Lion Tip 8 Local Backups in Lion’s Time Machine

One of the most popular features of OS X has been Apple’s built in Time Machine software.  This innovative software easily allowed users to make complete backups of their operating system in case of hard drive failure or if they had accidentally deleted a file.
The only problem with this has been remembering to plug in your external drive so that it could perform the backup.  Granted, you could use Apple’s Time Capsule which will backup whenever you are in range of it but even this only works in one location, not ideal if you spend large amounts of time travelling away from home or the office.
Allow me to set the scene, you leave your backup device at home while you go abroad for a business meeting.  Your only copy of the important presentation you will be delivering the following day is on your computer.  You accidentally delete the document.  No backup in sight, no time to recreate the document…
In the past this would have been a disaster situation, causing an immense amount of hair pulling and stress but not now, for in Mac OS X Lion, we have a new local backup feature in Time Machine.
Local Backups essentially mean that when your selected backup device is not connected or not in range, your computer keeps a local Time Machine backup on your system.  There is no configuration for this and it is enabled on your Mac by default.  By simply clicking on the Time Machine icon in the dock, we can easily go back in time and retrieve a file from our local backups.
It’s not going to help if your hard drive fails on the road but on the off chance the above scenario becomes a reality, you will be glad it exists..
regards
John
 
for more info on data backups click here