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time-machine interview questions

Top time-machine frequently asked interview questions

Does Apple's Time Machine app really copy everthing

Wanted to wipe out my drive, but wanted to make sure when restoring from Time Machine, all files, apps, hack-apps, will still work?


Source: (StackOverflow)

Wireless backups with Time Machine without Time Capsule

I just bought a 1TB external drive. I would like to set up time machine to backup wireless. Is there anyway I can do this with the components I have now. Which are 1 macbook osx 10.6, 1 desktop pc running win7, 1 1TB external, and multiple linksys wireless routers.

Obv I want the macbook to be wireless.

If there is no solution using these components what would I need?

Possible fixes: airport extreme? another mac?


Source: (StackOverflow)

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Are Time Machine backups incremental? And is Time Machine any better on Snow Leopard?

I would like to understand how Time Machine backups work and has this been made any better in Snow Leopard?


Source: (StackOverflow)

How can I share an external hard drive between a Mac and a PC?

How should I format my hard drive for use on both a Mac and a PC? Is there any way I can also use Time Machine with this drive?


Source: (StackOverflow)

Opening Time-Machine OSX backup files on Windows 7?

Have Time Machine backups on a Western Digital External HD. The Time Machine backups were done on my now dead Mac G4 running OSX Leopard.

I am waiting on a new iMac but in the meantime I need to access some of my backup files urgently. I have a laptop running Windows 7 so is there any safe way of accessing some of the files from the Time Machine backup on my laptop and still be able to do a full restore when the iMac arrives?


Source: (StackOverflow)

Disable Time Machine reminder on Mac

While giving a presentation in Keynote for a job interview, the presentation suddenly exit and I got a Time Machine message telling me that the last backup was more than x days ago, which was very bad timing. Is there a way to disable this reminder? I can see from the menubar icon whether Time Machine thinks I should do a backup (from the ! symbol) and I don't need an additional reminder that interrupts presentations... Any ideas?


Source: (StackOverflow)

Change Frequency of Time Machine Backups?

Is it possible to change the frequency of when Time Machine performs its backup?


Source: (StackOverflow)

Does an equivalent of Time Machine exist for Windows? [closed]

A simple Google search for "Time Machine for Windows" results in a flurry of different little apps. But instead of relying on forum anecdotes and advertisements, I call on the much wiser Super User beta community for some depth on this one.

Having Time Machine running on Leopard is like a warm, fuzzy blanket of comfort that I never got with RAID, rsync, or SyncToy on Windows. I'm not asking the community what the "best" backup software for Windows is, but instead:

Is there any true Time Machine clone for Windows, one that includes as many of the following as possible:

  • Completely transparent, "set-it-and-forget-it" backup
  • Incremental backups (changes only) for every hour for a day, every day for a month, and every week until the backup disk is full
  • Ability to rebuild from this backup disk in case of main drive meltdown (the backup doesn't have to be bootable; neither are Time Machine disks)
  • Extremely easy to use UI (target user == novice). Bonus points for a beautiful UI
  • As originally asked, this question did not take into consideration the Windows Registry, which has no equivalent on Mac OS X or any other UNIX, and poses a significant obstacle to Time Machine-like functionality. A true replacement for Windows would need to be able to seamlessly rebuild a user's desktop appearance, settings, applications, and all data on either a replacement drive (or equal or greater size), a brand new machine, or even an upgraded version of the OS, without the need to update file paths or make any other tweaks. This is the irreplaceable attraction of Time Machine.

Source: (StackOverflow)

Time machine backup on S3

Is there any possibility to use Amazon S3 for Mac OS X time machine backups?

Or in other words: Use S3 rather an external hard disk for time machine backups?


Source: (StackOverflow)

How can I delete Time Machine files using the commandline

I want to delete some files/directories from my Time Machine Partition using rm, but am unable to do so. I'm pretty sure the problem is related to some sort of access control extended attributes on files in the backup, but do not know how to override/disable them in order to get rm to work. An example of the error I'm getting is:

% sudo rm -rf Backups.backupdb/MacBook/Latest/MacBook/somedir
rm: Backups.backupdb/MacBook/Latest/MacBook/somedir: Directory not empty
rm: Backups.backupdb/MacBook/Latest/MacBook/somedir/somefile: Operation not permitted

There are a number of reasons I do not want to use either the Time Machine GUI or Finder for this. If possible, I'd like to be able to maintain the extended protection for all other files (I'd like not to disable them globally, unless I can re-enable once I've done my work).


Source: (StackOverflow)

Mac - Convert from Case-Sensitive to Case-Insensitive File System

So I just got my first Mac. After getting everything set up just the way I wanted it I decided to install Steam. When I opened Steam it said something about not supporting case-sensitive file systems...

I did some googling and found that Steam won't be the only application that gives me this trouble. Photoshop (when I eventually install it) doesn't support case-sensitive file systems either. I'm sure there are other applications as well.

There is at least a work around for Steam, but it involves disc images and symbolic links. Not very fun. It works, but it's not very fun (and Steam is supposed to be all about fun, no?). I am not aware of any work arounds for Photoshop.

So here's my question. Can I boot into the disk utility, format the drive to be case-insensitive, and then restore from time machine? Are there any technical limitations that would prevent me from doing this? I haven't named anything like Folder 1 and folder 1 yet, so I am not aware of any collisions that would show up.


Source: (StackOverflow)

Can Linux mount a normal Time Machine sparse bundle disk image directory?

I am looking to see if Linux can mount and read the files natively stored on a Time Capsule over a network share. Like this question, I am looking for something that replicates at least read-only function of hdiutil to attach and then mount a sparse bundle disk images.

The SMB mount is easy since the Time Capsule shares using both AFP and SMB, but I'm not so sure the sparse disk bundle can be mounted as the reconstituted HFS+ directory.

Bonus points for a working mount command or pointer to the appropriate package that parses this DMG format.

In case it's not clear - this is how the band files look to me when mounted from a Mac in Terminal and what I expect Linux to see without the ability to mount the actual file system that is encoded in a multitude of binary band files.

host:iMac.sparsebundle mike$ ls -la
total 24
drwxrwxrwx@     7 mike  staff      264 Jul  5 10:01 .
drwx------      6 mike  staff      264 Mar 26 13:11 ..
-rwxrwxrwx      1 mike  staff      499 Feb 24 15:33 Info.bckup
-rwxrwxrwx      1 mike  staff      499 Feb 24 15:33 Info.plist
drwxrwxrwx  31101 mike  staff  1057390 Jun 17 20:19 bands
-rwxrwxrwx      1 mike  staff      532 Jun 24 22:06 com.apple.TimeMachine.MachineID.plist
-rwxrwxrwx      1 mike  staff        0 Feb 24 15:33 token
host:iMac.sparsebundle mike$ ls -la bands | head -10
total 1582092552
-rwxrwxrwx  1 mike  staff  8388608 Jul  5 08:33 0
-rwxrwxrwx  1 mike  staff  8388608 May 31 13:02 1
-rwxrwxrwx  1 mike  staff  8388608 Jun 24 22:16 10
-rwxrwxrwx  1 mike  staff  8388608 Mar 19 17:15 1000
-rwxrwxrwx  1 mike  staff  8388608 May 31 00:50 10000
-rwxrwxrwx  1 mike  staff  8388608 May 31 00:50 10001
-rwxrwxrwx  1 mike  staff  8388608 May 31 00:50 10002
-rwxrwxrwx  1 mike  staff  8388608 May 31 00:50 10003
-rwxrwxrwx  1 mike  staff  8388608 May 31 00:50 10004
host:iMac.sparsebundle mike$ ls -la bands | tail -10
-rwxrwxrwx  1 mike  staff  8388608 May 31 00:51 fff6
-rwxrwxrwx  1 mike  staff  8388608 May 31 00:51 fff7
-rwxrwxrwx  1 mike  staff  8388608 May 31 00:51 fff8
-rwxrwxrwx  1 mike  staff  8388608 May 31 00:51 fff9
-rwxrwxrwx  1 mike  staff  8388608 May 31 00:51 fffa
-rwxrwxrwx  1 mike  staff  8388608 May 31 00:50 fffb
-rwxrwxrwx  1 mike  staff  8388608 May 31 00:50 fffc
-rwxrwxrwx  1 mike  staff  8388608 May 31 00:50 fffd
-rwxrwxrwx  1 mike  staff  8388608 May 31 00:50 fffe
-rwxrwxrwx  1 mike  staff  8388608 May 31 00:50 ffff
host:~ mike$ ls -la bands|wc -l
   96636

Source: (StackOverflow)

Verifying Time Machine backups

I'm preparing my system for a Snow Leopard upgrade, and I prepare for the worst case scenario: full reinstall and restore.

I would like to verify that my Time Machine backups are valid, and will restore correctly. My Time Machine backups go to a Linux server running Netatalk, and the backups complete successfully.

How do I do a test restore to an alternative location, or otherwise verify my data without overwriting any existing files? Do I need to save anything in particular externally to make sure I can access the backups if I have to reinstall from scratch?


Source: (StackOverflow)

Why has my Mac been running fsck_hfs for two days now?

I first noticed that fsck_hfs was running, taking up 50-75% of a CPU, yesterday. It continues to run today.

ps shows that it is doing /sbin/fsck_hfs -f -n -x -E /dev/disk3. Only problem: I don’t think I have a /dev/disk3.

  1. Why is it running?
  2. Will it ever finish?
    • Can I kill it?
  3. What is /dev/disk3? Could it be my Time Machine volume, which is not mounted at the moment?

System Info: MacBook Pro (2008). It has two disks installed—the internal disk (/dev/disk1) and a PC Card SSD (/dev/disk0, surprisingly). It connects to a remote Time Machine volume attached to an Airport Extreme base station.


Source: (StackOverflow)

Command-line access for Apple Time Machine?

We use Apple's Time Machine to back up our Apple 10.5.8 workstations at the office.

If I want to restore a file, I need to open up the Time Machine GUI and browse files there. The GUI is ugly eye-candy and gets in my way.

Is there a way to browse the Time Machine archive using the Mac's command-line?

I'm used to Netapps and other storage appliances. I use backintime for my Ubuntu workstation. To restore a file with one of those systems, you can restore a file with a simple command like:

cp .snapshot/daily.0/filename.txt .

or

cp /backup/backintime/20100611-000002/backup/etc/shadow /etc/shadow

Is there an equivalent for Apple's Time Machine?


Source: (StackOverflow)