Ask Apple Matters: Time Machine

It was only a matter of time before curiosity got the better of many Apple Matters readers as this week we’ve got a question regarding Time Machine within Leopard. User juleslegrand wants to know about storage techniques used when Time Machine backs up your data. Of course, until the keynote in January next year, none of us can be 100% clued up on the Mac happenings, but as it stands a simple external hard-drive should do the trick.

Another question this week, brings up the future of the one buttoned mouse that Mac’s are so famous for. User WAWA wants to know whether or not the mouse will be discontinued in future releases of OS X. I suppose no one other than Steve Jobs would really know the answer to that one, but a few helpful guesses on the way won’t harm anyone, right? I thank Buzz Bumble for his answer on this one.

Question of the Week

I watched Steven Jobs’ presentation last week of the new Mac Pro and Leopard preview. One of the new features will be ‘Time Machine.’

It was said that if your hard-drive crashed, all the info will be there when you replace the disk, let alone having only misplaced a folder, file or contact address or two.

Where is all this data stored if not on the crashed hard-drive?

Submitted by: juleslegrand

Answer by Aaron Wright:

During the Time Machine presentation, Apple failed to mention what would be needed to back up data, this is presumably because the conference was actually aimed at developers and not consumers.

Like any operating system with backup software on, you’re either going to need a second hard-drive installed within the system (not possible on iMac, Mac Mini, MacBook and MacBook Pro) or have an external Firewire/USB drive attached.

What remains to be seen is how big an external hard-drive you will need. Should we be going for hard-drives with exactly the same amount of space as seen in our internal hard-drives, or can we go with something smaller and only back up our documents etc?

Basically, Time Machine is going to let you back up your entire operating system, so that should your internal hard-drive fail, you’ve got an exact copy of it at the time of failing on your external drive.

Do you have an answer for this question? Drop by the forum thread ‘Time Machine In Leopard’ and submit your answer or thoughts.

Will the one buttoned mouse by discontinued? I’ve been using it from 1988 and would hate to adapt.

Submitted by: WAWA

Answer by Buzz Bumble:

I don’t think Apple has been making a one-button mouse for a while now. You can only buy the multi-button Mighty Mouse (in either wired or wireless form), which apart from the scrollball looks exactly the same.

The Mighty Mouse can be set-up in the Preferences Panelto ignore the other buttons and act like a one-button mouse. I purposely set-up three new iMacs like that not long ago to save confusing the users. I can still hear the “squeeze” button clicking as I move the mouse around, which would seem to indicate that it’s a useless idea anyway ... or I’m holding the mouse “wrong”?

I’m pretty sure you can also similarly set-up a multi-button mouse from other makers to whatever button processes you want.

Do you have an answer for this question? Drop by the forum thread ‘One Buttoned Mouse’ and submit your answer or thoughts.

Have a technical question? Drop by our dedicated forums and leave a message. You’re sure to get a reply from one of regular readers or even a member of staff. If you want a more direct answer, however, feel free to e-mail applematters .