Re: "Search by Content" feature of Time Machine?

On Sat, 10 Nov 2007 03:13:28 -0500, Mark Conrad wrote
(in article <noneof-B6725E.00132810112007@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>):

In article <081120071456210637%nospam@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
nospam <nospam@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

No it does NOT back up your entire drive, you raving lunatic.

it backs up enough of it so in the event of a disaster, the entire
drive can be completely restored.

Ahh, at last someone who is addressing the content of a post relating to
the thread topic.


No, TM by itself can not back up the entire drive, even assuming you
have the ext' drive that TM needs.


Example:

You grab your MacBook and its external bus-powered 250 GB external
drive, run out the door on a very important business trip, confident
that if your internal drive becomes corrupted, you can restore it from
your TM backup.

On the aircraft, worse comes to worse and the int' drive is heavily
corrupted, such that it will not even boot off the internal drive.

Not to worry, you think, I will just grab my OS X install DVD.

That DVD, plus TM, will restore my drive.


WHOOPS, I forgot to grab my OSX install DVD when I left my house!

You are screwed, there goes your business trip, up in smoke.

In the first place, this assumes that most people are as stupid as you are.
Around here, at least, the following things are done as per checklist:

1 the night before any trip, the _complete contents_ of the internal drive of
the laptop which will be used is cloned to an external bus-powered drive. On
WinBoxes, it's an image which can be restored to the drive if necessary, on
Macs it's a bootable clone.

2 the external drive noted above is placed into the laptop case, along with a
known working disc. For Windows, it's a bootable disc with the tools required
to restore the image, plus assorted disk tools and anti-virus/spyware/spam
tools. For Macs, it's a bootable disc with the basic OS and a copy of
assorted disk tools. The travel kit also includes full bootable copies of the
OS install discs.

3 a thumb drive with a complete copy of the data required for the trip is
handed to whoever's making the trip, with instructions that s/he is _NOT_ to
put that thumb drive into the laptop case, but rather is to keep it on
his/her person. That way, if the laptop dies completely or walks away for one
reason or another, the data's available. The user is also handed a copy of
the bootable OS install disc for his/her system. This also does not go in the
laptop case, and has to be returned to IT when the user comes back from the
trip.

On a Mac, the user can always boot up from the external drive; on a WinBox,
the user can always regenerate his drive from the image. The worst case would
be that s/he'd have to buy a new internal hard drive if his/her drive went
south... and s/he'd not even have to do that with a Mac. And, if for some
reason, s/he can't get a drive to replace a dead drive, the thumb drive can
be plugged into any machine with a USB port and the data's all there, in
standard file formats (PDF, DOC, XLS, PPT, etc.) which can be used on any
machine.

In times past we used SyQuest disks, or Zip disks, or Jaz disks, and carried
the proper drive with us... and not in the laptop case. This method has
always worked.




Example learned by you, the hard way -

BOTH the external TM drive AND the OS X install DVD are a necessary
part of the TM "application", in the sense that TM will not function
without them.

And, as I made a clone of the OS X install disc and put that clone into the
standard travel kit, this means that in an emergency the user _can_ reinstall
OS X. Though this would usually not be required, as the user would have a
_full_ backup with him/her.






3) MBR (Master Boot Record)

that is not used for the main drive, so no need to back it up either.

False and false, you managed to squeeze two falsehoods into one sentence.

Sector zero on my main drive (internal) contains the pointer to the MBR.


I would be in deep do-do if that sector was not restored.

Any standard disk utility will generate a new MBR for you. Any standard
restore system will restore your data without caring about the MBR. He's
right. There's no need to back up the MBR.





4) Any Boot Camp created Windows partitions

that's not part of its design.

Yep, lousy design. By contrast, _my_ backup/restore scheme _does_
backup/restore Windows partitions.

That's nice. So does mine... but it doesn't do any of the crap yours does,
because mine uses standard off-the-shelf tools: one for Macs, one for
Windows.




2) GPT (the partition table)

that does not need to be backed up.

Your Intel Mac will not function without it.

And the GPT will be recreated when a new partition is set up by Disk Utility.
You don't need the _old_ GPT, you just need _a_ GPT. So long as the partition
has enough space for your stuff, everything will be fine.



Mark-



--
email to oshea dot j dot j at gmail dot com.

.

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