


To use the drive as your backup disk, just click the “Use as Backup Disk” button and Time Machine begins the initial backup. If this is the first time you’ve specified a backup device, Time Machine asks if you want to use that drive to back up the Mac with Time Machine: With a properly-formatted and empty external drive, setting up Time Machine is simple - just connect it to your Mac. Related: Yes, You Can Use One Drive for Time Machine and File Storageįor this very reason, some Mac users prefer to use Time Machine for their regular backups, but make bootable full backups of their Macs frequently on another external drive using a backup utility like Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper!. Once the backup drive is full, the oldest backups are deleted from Time Machine. It also keeps weekly backups for as long as the external drive that you’re using for Time Machine has available space. Time Machine keeps these hourly backups for the past 24 hours, then keeps a daily backup for the past month. Once the first backup is complete, Time Machine checks your Mac for new, changed, and deleted files once every hour. This initial backup can take some time, so be patient and allow it to finish.

Time Machine performs a full backup of your Mac when it is first set up. How often does Time Machine back up your Mac, and for how long?
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Whether you’re new to the Mac platform or have been using it for years, there’s one feature built into Mac OS X or macOS that you should not only know about, but use.
