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I’ve finally decided that it’s about time to start using the Time Machine system that is built into Mac OS X. I’ve heard a lot of great things about it, but haven’t really had the time or desire to play with it up until this point. When I began looking into the options for setting up Time Machine, I realized that the supported options were fairly slim. I could:
- Purchase a Time Capsule from the Mac store that would cost me in excess of $400
- Purchase an external hard drive that could be plugged into my MacBook Pro
Though both of these options would work, and would be ready to go “out-of-the-box”, neither of these situation was going to accomplish what I was looking to do. Which brings me to my third option: Setup a dedicated drive on my Windows PC that could be used as a Mac Time Capsule through my Mac OS X software. This is basically going to be the best option for me because there will be no out of pocket expense; I already have a PC that has an extra 250GB drive installed. The trouble is going to bee getting Mac OS X and the Time Machine software to recognize the drive on my Windows PC as a supported network drive.
I had a friend of mine ask me, “Why would you even want to do that [Use Apple's Time Machine] anyway?”. And the answer is really simple… Just in case. Just in case what? Just in case anything ever happens to my MacBook, to my data, to my music, to my documents, to my applications, etc.
The Time Machine software creates an entire backup of your system the first time it runs, then ongoing, it creates incremental backups every hour, and every week. The beauty of incremental backups is that they don’t take up nearly as much space as full backups do, yet you get the same security and piece of mind.
Let’s say for instance that I start my backup and I have my wedding album in my iPhoto library. 2 months go by and everything is fine and good, but then I somehow accidentally delete my wedding album from my iPhoto library on July 30, 2009. All Time Machine backups going forward will not contain a link to my wedding album, however if I go to any Time Machine backup prior to July 30, 2009 I’ll be able to retrieve a complete copy of my iPhoto wedding album. Pretty cool right?
Well stay posted as I start my journey to create a Windows PC that acts as a Time Capsule to be used with the Time Machine software on my MacBook Pro.
