How much space does Time Machine use?
I have a 500GB USB 2.0 drive that, for the time being, is dedicated to backing up my laptop using Apple’s new Time Machine feature in Mac OS X Leopard. Since my Macbook’s hard drive is only 80GB, and most of the time I don’t even use 3/4 of that space, I always thought that I’d have more than enough from on my external drive for Time Machine to do its thing.
I’m happy to report that after a few months of letting Time Machine run its hourly back ups, it has only eaten up a little less than 100GB to keep a versioned backup of my entire system.
However I wasn’t alone in wondering how much space Time Machine takes up, and some people are having different experiences with Time Machine than I have. So far I’ve found Time Machine to be very valuable - even with the limited number of times I’ve had to use it.
I can think of two very important times I’ve used Time Machine so far. The most notable would be when I used Time Machine to restore some databases I had lost when upgrading MAMP on my Macbook. Which is what spurred my tips for upgrading MAMP post. In this particular case, I do not know what I would have done without Time Machine.
The other notable time was when I accidentally deleted a site folder I was working on a project in. It wasn’t a lot of code (maybe a few days worth) and everything was stored on a remote server too - so I could have downloaded it again - but it saved me the headache of having to do so.
So far, for me, Time Machine has saved me time and the experience of losing data I could never get back again. I think it made the upgrade price of $129.00 to Leopard well worth it.
Update: As mentioned in the comments it turns out Time Machine will, ultimately, take up as much space as you give it. Time Machine will back up as much as it can until the entire disk is full. I have not seen this reported as actually happening yet, but it makes sense to me.
I do not think this is a bad thing, but if true I wouldn’t mind seeing a preference available within the preference pane that allows you to constrain Time Machine to a maximum amount of space on the disk rather than just sucking up the entire partition by default.
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I’ve been extremely pleased with Time Machine’s storage as well. I’ve used around 100GB backing up my MBP’s 120GB drive since October. I still have another 200GB available on my dedicated backup drive, so I figure I can probably fit a year’s worth of backups.
Time Machine has also saved me more than once. I lost everything in my iCal when updating Spanning Sync once, and I seem to constantly delete things in my Downloads folder that I need a few weeks later. Now instead of redownloading the said file, I just run a quick spotlight search, fire up Time Machine, and bam, it’s there.
If Time Machine was Leopard’s only feature, I think I would still be getting my money’s worth.
Ronald Heft on December 29th, 2007 10:33 pm
Ronald: I never thought about getting downloaded files back! Presumably that only works for however long Time Machine keeps a record of the file. It isn’t back forever, right? Just a month or two?
I agree with you though. I would have gladly paid over 100 bucks to get my databases back, so Leopard’s price is more than fair.
Colin Devroe on December 29th, 2007 11:32 pm
Colin:
TimeMachine will continuously backup forever if it has enough space to work with. It only starts to delete backups once the HD is full, which is why it’s a good idea to have a vault that is much bigger than you startup disk.
Tom on December 30th, 2007 6:21 pm
Tom: Thanks for the information. I didn’t realize it would just keep going and going. Good to know!
Colin Devroe on December 30th, 2007 6:50 pm
Hmm.. TM holds hourly backups for two days. Beyond that it’s one snapshot per day.
I wonder if a.) the daily snapshots are merged from the hourly snapshots or if b.) the last hourly snapshot is used for the day.
For example, download a file in the middle of the day. Let it backup then trash it before the day’s over. Two days in, would it be retained in the daily snapshot? If a. was true then it would still be around while with b. it’d be lost forever.
Make sense?
dvessel on December 30th, 2007 8:29 pm
Thanks for the thoughts, this was one of the ‘problems’ I am considering before upgrading to new OS.Let’s see what 10.5.2 brings.
Nigel Brazier on December 31st, 2007 6:12 am
dvessel: I think, somehow, you’re still able to go back into the “hours” per day for as long as the backup is there. I’ve been able to get files that I’ve deleted in the middle of the day (from days ago).
Nigel: Either way, Leopard is worth it. Time Machine is worth the price alone, but lets say (for whatever your reason) you don’t use it - I still think Leopard has a lot to offer.
Colin Devroe on December 31st, 2007 8:57 am
I have a 500GB USB 2.0 drive and it’s taking up 465.75GB of that drive. Since that’s what I bought it for, I’m fine with it taking as much space as it wants.
JustJason on January 15th, 2008 11:10 am