What has been your experience with Apple's Time Machine?

I suppose it would be trustworthy to use, most of Mac’s stuff are pretty stable.

I haven’t used it myself, but I have heard about it.
computerhope.com
these guys would know better.

I have restored an entire system with it, and it worked out pretty well. There were some glitches, like Quick Look support disappeared, but that was easily fixed by installing the most recent OSX update.

I use it as my main hardware backup, but I use Dropbox for my online backups of stuff like documents, etc.

I’ve been pretty happy with it, but it can be very slow the first time you run it.

I have not used any other back-up systems so I can’t compare it to anything. the back-up sometimes (say, two or three times a month) stalls and takes a long time it does seem to work better with an external hard drive than with Apple Time Capsule. so far I have not used it to restore an entire system from it. if you want to switch the whole of one Mac to another Mac, though, you have other ways to do it.

you know, if you want an evaluation of Time Machine’s strengths and weaknesses, then I suggest going to a dedicated consumer reviews site like epininions, Amazon, etc.

I use it extensively, and have not noticed any problems. I’ve restored files, but never an entire system. I use one disk at home and one at work for redundant protection.

Lacie provides an online backup system with their drives. They will back up your entire system encrypted for a year for free. Has anyone ever tried these? I’ve thought about it.

I’ve had a lot of problems with my Time Capsule, from kernal panicking my computer every time it would back up to totally corrupting the backup so I couldn’t restore.

Time Machine itself, on the other hand, has worked very well for me, both on per-file and total-system backup.

@rovdog: good tip, there. I hadn’t heard of that before.