[X4U] Leopard Features

[Jim Scott]

On Aug 9, 2006, at 7:16 PM, Michael Elliott wrote:

> I would use Apple's own graphics on their Time Machine page as a  
> clue.  They clearly show some kind of external hard disk attached  
> to an iMac:
>
> http://www.apple.com/macosx/leopard/timemachine.html
>
> Michael
>
>
> On Aug 9, 2006, at 1:34 PM, Stroller wrote:
>
>> The first is that - unless I missed it in the keynote, I have to  
>> admit that I enjoyed it but didn't pay full attention - is that it  
>> doesn't seem to be a backup so much as a versioning file system. A  
>> VFS is NOT a back up. What happens if the whole drive goes clicky- 
>> clicky-clicky? You can't go back in time to a file which the disk  
>> can't physically read anymore.
>

An external hard drive also was connected to the demo iMac on-stage  
during the keynote when the functions of Time Machine were being  
shown. Based on what I've seen so far, I suspect the proper  
functioning of Time Machine will require an always-on connection to  
an external hard drive or a network server. A less-secure alternative  
offered might be another partition on the installed hard drive. But I  
suspect Apple's advice will be to not do that in case that hard drive  
crashes. The whole point of Time Machine is to protect the vast  
amount of users who never back up from themselves, and to make  
retrieval of data as easy as possible.

Given that office-type servers usually have RAID configurations and  
home desktops do not, I imagine Time Machine will create a whole new  
category of affordable RAID external hard drives for home users and  
others without dedicated 24/7 connections to corporate, government,  
education or other RAID servers. I also imagine the Mac Pro towers,  
with their 4 drive bays and capability of handling 2 terabytes of  
data storage (at present hard drive sizes) will be RAID-configurable  
by Leopard from the git-go. Leopard might even offer that option to  
home users who wish to daisy-chain external hard drives themselves.  
This probably is one of the "secrets" Steve Jobs was smiling about.

-- Jim Scott