Why (and How) I Still Use Time Machine to Back up My Mac
Losing something you’ve been working on for a long time or photos that are irretrievable is devastating. You might think this problem is a thing of the past thanks to cloud storage services like Apple’s iCloud, but that’s not entirely true.
First, users sometimes get locked out of their cloud accounts , making file recovery impossible. Second, not all data on your Mac is stored in iCloud. Things like preferences, apps, and personal settings are difficult to restore if something happens to your Mac. Furthermore, files from a local backup are restored much faster than from a cloud backup, which is important if you back up things like videos or photo libraries. Finally, having control over your backup gives you peace of mind, rather than entrusting it to a company.
For these reasons, I recommend creating a full local backup of your Mac . There are many ways to do this, including using third-party software. However, for most people, I recommend something that may seem old-fashioned: an external hard drive and Apple’s Time Machine.
Why “Time Machine”?
Time Machine is the easiest way for Mac users to create a local backup. Of course, there are other solutions, and every experienced Mac user has their favorite. However, for the average user, Time Machine is hard to beat. It’s simply integrated into the operating system.
Simply connect an empty external hard drive (larger than your Mac’s hard drive) and go to System Preferences > General > Time Machine . From here, you can start backing up in just a couple of clicks.
This backup includes everything on your drive. That means your documents, photos, and videos, but also everything else. It also includes your installed apps, including large games. Your settings, both for macOS and for all your installed apps. If the data is saved on your Mac, it’s saved to Time Machine (unless you specifically tell the program not to back it up).
There are many ways to restore files from a Time Machine backup. When setting up a new Mac, you can use the backup to restore files and settings. Or, if you prefer, you can simply drag and drop files from the backup to the new Mac.
By default, Time Machine creates a new backup every hour. Only new files are copied, and versions of deleted files remain on the disk until the disk is full. Time Machine also allows you to view previous versions of the same file, if necessary. You can configure the backup frequency—hourly, daily, or weekly. Personally, I find all these options redundant and use the fourth option—manual. A free app I found does this without any problems.
The tool that makes Time Machine work for me
My Mac is a laptop that I use away from my desk quite often, so I can’t leave an external drive connected. I try connecting the drive when I’m at my desk, but this results in me accidentally disconnecting the Time Machine drive without unmounting it. If I do this often enough, the drive will become corrupted (trust me, it’s happened to me more than once).
That’s why I was happy to find Easy backup and eject , a free Mac app that runs silently in the background and does one thing: starts a Time Machine backup when you connect a drive and disconnects it when the backup is complete.
Once I’ve installed this program, I can plug in a backup drive at any time and never have to worry about it again. Backups usually only take a few minutes, so when I’m ready to get up from my desk, I can simply unplug everything and get on with my day. It’s perfect. Give it a try if you like the idea of Time Machine but can’t keep your hard drive plugged in all the time.