Leopard to Spur External Hard Drive Sales
Prediction: Hard drive manufacturers will love Apple for boosting external hard drive sales. Apple’s upcoming operating system, OS X Leopard, contains a powerful system backup tool that makes use of an external hard drive rather than using a portion of the main hard drive’s space, as Windows Vista and XP do for “System Restore” points.
It’s called Time Machine and Apple’s guided tour walks you through the basics of using it. Once activated, Time Machine initially backs up everything on your Mac to an external hard drive. Then, it checks your disk for changes every hour of every day and creates incremental backups on the external disk. Power users and Unix nuts alike might go so far as to call Time Machine an interface for rsync, but I digress. The real draw of Time Machine is being able to easily browse through the state of various folders and files on your Mac at different points of time.
The Time Machine interface in Leopard.
Never has it been so easy for the end user to safely backup their files. As such, I’m thinking that many Leopard users will take this to heart and actively make use of Time Machine. In times past, the closest users could get to backing up their files would be:
- a) dealing with Windows’ archaic System Restore points, where if the main disk goes down you’re SOL,
- b) installing and making sense of 3rd party backup software such as Retrospect, SuperDuper! or Carbon Copy Cloner, or
- c) manually saving important files or directories to CDs, DVDs, emailing them or putting them on another hard drive.
None of those are intuitive and easy processes for the basic user; even manual backups become tedious and lead to infrequent backups. Time Machine is yet another reason for anxious Windows users to switch over. With Time Machine, all you really need to do is plug in an easily accessible external hard drive via USB or FireWire and then set it as a Time Machine backup disk.
Here is my external hard drive suggestion: the 500GB Western Digital My Book Pro with USB 2.0, IEEE1394a/FW400 and IEEE1394b/FW800 connections. If your Mac has a FireWire 800 port, you’ll definitely want to spring for this drive. While the hard drive’s throughput rates won’t even come close to taking advantage of FW800, you can tell your friends you have a FireWire 800 device, not to mention spare a FireWire 400 port for another device. This Pro version carries a 5 year warranty.
If you don’t need so much grunt or FireWire 800, any of the Seagate FreeAgent Pro external hard drives should do just fine and they carry a 5 year warranty as well. Whichever hard drive you choose, make sure it is a 7200RPM, 3.5-inch drive for reliability and performance. Then again, since it is just a backup drive speed isn’t terribly important so you could opt for a slower 5400RPM model to save power, especially considering it will be spun up every hour by Time Machine. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: 2.5-inch disks are not nearly as reliable as their larger and more rugged counterparts, with the exception of the IBM/Hitachi DeathStar drives of yesteryear.
If you’re planning on upgrading to Leopard, will you be using Time Machine? If so, with what drive?
I’ll definitely be using Time Machine, but I haven’t quite decided if I should buy a third external HDD. I’ve already got two external 250GB Comstar USB drives (you can buy them for $80 CDN new), and though they’re both rather full, I could eliminate the SuperDuper partition and just use that.
A brand name FireWire drive would of course be nice, but a dirt cheap USB drive would probably do for most people. :p
I bought a 320GB My Book Pro, should be here in a few days, and Leopard is arriving on Friday. :D
One great thing about Time Machine is that it can run on a partition, it doesn’t need an entire hard drive, so I’ll cut the 320 in half and use part of it for Time Machine and part of it for just standard backup, file archiving, warez, building my new OiNK, etc….
I plan to use Time Machine with a WD Passport 250GB.
And Michael, I’m not so sure about building your new OiNK anymore :P
I won’t be getting one, because {and I hate to bring you down} I don’t have a Mac. :-(
When I do get one {hopefully soon} I’ll definitely be using this feature. So much better than anything in windows.
I’ve been using the developers edition of Leopard for the last month and for some reason my Time Machine won’t work. I’m looking forward to getting the official release and utilizing this new feature.
I plan on using time machine with my lacie 250GB hard drive for now but I do plan on purchasing a my book pro in the near future.
I’ve got a laptop and don’t want to be tethered to a drive. Also, Time Machine supports afp network drives, so I bought a new NAS to use with it. Hopefully it will be fast enough…
If I was running Leopard I would most definitely be using Time Machine.
I can’t wait to see a hack so you can backup to a networked drive or Amazon S3 (although that would be expensive). This would be nice b/c if there was a fire (like if you lived in California), both the main drive and the backup are screwed!
@harold - you don’t have to be tethered. Leopard is smart enough to track changes and do it when you next connect.
I just purchased another internal HDD for my Mac Pro to use with Leopard.
Also, I’ll use SuperDuper to clone my hard drive once a week onto an external LaCie just in case my tower spontaneously combusts or someone comes over to steal it.
If you don’t need the Firewire 800 support, the 500 GB My Book Premium with USB 2.0 and FW400 is $159.99 at Costco.com right now :)
I am looking forward to Time Machine, but I feel like I should upgrade my almost 3 year old drive to a new larger one before I use the new backup feature. I feel like it would be in mine (and everyone’s) best interest to use your Time Machine drive exclusively as a Time Machine drive. For that reason I need two: one for my movie projects (digital video is huge) and one for TM.
I absolutely agree that Apple’s going to be boosting external HD sales. As a matter of fact, the model in the Leopard introduction video (the one that looks like a flattened, small Mac Pro) was in the top products on the Apple Store last time I checked.
I found this remarkable because it’s a pretty unknown brand and model, at least to me, and I’ve been looking at external HD’s for a while, trying to convince myself to buy one. Of course, Leopard might be the final push.
Time machine: definitely. Would like to get it to work with my 1TB TeraStation, but that seems to be more of a dream than reality at this point. Got to spend some time to figure out how to make it work with the TS. Or wait … for a Mac OS update.
I’d like to know if I can boot off that external HD Time Machine has been writing to before I choose to use it. Being able to boot off a backup from SuperDuper really saved my arse as my HD died a day before an assignment as due. Unless Time Machine clones my HD like SuperDuper does, I think I’ll stick with SuperDuper.
How long did it take you to work out that one then Paul *grin*. I reckon a lot of peope are going to be working out how best to utilise their disc space now e.g. do you really want a incremental (Time Machine) back up of your iTunes and Photos or do you just want a regular backup.
I store all my digital media on seperate drives and back them up independently, not with Time Machine - @Greg, weird I have had no problems with TM on the developer versions I have used over the months.
Any opinions on OWC Mercury Elite Pro drives? I never see anyone mention them…
I’ll likely be using Time Machine when I upgrade to Leopard, but I’m not sure if it will be my main backup tool. I’m quite happy with Carbon Copy Cloner for the moment. However, I think Time Machine’s strength is it’s UI and ease of use finding a particular file that you’re after. It sure seems pretty, if not a little bit gimmicky, but I’m definitely looking forward to trying it out. As for an external drive, the My Book Pros look pretty impressive, and have the whole slick Mac ‘thing’ going for them.
I’d have to disagree about none of your aforementioned backup strategies being intuitive. I’ve used SuperDuper for about 1 year, and although it isn’t super drop dead simple like Time Machine, it is pretty trivial.
You connect your external drive. You open SuperDuper!, select the drive being copied and where is being copied to. You select the type of backup you are doing, and press start. That’s it.
Subsequent backups can be done as smart backups (only updating the files that have changed - super quick) or as completely new backups (lengthy).
Yes, TimeMachine is easier. But there is one benefit you get with SuperDuper! - you get a fully bootable backup (if you choose this method). TimeMachine backups will require you to reinstall Leopard, and then restore. This makes restore a two step process, where with SuperDuper!, it is a one step process.
Prediction: Time Machine to spur Leopard sales.
This is really the first compelling reason I’ve seen to upgrade. Thanks for the heads up.
I use SuperDuper and it’s DROP-DEAD simple with my macbook pro. I was so happy to dump my DVD backup. Pay $30 and it then uses smart backup to copy changes since the last backup.
I now backup my macbook pro in 10 minutes!
I don’t know how useful it is to have the state of every file over every hour (and I’m a software engineer that uses revision control daily). I need a simple backup to ensure I don’t lose files.
Perhaps one day I’ll change my mind but we will see in a few weeks as people start using Time Machine.
I have three Macs (the third recently replacing a Windows unit that serves as my primary home machine) and was planning on buying a 1TB LaCie Ethernet Big Disk as a central backup for all of them. Will Time Machine work in such a setup? If not what is the best choice?
@Lance
From the Apple site:
That was in addition to USB/FW drives - it doesn’t sound like NAS storage is explicitly supported. I’d say proceed w/ caution or ask someone at the Apple store. I can’t say for sure w/o having tried it myself. With the central backup idea, technically if it appeared as a networked drive on each computer you would be able to create partitions for each Mac and have them use their own for Time Machine without conflicting. Does a NAS drive on a Mac show up on the desktop as a hard drive, or just as a networked device in Finder? If it shows up as the prior, I’d say it would work.
I would buy a Seagate Barracuda ES drive. It’s much better quality for not much more. It will last longer and has far less vibration. It’s enterprise level.
http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/products/servers/barracuda_es/
And then I would buy an enclosure for the drive. I think the NewerTech miniStack 3 enclose is one of the best. It’s shaped like the Mac mini for perfect stacking and it’s nice looking. It has 1 eSATA, 2 FireWire 800, 1 FireWire 400, & 3 USB ports. The awesome thing about this is that you can connect your printer, iPod and other junk to the drive. And use one FireWire cable to connect all of that “junk” to my laptop! It’s so much cleaner and great!
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/ministackv3
For a little bit more money, you’re getting a way superior drive and a great case with added benefits. Ordering them both through OWC is great. Talk to Dennis….he helped me and has personal experience with this stuff.
-joel mueller
http://www.macupdate.com
I will take Time Machine for a spin when I upgrade … how can you not take something called Time Machine for a spin? :)
But, if it is not impressive, I’ll continue using Chronosync.
Picked up two 250GB Seagate FreeAgent Pros for my MacBook Pro and my wife’s Macbook.
During WWDC, Apple claimed that Time Machine would work on an AirportExtreme Mounted Disk. I believe it was even listed on the Time Machine page up until last week. It’s omission leads me to believe that feature has been pulled. I’m not surprised - AEDisks already have enough issues. On my AE base station, the disk routinely unmounts itself after awhile, and the only thing that remounts it is rebooting the drive.
I second the MiniStack. I love mine. I’ll be using it the same way I do now, as a backup for work and media files.
I’ll be purchasing a quiet 100-120GB external exclusively for trying out Time Machine. If I don’t like it, then I’ll just use it as a carbon copy bootable backup and take if offsite.
For someone like my mom though, who has a MyBook and has trouble with backing up - Time Machine might be perfect. We’ll see.
I think I might spring for a new external HD for Xmas. Can we get a confirmation on whether or not Time Machine works with network storage?
So will you be getting Leopard as soon as it comes out or will you be giving it a few weeks so they work out the kinks?
@C.M.Sevilla - I already got it and it’s great! No point to waiting, they will fix any bugs through software updates.
i’ll be picking up a second lacie hard drive since I already have a filled up 120 G I can stack them in a nice rack don’t know if im going to get the 500 or 750 G yet.
C9.
24″imac, 1T, 2GB ram
I just got Leopard yesterday, and I am loving it. I was really impressed that my desktop background and desktop files were in the exact same place I left them on the desktop before the upgrade.
I bought a Seagate 500GB Firewire 400/ USB 2.0 drive over the summer for FCP projects, and I will be using it with Time Machine in case I ever decide to use Motion again (nasty corrupting files).
I have to say my favorite new feature is Spaces. I am a Unix user, so it is only natural! ;)
If you are a Windows user, and you need a backup solution beyond System Restore, then use SyncBack, a ~2 meg, free backup and recovery tool…
http://filehippo.com/download_syncback/
I ended up going with a 750GB Packard Bell Hard disk, (it was the only one PC World had left in stock). Sadly it is not as silent as my Freecom 400GB hard disk, but I’ve discovered wedging two old socks on a beermat underneath the shell seems to cut noise right down. Time Machine is great though, just plug it in and forget all about it. The only issue I have is that it seems to get stuck not updating when I have Skype running… any thoughts?
Hi there … thanks for the tip … I just bought leopard … have the MacBook Pro Intel core 2 duo …. AND I’ve been using WD My Book 1T drives … RAIDed for Win … not for Mac Leopard … So stay tuned in the next week … I’ll format one of the drives for Mac (a set of 2×500G drive) … install leopard (& hence time machine) … see how things go … report soon … ANY/ALL advice welcome in advance of my plan … Should I stay with MSWin NTFS? … don’t know …
Steve
Why doesn’t anyone seem to like Wiebe Tech hard drives? They’re terrific and they are what I use. I back up onto three Wiebe Techs every day. Two regular size with 400 and 80 FireWire ports, one mini with a SATA drive on top of that.