image of the data that can be frozen. Many products use it and if you have the disk space it's fine. It's great for local recovery but it is not a backup that you can remove from your site.
[/quote]I think you are mistaken. From MSDN:
The Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) is a set of COM interfaces that implements a framework to allow volume backups to be performed while applications on a system continue to write to the volumes.
Click to expand...
It is not a mirror image of the whole volume, just a snapshot of locked files taken at a point in time that can then be backed up while the OS may be writing to the original. VSC(VSS) actually takes up very little additional storge and is freed as soon as the backup completes.

But this in no way answers my question about OSX and TimeMachine. Can TimeMachine backup open files? My biggest interest inthis is that a friend recently purchased a Mac based upon the recommendaton of others that the Mac would be better at imaging programs like Lightroom. I am going to get asked a lot of questions about Lightroom and Macs and best practices. My Mac knowledge is limited and since I retired, getting stale. Is a backup program like 'SuperDuper' better than TimeMachine and why it it better?
 
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[quote author=clee'1l link=topic=7554.msg51824#msg51824 date=125'536961]
I think you are mistaken.
[/quote]

nope it relies on a RAID function underneath, it's very similar to the mirror / split/ backup options we used to use. It's just that VSC is more intelligent and only mirrors / splits on partial files/groups. It also doesn't guarantee the sqlite database will be useable once it has copied as it has no idea of the transactional state in the database when the file is frozen for copy. See http://www.sqlite.org/backup.html the only safe way to copy the database while it is open is to use the Sqlite backup API.

It is important that the database is only copied while it closed, hence the backup function provided by Adobe.

as for Time machine it just copies files it doesn't use VSC type technology.
 
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[quote author=sizzlingbadger link=topic=7554.msg51817#msg51817 date=125'535186]
@stasber: you have instant access with Time machine also. I don't see the difference.[/quote]
I couldn't access the data when I tried. I have a Mac Pro with 4 internal drives, at the time bay 4 was Time Machine and was backing up bays 1, 2 and 3. When the drive in bay 2 failed, I opened Time Machine and couldn't figure out how to get my data. I searched a few forums without luck. Maybe I should have come here and posted the issue.
 
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[quote author=sizzlingbadger link=topic=7554.msg51855#msg51855 date=125'5552'7]
normally you just go to the drive in TM select it and click restore.... never mind, next time eh !
[/quote]
'Normally' - maybe. But there's no drive - in TM's opinion - to restore to, as where it was (i.e. bay 2) won't show up given its fault; which seems to be where TM falls short. Had I a spare drive to swap out then I could have restored it and accessed it: once it had restored it. But from my frustrated playing around with it, there's no 'instant access' like there is with SuperDuper, which doesn't rely on an accessible target volume to restore to first - I get the data directly from where I backed it up to. It is a faithful copy, not compressed or anything, but does the job handsomely.

Seagate flashed the firmware on my drive and got the header back. All data was intact (though hideously out of date by that time) and I restored from an external copy I had made with SuperDuper.

Hence I now keep 2 identical backups that I know I can access & rely on should an emergency arise again.
 
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[quote author=stasber link=topic=7554.msg51912#msg51912 date=125'637562]
[quote author=sizzlingbadger link=topic=7554.msg51855#msg51855 date=125'5552'7]
normally you just go to the drive in TM select it and click restore.... never mind, next time eh !
[/quote]
'Normally' - maybe. But there's no drive - in TM's opinion - to restore to, as where it was (i.e. bay 2) won't show up given its fault; which seems to be where TM falls short. Had I a spare drive to swap out then I could have restored it and accessed it: once it had restored it. But from my frustrated playing around with it, there's no 'instant access' like there is with SuperDuper, which doesn't rely on an accessible target volume to restore to first - I get the data directly from where I backed it up to. It is a faithful copy, not compressed or anything, but does the job handsomely.

Seagate flashed the firmware on my drive and got the header back. All data was intact (though hideously out of date by that time) and I restored from an external copy I had made with SuperDuper.

Hence I now keep 2 identical backups that I know I can access & rely on should an emergency arise again.
[/quote]

If it was an external drive then you will not see it in the time machine restore window as there no longer a drive with that name in finder. You just go into the backup folder in Finder manually and you will see the drive there in the folders. Quite often you will have to go back through the dated folders because TM will have made backups every hour since the drive failed and you won't see it in the latest folders.
See my attached image. You don't have to use TM to restore from the backups it makes, you can copy stuff back manually. As you can see my MEDIA drive shows up in a folder after it had failed so I could just copy the stuff back once I replaced the drive.
 
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Thanks for that.

The drive in question was an internal drive (as mentioned - bay 2 of my 4-bay Mac Pro, where bay 4 contained the TM drive).

Maybe this is where I missed a trick, though I remember trying to find a way of getting 'into' TM other than the fancy interface and don't recall seeing it in Finder for manual navigation (this thing happened some 5-6 months ago now).

When you say 'you can copy stuff back manually' - does that also mean it can be accessed there and then without having to copy or restore it anywhere?
 
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I only do my TM backups to my external CalDigit VR when I have first booted up the machine and no other programs have been opened. I let TM do its thing and then when it's done I eject the drive and turn it off... this way no locked files and nothing to step on the TM backup.
 
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@staber - yes it is just a copy of the original files.

@hassiman your method kind of defeats the whole point of TM. Hourly backups.
 
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I like to think of it more like taking snapshots...
 
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