How to Back Up Your Mac Computer with Time Machine

To protect your personal data, it is important to back up your Mac regularly. If your hard drive crashes or fails, all of your personal data, including family photos and work documents, could be lost. All Mac computers now make it easy to backup your files and restore them in the event of a crash or other unforeseen events. Time Machine is a tool that can back up your Mac.

What is Time Machine Backup Up?

Time Machine backups all files on your computer including music, apps, documents, photos, and emails. It will automatically backup your Mac files every hour, daily, and weekly if enabled.

Time Machine checks your Mac for new, modified, or deleted files each hour. This allows you to create new backups. Time Machine keeps a monthly backup of your Mac’s files. The application will also keep weekly backups, as long as there is still space on the storage device. The oldest backups that are not in use will be deleted once the storage device is full.

You will need an external hard disk formatted for macOS to use this application. You can find our step-by-step guide on formatting your hard drive for Mac computers.

How to Backup a Mac using the Time Machine

1. Connect an External Hard Drive to Your Mac.
2. Next, click on the Apple icon in the menu bar. This will appear in the upper-left corner.
3. Next, select System Preferences.
4. Click Time Machine.
5. Next, click Select Backup Disk.
6. Select a drive, then click Use Disk.
7. Next, click the box next to Backup Automatically. You should see your Mac start backing up immediately.

You can manually start the backup process if your Mac does not start backing up immediately. Click the box next to Show Time Machine on your menu bar. Next, click on the Time Machine icon in the menu bar and choose Backup Now.

You can choose to backup only certain files if you don’t want to save every file on your hard drive. Here’s how:

How to back up selected files to the Time Machine

1. Click on the Apple Icon at the top-left corner.
2. Then select System Preferences.
3. Next, select Time Machine.
4. Next, click Options. This will appear in the bottom-right corner.
5. Next click on the “+” button.
6. Next, select the files and folders that you wish to remove from your backup. Holding the Command key in your keyboard will allow you to select multiple items simultaneously.
7. Click Exclude.
8. Click the Save Button.

You can now exclude files from your backup that you don’t need.

You now know how to back up your files. Check out this step-by-step guide to restoring from Time Machine.