Mac OS X forum: Can Time Machine really be this stupid?

But if you recall your days with computers you only reach a state of backup with 2 or more copies. It sounds like you were driving some unicycle with no spares and crashed.
Bob

It does not matter if you have an Apple or an IBM MainFrame. The area of backup is something we covered in the second year of most Computer Science or information classes.

With the move to where you can get a computer in the check out lanes with that tabloid trash rag, you don't get a course in computer science.

Around here I see Apples are being sold to enterprises. Just a few months agoI found the iPad in the front lines at a major brand car maker. Looks like they could not wait for Android, Microsoft or RIM to get their act together.
Bob

I've only been around a while (google the GE 210 computer) but I see what the changes are. For folk that don't want to backup and be defensive about computing use the new Cloud stuff is OK. But Wozniak is right too.

-> http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-57486930-71/woz-the-cloud-is-a-nightmare/

He covers a lot of ground but the key point is you must own your files. If you don't backup and think that some OS will save you.
Bob

I'm sorry for your data.

A couple of years ago, Apple got picked up on another silly bug where, if you MOVE a file from one disk to another, or cut a file and paste it to a different disk, it got deleted before it was fully written to the destination. If anything went wrong with the writing operation, you lost the original too.

Source: http://www.macintouch.com/leopard/movebug.html

Apple's first response, if I remember correctly, was to say something like "Well, users shouldn't be MOVING between disks, they should COPY and then delete the original". I never MOVE between disks because I don't trust the operating system - but if the function is available, it should be safe to use or come with a warning. Apple's attitude was blaming the user for assuming that the function was safe to use.

So, to answer your question: Time Machine can really be that stupid. And knowing some of the schoolboy mistakes Apple's software engineers make, I'm really not surprised.

The erased partition had a good year's worth of TM files on it, many dozens of backups, not just one.

If I had to draw conclusions from this, I'd say the user needs to back up his TM files on at least one other hard drive, or, if you're paranoid, a daisy chain of external drives. Or you could burn a lot of optical media and never run out of coasters. You could use a more intelligent backup application.

We used to have to protect ourselves from drive failures. Now we have to protect ourselves from the OS. I was one of the unhappy few who found out 1) InDesign and other pricey software quit working under Snow Leopard and Adobe's solution was just buying new software and 2) There is no available Intel version of Tiger, so Apple had no solution. I thought I had prepared by making a clone of the boot drive in my PPC before getting a new and Intel Mac, but silly me, it all became useless.