Time machine issue!

zoranb

Registered
Suppose im working with Photoshop using an external HD. Can the pics im working on and saving into the HD be retrieved when the HD is not connected with the Mac?
 
I'm not sure where this question comes from. Quite obviously: No, they're on the _external_ drive. Or do you mean in the paranoid sense of whether Photoshop saves the whole pictures also somewhere on the internal drive automatically? Well: it does save some data on a scratch-disk. You can set Photoshop up, which harddrive to use for that. But I don't know of any way to retrieve a complete picture from PS's cache. Also, you can purge that cache from within PS.
 
Well i don't see whats so wrong about my question. As you explain its like that if i have partitioned my hd into two partitions and i do all my work on the 2nd partition, then that stuff will not be retrieved by TM. Or isn't this the same situation?
 
I don't see the full extent of the question either Zoranb. You may wish to be a little more detailed and provide information that for you may seem obvious but for us people out on the web, may not be so obvious.

Based on the facts you indicate, I agree to fryke's answer : "No"
 
Let me try again, and im sorry that im not quire as specific as you guys say... well what im asking is, can data that are processed from an external drive be retrieved by timemachine?
 
I think I understand the question, and the answer is YES. If Time Machine has backed up the contents of drive A to drive B, you can retrieve them from drive B even when drive A is not available.

However, you can't use the fancy Time Machine interface to do it, since that only works when the original folder is open in the Finder (unless there's something I'm missing). Instead, navigate directly into the Time Machine backup folders. The file structure of Time Machine's backup is pretty straightforward.

Inside the "Backups.backupdb" folder on your backup volume, you'll have one folder for your computer. Inside that folder is a bunch of folders with backups from different times. Despite the fact that only newly-changed files are copied with each update, every one of these folders contains a complete image of the disk at that time, using "hard links", which essentially make one file appear in multiple places. Open one of those folders (or the "Latest" link) and then just pick out the files you want.

I just tested this myself to be absolutely sure, and yes, it works.


P.S. I completely misunderstood the question at first, too, since the original post doesn't mention Time Machine except in the subject line.
 
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