My understanding is that Apple is encouraging software developers to find ways to break changes to large databases into smaller chunks.
There is an inherent problem with backing up large files which have incremental changes. In order to have a backup you do have to copy the entire file. The question then arises, how often and how far back should the backups go. Users have this problem regardless of what backup system they use. Is your goal to be able to re-start work immediately at the same point after a hard drive crash, or to be able to retrieve a copy of a file which you deleted and then found you need? Or do you want a really simple way to make sure that anything you do on your computer, at any time, is always backed up? Time Machine is geared to keep a constant backup and to let you go back some distance, and is set up to make that easy by fully automating things. This approach will work well for some people and not well for others. I suspect TM will work well for the "average" Mac user who needs photos, iTunes, Word and Excel documents, Address Book and Apple Mail backed up. But (as I understand it) Time Machine is not set up to let you just reboot from the backup drive and be back in business immediately if your main drive fails. I have not tried Time Machine yet, but I do have some experience with Apple Backup (tied to a Dot Mac account). Its main weakness is that once you fill the backup disk the only practical way to gain more space is to reformat the disk and start over again. You can't specify when certain file or folder backups "roll off". (Backup has other issues too.) Big files make this problem show up sooner. - Winston Richard Hart wrote: >Lecoat wrote: > >>Which rather brings us back, full circle, to the point I made a couple >>of weeks ago: that I find an automated and regular backup strategy is >>made difficult by Powermail, > >I respectfully disagree. > >First, my experience with SuperDuper is different from yours. It >automatically backs up my disk drive while PowerMail is running. I have >no problems restoring my mail. > >Second, your discomfort was amplified by the introduction of Time >Machine, not by PowerMail. Time Machine is an application designed to >eat up your disk space quickly. It continually makes copy after copy of >very large files such as FileMaker solutions, Final Cut Pro render >files, mail databases, etc. > >There are many files on our computers that are large, change >incrementally, and cause Time Machine to create a whole new >multimegabyte copy. If you change a phone number in a FileMaker contacts >file, the entire 1GB file will be copied yet again by Time Machine. >Should FileMaker split up my record entries into separate files? > >I could be wrong, but in my opinion, this is an Apple issue. > >RH > > > > > >
