Time Machine useless for macbook owners?

Would I be right in saying that Time Machine in Leopard would be useless for notebook (macbook/pro) owners as I read somewhere you need an external drive to use it. If this is true it annoys me that apple is pretty much boasting time machine as its biggest feature in leopard but I can definitely see why an external drive would need to be used.

 

Well, just connect an external drive to your MacBook! Then you just backup everything on that.

 

Well it really wouldnt be worth me buying an external drive as I dont really have anything majorly important that I wouldnt want to lose, but if I could have used it without an external drive then it definately would have been nice, but overall im not too bothered.

 

Well, .Mac is supposed to be upgraded soon...let's see how Backup will work with that.

 

no offense but where is the logic in this question???

have you looked at any information about Time Machine? it is a BACKUP PROGRAM!!!! why and how could you use it with a single HD?, technically you could partition a single HDD and probably use Time Machine on the other partitions, but that would make very little sense at all.

Using an external is the whole point, it would be very easy to plug in an external drive whenever you need to backup or restore. Not to mention with the Apple router and a HDD plugged into it, you can be using it wirelessly, backing up, restoring, etc.

this information is all on Apple's site, not trying to be a jerk but any answer you were looking for from here is directly available on Apple's website.

 

how much would an external hard drive cost?

 

I got a 500gb for $100

 

where from?? online store? that's very very cheap...

 

the prices vary with the sizes, obviously portable ones would be more but if your using a macbook or MBP it'd be nice to have something portable. there are some portable drives on apples website that are out of the box compatable with OSX.

 

newegg usually has pretty good prices. You can also use pricegrabber to compare between different resellers. I assume it would also be cheaper to get the HDD and the enclosure separate.

 

so with the airport router be able to plug an HDD directly into that and back up without wires?? Interesting...

EDIT:

Oooooooooooh

" Effortless meets wireless.

With a hard disk connected to your AirPort Extreme Base Station, AirPort all the Macs in your house can use Time Machine to back up wirelessly. Simply select your AirPort Disk as the backup disk for each computer and the whole family can enjoy the benefits of Time Machine."

http://www.apple.com/macosx/leopard/features/timemachine.html

 

Yes. It is a backup software. However, I wouldn't want to carry an external drive with the laptop. Apple needs to make sure we can sync the backup to an external hard drive when it is convenient.

For example, the backup will be stored at the local disk when the external hard drive is not plugged in at work. When I reach home and plugin the hard drive, OS X prompts me to sync the local backups to the external drive. There should be an option to keep one or two days of backup in the local drive as well.

 

Ya or carry a portable HDD with you all the time.....wich can be annoying and often slower & smaller size.

I was wondering...how much can you go back with Time Machine?
If your backing up EVERY day for 2 years...wouldnt your 500gb HDD be full by then..(& only with backup in it?)

And I hope it keep 1or 2 days in the HDD, when I have to leave my computer at work or I got to somewhere for 2 days. I cant carry a HDD around all the time.

 

BTW, for an external HDD, get yourself an enclosure and put an HDD in it yourself.

70% of the drive in those external drives are actually Refurbished.
Ya, even the cool G-Tech (wich are expensive for...nothing) have refurbished HDD's.

You'll have a brand new HDD for sure & probably a faster one for the same $.

 

in that case i suppose its not time machine that is useless, its just that you don't need it, regardless whether if u have a notebook or a desktop.

 

Why are there two threads about this? See: Time Machine A Disappointment.

The other thread includes information for a workaround.

 

Curious if you could use a big enough flash memory stick to do a backup with TM.

Yes, I know it will be like... 3 years before flash memory sticks big enough are even economically feasible.