Mac Timemachine backups are NOT complete

How annoying. I’m discovering the hard way that a TimeMachine backup is NOT complete.  It’s missing things all over the system.

Sure, it has backed up my documents and applications but so far it appears to have missed:

  • /private/etc/hosts (lost some custom DNS settings)
  • Missing symbolic links, fixed by sudo ln -sn /usr/bin/g++ /usr/bin/g++-4.2(Thanks StackOverflow!)
  • All my ruby gems (fixed by running bundle install)

Whilst none of these are major issues they do result in strange errors. Gem::Installer::ExtensionBuildError: ERROR: Failed to build gem native extension sure does make the heart jump and slow things down.  I’m still glad I bought a new hard disk though