on 2014-12-02 11:43 Godfrey DiGiorgi wrote
Time Machine is an incremental backup system which does a spot check of the state of the file system every hour and writes a new copy of everything that has changed
hourly backups were great for office workers and students writing papers … before cloud services came along
nowadays i don't see the point, especially for those of us who actively create and work on large files; all my little stuff is synced continuously, and hourly backups just get in the way; that's why i recommend running Time Machine once a day or so; Apple's default is easy to subvert
There's also the issue that a Time Machine backup is not just "files on another drive," usually what you want for photographic and video backups for best access. For efficiency's sake, Time Machine creates a nested series of "sparse disk images" which incrementally add up to the current contents of a given file system. You can only retrieve the files by using Time Machine and restoring them, you should not touch files stored in the internals of the Time Machine backup manually.
first, Time Machine only uses sparse images for network backups; directly connected drives use a simple dated folder system
but more importantly, backups are for emergencies, not for efficiency of access; if you have a regular need to access copies of your photo files, an _archive_ is probably a more appropriate concept; archives are for long-term, well-organized, reference storage; backups are for recovery when something goes wrong
Time Machine shines at being able to mass-restore an entire hard disk, including all configuration details; it's also pretty good for occasional recovery of individual files (it pays to practice with it before an emergency comes along), but it's not well suited for archiving
for people with a moderate number of photos, including them in an overall backup of the system can suffice, and the built-in cataloging of Lightroom or Aperture can take care of the archiving aspect; the more photos you have, the more you may find yourself dividing your catalogs and wanting a deliberate archiving system
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