Sorry, but i see no difference between "recovery" disk and timemachine backup. I think that we can use TM instead of recovery pertition. I restored my system a couple of times from TM and it worked just fine.
and for people, who are not common with the terminal instead of using fdisk u can just reinstall the system from dvd/install partition unchecking everything but mbr efi installer. (zeph's dvd).

I advise also to restore install dvd on a small hd, it make install procec really fast ( 7 min in my case, including the boottime)

@ azathot: Here are the differences between my system and Time Machine.

- You can't boot from a Time machine backup, but you can boot from the Recovery partition.
- Time machine needs another harddrive, mine only one. For my personal system I would need a Time Machine backup drive of 1,42 TB in size.
- If your system crashes and your boot partition is damaged, you need the installation DVD, you don't need this on my system. To crash my system, two partitions and the bootmanager must be damaged - or the complete harddrive, but this also could happen on a Time Machine backup.
- You can backup the created disk images on a DVD, this isn't possible with Time Machine. It would be even possible to store very large backups if you use splitted .rar archives or a split/joinin program like Macchaca.
- Time Machine backups all the time, that's kind of nerving. The last backup I'm creating is before installing large programs, after this I don't have to.
- It is still not sure if Time Machine works 100% on AMD. My system is definetively working with AMD OS X because no special programs are needed.
- There are not much Terminal commands, I also have created a file which contains the most used commads, so just copy/paste is needed. I have to translate the file and attach it then. By the way, an OSx86 user should know a little bit how to use the Terminal.

The main idea of my system is to have a standard system with an immediate possibility for recovery combined with fast available backups which can be stored on DVD.

- You can also exclude folder from a time machine backup, so you only backup system files.
- Booting from DVD and restoring from TM backup doesn't take too long, and most of the times you're able to boot into single user mode / safe mode.
- You can still create an image of your current desktop and burn it to a DVD, but that isn't necessary because you can just boot up the install DVD and restore from there ( unless you want to share the DVD ).
- You can edit the timer so TM only backs up each 4hrs / day / week / month. It's already explained on this forum how you should do this.
- I agree, OSx86 users should be able to use the Terminal.

Personally, I went back to time machine. But of course, that's my opinion.

I tested Time Machine twice, but it's unneccessary for me. To waste a whole harddrive only for backups gives me the creeps. I never had data loss yet only except if I deleted something myself by mistake. And for these reasons I backup important files by myself.

And by the way, this thread shouldn't become an info page to show the functionality of Time Machine, this guide should be an information source for setting up a specified OS X system from the empty HD on, especially designed for beginners who probably do some more mistakes. And if somebody has to reinstall because his system crashed (and he had no second drive for Time Machine) he can try this one as an alternative.

Nasty EDIT: Don't trust Time machine too much - PingunZ one crashed a day before ;-)

I understand the intention of this guide, and it is very helpful for beginners, who want to stay on the safe side. I also appreciate your effort - it is really well done and clear guide. Just wanted to mention, that there is also another way of keeping system good backuped, for those who are sure about tm functionality and can afford extra hd.

As for the terminal use - I have linux( suse ) on my third drive, so.... Just most of ppl prefer GUI.

My TM is on usb drive, so i connect it only when i change something with the system, that means it works in the way u describe in your guide, but without editing dmg.

Maybe we should start a discussion about proper use of time machine.

It is a really nice guide, still i think we need to encourage people to use the Terminal as it can greatly speed up all of your OSx86 hacking needs without the need to ever copy a file around.

Just load up terminal.app and enter:
sudo -s
then enter you password.

To edit a file use pico, it's installed by default with OSX and it's pretty easy to use (instructions are at the bottom of the screen.

So if I wanted to edit com.apple.Boot.plist I would type:
pico /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.Boot.plist

You can always TAB in the terminal, so when you filling in a path type the first few letters of the folder/file (it's CaSe sensitive) then hit tab, it will auto fill the name.

Also to do a repair permissions you don't even have to open disk utility, just type:
diskutil repairPermissions /

Instead of "/" you can enter the path to the volume you want to test so "/Volumes/Recovery" for example.

just some more hints cause in OSX the Terminal is your friend!

However - I do not like your policy on data back up, or the lack of a policy. Always back up your files onto a separate disk. A USB 500GB drive is about $130 these days so just go and spend the cash. I'm constantly reminded of the old saying:

'There are two types of people in this world: those that will loose data, and those that have lost data'.

It's inevitable, unfortunately I am the latter. Time Machine provides an excellent interface for cloning a bootable version of all your drives onto a single backup volume. Use it. Just make sure to to a repair disk or rebuild the directory in Disk warrior every three months or so, because your backup disk can get corrupted.