What way do you use Time Machine?

[secretpact]

I have a Macbook Pro right now, so I occasionally plug in my external hard drive to backup things. But Time Machine is built to do hourly backups. When I buy an iMac, I plan on having Time Machine running all the time so I will have that 1 hour backups thing going.

My question is how do you guys use time machine on your desktops? Do you keep an external hard drive on all the time (doesn't that waste power?) or do you partition the internal HD (if the hard drive fails, you're screwed)?

 

[PaulexPC]

I have a flaky external hard drive. So I keep it unplugged from USB and when I am done working I plug it in, and run "Back Up Now" from the Time Machine menu. Then I eject the drive.

If my drive weren't flaky I'd leave it plugged in and let the hourly thing run on it's own.

 

[AC Rempt]

I have it plugged in all the time and let it do the hourly thing. I also do a monthly cloning onto a MyBook 500 Gig via FireWire just in case. I like having the different backups.

I've thought about doing more with the TC, like using it to share files, etc, but I get nervous thinking about my backup and shared files being on the same device. Silly, I know, but there it is.

 

[apfhex]

My question is how do you guys use time machine on your desktops?

I don't know how you use Time Machine, but I use it to make tasty grilled cheese sandwiches.

Oh, and to backup my stuff onto an internal 500GB hard drive (twice the size as my boot drive).

Edit: I didn't see this was in the iMac forum. In that case I'd use a regular external and probably leave it on all the time to let Time Machine do it's hourly thang.

 

[thejadedmonkey]

I plug my external drive into my macbook pro via firewire whenever I feel like it, and let it do it's thing. It's really only good if I delete something I shouldn't have (say my documents folder) or if the hard drive crashes.

 

[ADent]

I have a big Seagate USB external drive. It runs every hour. About 1 in a 100 times I get an error. Typically it will resume at the next hour, sometimes the next boot.