Dual drives
Now that it appears Leopard's Time Machine will require a second hard drive do you think we will see dual drives in the laptops and consumer Macs?
1. iMac 20" with dual 3.5" HDD?
2. MBP 17" with dual 2.5" HDD?
3. MBP 15" with dual 1.8" HDD
4. MB with dual 1.8" HDD?
5. MM with dual 2.5 or 3.5" HDD and a larger form factor?
I can't see models getting 2.5" HDD in place of current 3.5" drives due to the limited capacities of 2.5" drives - but the capacities of 2.5" and 1.8" are similar and narrowing.
mrtotes
1. iMac 20" with dual 3.5" HDD?
2. MBP 17" with dual 2.5" HDD?
3. MBP 15" with dual 1.8" HDD
4. MB with dual 1.8" HDD?
5. MM with dual 2.5 or 3.5" HDD and a larger form factor?
I can't see models getting 2.5" HDD in place of current 3.5" drives due to the limited capacities of 2.5" drives - but the capacities of 2.5" and 1.8" are similar and narrowing.
mrtotes
Comments
No, simply because a backup that gets damaged, lost, or stolen at the same time as your primary drive is of little use.
But Apple is aiming at the 94% of Mac owners who don't routinely back-up and the 77% who never back-up at all. It's a compromise between complexity (I have to dig my Ext HDD out of a Fire Safe periodically); where users don't bother, and ease; where it's less secure.
I suppose we all need 500Gb iDisks to work with Time Machine - now if that was one of the 'Top Secret' features I'd be well happy.
mrtotes
Heck, you could partition the drive into two volumes, and do it that way if you're leaning that hard towards ease of use. *shrug*
More thoughts...
The reason "I" thought about this in the first place is because if you have an external HD like mine, which requires to be plugged in, you have wires etc. on your desk, you have to plug your external HD in, and you have to remember to turn it on everyday at a certain time for back-up. With all these points Time Machine is starting to look more and more like regular backing up, so as a result why would as "mrtotes" pointed out - 94% of Mac users who don't back up start changing their ways?
As Scott Forstall pointed out "So if your HD dies. You can buy a new HD. Put it in your machine, and be right where you were before that HD died." That quote makes it all sound so simple. Which is what Apple wants. Using an external HD, and remembering to turn in on, and taking up one of the ports (if you want to be able to restore whenever you want without to much effort, you will need to leave your exteranl HD constantly plugged in to one of your ports) will not convince many more people to back up. The result would just be a slightly easier way of doing backups, and I don't think it would convince many people to change their ways.
Final thought: If ZFS (snapshots) was implemented into Leopard, and all new Mac's came with a small amount of back-up-flash (I just invented that term by the way) preloaded in them. So if and when you chang or delete a file From wikipedia "As ZFS does not overwrite data in place, taking a snapshot simply means not releasing the blocks used by the old version of the data. This has the advantage that snapshots can be taken very quickly and that they are space efficient as they share unchanged data with the file system. Writable snapshots, called clones, can be created, resulting in two independent file systems that share a set of blocks. As changes are made, file system blocks diverge but common blocks are only held once, no matter how many clones exist." that change could be snapshot onto that small amount of flash, which in turn could act as a back up, in case and when needed. Conclusion: Fool-proof backup. Everybody, would do it, and everybody would use Time Machine. Apple will succeed again to give us something we didn't know we needed, and now that we have it, we can't live without it.
If this is possible, and comes true, this alone would sell new Mac's. Imagine for a second, Apple sells new Mac's cause they have convinced people backing up is not only needed, but now it's actually cool.
Uh... Time machine doesn't require multiple drives.
Huh?................
Huh?................
You can perform searches of the past without having a 2nd drive. The only thing you'd need a 2nd drive for is to keep a real backup for people who are worried about hard drive crashes.
You NEVER want to have your backup on the same computer. If someone steals your laptop..there goes your backup too. If your computer is damaged your backup could be damaged as well.
Losing precious data will be all the impetus people need to find the fortitude to turn the power button on their drives. Trust me.
Come'on people. Computers users aren't morons generally. Turning the power button on an drive isn't a hard task and even if you don't turn the power on you determine when the syncronization process happens so it will sycncronize the delta changes when it has access to the chosen volume.
You NEVER want to have your backup on the same computer. If someone steals your laptop..there goes your backup too. If your computer is damaged your backup could be damaged as well.
Losing precious data will be all the impetus people need to find the fortitude to turn the power button on their drives. Trust me.
I said desktops.
Storing backup data on the same computer is just above the insanity of not doing backups at all.
But Apple is aiming at the 94% of Mac owners who don't routinely back-up and the 77% who never back-up at all. It's a compromise between complexity (I have to dig my Ext HDD out of a Fire Safe periodically); where users don't bother, and ease; where it's less secure.
I suppose we all need 500Gb iDisks to work with Time Machine - now if that was one of the 'Top Secret' features I'd be well happy.
mrtotes
Most of those Mac owners have an internet connection though what percentage has high speed I don't know. I'd guess .mac as a tie in for time machine. I currently back up to Amazon/JungleDisk but Timemachine to .Mac would actually get me to pay for .Mac as long as it wan't any more expensive than Amazon.
Vinea
why can't we have apple have an online appleworks, online quicken, online spreadsheet, etc all tied into idisk....take the most used apps, so we could use any computer away from home, including not having to use windows. when i use gmail which i love this is the way we need to go. unless it's a "go to my mac" anywhere .mac service. now wouldn't that be cool using .mac "go to my mac" home desktop FROM ANYWHERE. if this is the case then computers would be judged by interface not "business as usual windows"
i think .mac could be a very wonderful future for mac and switchers. SJ please make it better!!!! tie into multimedia access from anywhere, who would need slingblade, tivo. imagine accessing your home video library from your hotel or a friends house. now that has potential.
You can perform searches of the past without having a 2nd drive. The only thing you'd need a 2nd drive for is to keep a real backup for people who are worried about hard drive crashes.
Clearly you have insider info I'm not party to but surely to actually recover deleted data you need that second drive???
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If I may extend the question now....
Will we see dual drives in the MBP17" and iMac 20" because heck they've got the space so why not provide RAID stripping? 2.5" drives are seriously lagging in capacity so I'm sure there are MBP17" users who'd love 2 x120Gbs...
I thought about this a few times today and yesterday, but didn't think there was anyone else thinking along the same lines. In desktops (iMac's), I think this is a serious possibility. Who wants to spend over an hour waiting for a External HD to reformat, and Joe Soap knows nothing about disk utility and reformatting. This seems like a no-brainer to me.
More thoughts...
...... we can't live without it.
If this is possible, and comes true, this alone would sell new Mac's. Imagine for a second, Apple sells new Mac's cause they have convinced people backing up is not only needed, but now it's actually cool.
I love the way you're going with this. I suspect we are nearing a point of saturation of new a innovative features. What remains is for OS coders to hone and perfect systems to make systems more reliable and easy to use. If Leopard can make Time Machine the instantly accessible back-up system for anyone then it could be the killer app for OS X.
Clearly you have insider info I'm not party to but surely to actually recover deleted data you need that second drive???
No, time machine backs up multiple copies spanning back to a particular date in time (which, I'd imagine, is configurable). You have your choice where to store the backup, such as on a 2nd drive or on your primary (I don't know if it's in a database form or in file form).
Some of this was mentioned in the keynote.
Time machine may or may not be used for total hard drive restoration. I'm leaning toward not.
Time machine may or may not be used for total hard drive restoration. I'm leaning toward not.
It can optionally be used for that.
Isn't the purpose of Time Machine to go back and find accidentally deleted files? It doesn't seem to fix the same kind of "back-up" definition that you all are saying.
All of you saying that keeping the drive in the same computer does no good, in case of theft, fire, etc.-
Isn't the purpose of Time Machine to go back and find accidentally deleted files? It doesn't seem to fix the same kind of "back-up" definition that you all are saying.
When you run the OS X Installer, you can restore a complete Time Machine backup. So, there's more to Time Machine than just restoring particular files or returning to older versions of them.