- How Does Time Machine Work
- How To Run Time Machine
- How To Use Apple Time Machine
- What Is Time Machine Backup On Mac
- Imac Time Machine
- What Is Apple Time Machine
It’s a good idea to back up your Mac in case your hard drive fails or your computer crashes. If this happens, you could lose all of your personal files. To prevent this, you should back up your files on a separate drive that you can restore from if anything happens to your computer. And thankfully, you can do this easily on your Mac with a built-in backup application on your computer. Here’s how to back up your Mac with Time Machine.
What Does Time Machine Back Up?
Time Machine is Apple’s preferred and only official Mac OS X backup system. However, it was created as a stopgap when Apple realized Mac users rarely backup their systems. It works, but it was created in 2006 and it shows. Jul 17, 2019 Time Machine is a backup utility built into macOS that allows you to create a backup of all your data on external storage that is updated every hour. If at any time you lose a file or something catastrophic happens to your Mac, you can, “Go back in time,” to retrieve the data. Time Machine is a great tool that automatically makes backups of your Mac onto an external drive. What's really great about it is that it's built into macOS itself, so every Mac comes with it automatically.
TimeMachine backs up all the files on your computer, including apps, music,documents, photos, emails, and system files. With a backup, you can restorefiles you accidentally delete or change. When Time Machine is turned on, itwill automatically back up your files on your Mac hourly, daily, or weekly. Inaddition, it also deletes older backups as the backup starts running out ofspace.
Note: To use this application, you’ll need some form of external storage, such as an external hard drive. If you want to know more about how to format your hard drive for Mac computers, check out our guide here.
How to Back Up with Time Machine
![Backup Backup](https://s2.glbimg.com/QYLS31Xc3eb1976tJUnz8yzYT6c=/0x600/s.glbimg.com/po/tt2/f/original/2016/01/13/hfsexplorer_4.png)
- Connect an external hard drive to your computer. If you are connecting this drive for the first time, a pop-up window will appear to ask you if you want to use Time Machine. If you see this pop-up window, you can click “Use as a Backup Disk.” Then skip to the last step.
- Then click the Apple icon in the Apple Menu. The Apple icon is always located in the top-left corner of your screen.
- Next, select System Preferences.
- Click on the Time Machine icon. The icon looks like a curving arrow pointing downward that surrounds a clock face. Clicking this will open Time Machine preferences.
- Click Select Backup Disk.
- Select the drive you’ll use as a Time Machine backup.
- Finally, click the Back Up Automatically box. This will automatically start to back up your files on your Mac to your chosen disk.
Once the first backup is complete, Time Machine will check your computer for new, changed, and deleted files every hour to make backups of your Mac. The application keeps a daily backup for the past month. It will also keep weekly backups as long as the storage device still has space. Once the storage device runs out of space, the oldest backups will be deleted from Time Machine.
If you want to back up your Mac manually, click the box next to Show Time Machine in menu bar. Then click the icon in your menu bar and select Back Up Now.
![What Is Time Machine Backup For Mac What Is Time Machine Backup For Mac](https://icons.iconarchive.com/icons/artua/mac/256/Time-Machine-icon.png)
How to Selectively Back Up with Time Machine
If you don’t want to back up every single file, you can also opt to select which files you want to back up. Follow the steps below to exclude files from your backup:
- First, select System Preferences from the Apple menu.
- Then click on the Time Machine icon.
- Click Options… You will find this in the bottom-right corner of the window.
- Click the “+” button.
- Choose the files or folders you want to exclude in your backup. You can select applications, files, and folders to exclude. You can select multiple items at once by holding the Command key on your keyboard.
- Then click Exclude.
- Finally, click the Save button.
The files you don’t want to back up will now be excluded from Time Machine backup.
Now that you know how to back up your files, check out our guide on how to restore from Time Machine here.
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How Does Time Machine Work
Time Machine is a built-in feature on your Mac. It’s one of the most important ones as it automatically backs up all of your files on an external drive (and restores them if they’re ever deleted).
What to do if Time Machine won't back up
Unfortunately, many Mac users have reported that they’re having difficulty backing up with Time Machine after upgrading their computers to macOS Mojave. If you’re one of those users, check out our tips for troubleshooting when Time Machine won’t back up your files.
Make sure your external hard drive’s file system is compatible with Time Machine
One potential problem that may prevent Time Machine from performing backups is that your external hard drive is formatted incorrectly, making it incompatible with Time Machine.
While Windows FAT and NTFS are used as the default file system for many external drives, Time Machine can’t use them — it requires a native macOS format. However, there is one macOS format that doesn’t work, either: APFS. While it’s fine that your Mac uses APFS, Time Machine can’t.
To determine the format of your external hard drive: Best usb hub for mac 2017.
- Connect your external drive to your Mac.
- In Finder, select the drive from the left sidebar and click Get Info. You can also use the keyboard shortcut Command-I.
- Your drive’s format will appear in the list of general information next to Format:
If your external drive is in one of these unsupported formats, you’ll need to reformat it correctly before it’s used to back up your Mac. In order to work with Time Machine, your external drive needs to be formatted as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) with a GUID Partition Table (GPT).
Here’s how to format your external drive using Disk Utility:
How To Run Time Machine
- Connect your external drive to your Mac.
- In Finder, go to Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility.
- In Disk Utility, select your external drive from the list on the left.
- Select Erase from the top of the window.
- In the pop-up window, you have the option to rename your drive and change its format. Change the format to Mac OS Extended (Journaled) and click Erase.
Now that your external drive is in a compatible format, you should be able to back up to it with Time Machine.
Check your external hard drive’s free space
If reformatting your external drive didn’t work, you need to make sure that your external hard drive has enough available space to back up files (go to Disk Utility to check how much free space is left). If it doesn’t, you’ll need to delete some unneeded files to free up space or start backing up your Mac to a new hard drive.
If you’re having trouble backing up your data with Time Machine, you can try performing some basic tweaks to resolve the issue. There is a dedicated app to help you out. CleanMyMac X is a Mac cleaning utility that also runs a set of maintenance scripts that rotate system logs, remove temporary files, and perform other optimization tasks.
It can help you fix the issue with Time Machine and additionally speed up processes on your Mac. Try CleanMyMac X now.
What to do when Time Machine backup fails repeatedly
Clean up Time Machine and back up again
Time Machine uses some extra files to help it work. Sometimes, when Time Machine fails, it leaves some files around that it was using temporarily to help it work. Safely deleting these files and “cleaning up” Time Machine may fix any issues you’re having with backups.
To do this, you’ll need to first turn Time Machine off:
- Open System Preferences and go to the Time Machine tab > deselect Back Up Automatically.
How To Use Apple Time Machine
Next, clean up Time Machine’s working files:
- Open Finder.
- Go to your external hard drive.
- Open the “Backups.backupdb” folder and move the file ending in “.inProgress” to the Trash.
- Empty the Trash.
- Restart your Mac.
What Is Time Machine Backup On Mac
After this, turnTime Machine back on and start a new backup.
Check if other processes are causing problems with Time Machine
Imac Time Machine
In some instances, malware (malicious software that can be installed without your knowledge) can prevent important applications from running properly.
What Is Apple Time Machine
It’s almost impossible to detect malware on your Mac without special tools. My personal favorite, thanks to its sleek UI and intuitive features, is CleanMyMac X. Its Malware Removal quickly checks your Mac for malware, including trojans and worms, and allows you to delete them if found.
To run a malware scan on your Mac:
- Download CleanMyMac X – it has a free trial.
- Install and launch the app.
- Go to Malware Removal and press Scan.
- When the scan is complete, you can delete the threats if any are found.
As you see, Time Machine backups can fail for various reasons. The first thing you should try when that happens is to make sure your external hard drive format is compatible with Time Machine. Then check whether your external hard drive has enough free space. In some cases, running maintenance can also solve the problem for you. You can use CleanMyMac X’s Maintenance module for that.
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