So my inner dork continues to surface. Most Mac users that I know do not really give a hoot about Time Machine. And to be honest, it isn’t the quintessential backup system for your computer. Use Silverkeeper or Carbon-Copy Cloner for that. But, what Time Machine is insanely good at is restoring files that you casually deleted in the not so distant past.
Today, I’m sitting there thinking about some notes that I had written down on my old phone, my Palm Treo. I remember deleting everything off of the phone, but keeping my files on my computer so when I needed to access them, I’d have them. Only thing is, the filetypes are proprietary to the Palm software. So you can read bits and pieces with your basic text editor, but there is a bunch of gobbledy-gook in between. For some reason, I thought it was a good idea to delete the Palm software some time ago.
Now, I still have the installation CD, but what a hassle that would be. Enter Time Machine.
All I had to do was “go back in time” through a number of saved instances of my harddrive over the past year until I was able to locate the Palm Desktop software. Click the Restore button and Presto! I now have the fully working software reinstalled on my computer and have access to all my old memos and everything else I needed.
The interface to Time Machine is slick. I’ve used it before to relocate pictures I had deleted. But today’s adventure really saved me a some time. So a big thanks to the engineers who designed this. It’s amazing!
Now, if they can only get it to be the ONLY backup system you’ll ever need, I’ll be an even happier fanboy.
Going Back to Cyberspace 