Home Forums Mac Software Mac Operating Systems Time machine, worth it?

I just started using Time Machine in the last year or so. Very very rare it comes in handy or saves the day.

I've heard that it takes resources, but this beach-ball today, was ridiculous. Had to unplug the time machine hard-rive to get an excel file up.

Any opinions?

Most people find they place a LOT more value in their backups after the first time they need them. It's like insurance that way. $30/month seems like an unnecessary expense until the day an uninsured driver totals your car and puts you in the hospital for a month. ($$$!)

Time machine provides the additional benefit of versions. You can grab a copy of a document as it existed a month ago, before you made those edits and accidentally deleted the reference page.

If time machine is causing your computer to stall, the external drive it's using (or your internal one) is probably having problems and causing the time machine process to stall. It would be a good idea to investigate this before it gets worse.

thanks V, well I just dumped the old TM hardrive and it was happening on the new old one. Maybe it was indexing and that is why is was causing sluggishness? I mean I couldn't open anything up. Beachball time... But thanks for the perspective.

Do you have any antivirus software running in the background? The first time that I used TM it seemed to take forever until I disabled Intego VirusBarrier. Since then, I dumped all AV software and haven't had a problem.

thanks J, no anti virus, maybe hardrive. Older Lacies, when they make that clicking noise, that it for them correct?

That sounds like it could be a power brick problem, for which LaCie is notorious. If you have more of those bricks, exchange the problem one for another, and see if the issue persists.

thanks A, what does that mean power brick? You mean power source not the hardrive. In fact the clicking happened on the 2nd one right away too. (basically I have a handful in the closet I use for backup -- they are old) -- So far 3rd one is ok, but I assumed it's the hardrive's time up not power source.

(ps reminds me I just bought my first non Lacie external DVD drive, no power source, that's the trend, and now I understand why from your comment!)