Time Machine is a most excellent backup system that was introduced with OS X Leopard — and OS X Mavericks has only made it better. It’s a system because it consists of two parts: the Time Machine System Preference pane and the Time Machine application. To use Time Machine to back up your data automatically,. For most users, the most noticeable changes are these: the disk space that the operating system frees up after a clean installation compared to Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, a more responsive Finder rewritten in Cocoa, faster Time Machine backups, more reliable and user friendly disk ejects, a more powerful version of the Preview application, as well.
You can use Time Machine, the built-in backup feature of your Mac, to automatically back up all of your files, including apps, music, photos, email, documents, and system files. When you have a backup, you can restore files from your backup if the original files are ever deleted from your Mac, or the hard disk (or SSD) in your Mac is erased or replaced.
Create a Time Machine backup
To create backups with Time Machine, all you need is an external storage device. After you connect the device and select it as your backup disk, Time Machine automatically makes hourly backups for the past 24 hours, daily backups for the past month, and weekly backups for all previous months. The oldest backups are deleted when your backup disk is full.
Connect an external storage device
Connect one of the following external storage devices, sold separately. Learn more about backup disks that you can use with Time Machine.
Time Machine Backup Mac Os X Server
- External drive connected to your Mac, such as a USB, Thunderbolt, or FireWire drive
- External drive connected to an AirPort Extreme Base Station (802.11ac model) or AirPort Time Capsule
- AirPort Time Capsule
- Mac shared as a Time Machine backup destination
- Network-attached storage (NAS) device that supports Time Machine over SMB
Select your storage device as the backup disk
When you connect an external drive directly to your Mac, you might be asked if you want to use the drive to back up with Time Machine. Select Encrypt Backup Disk (recommended), then click Use as Backup Disk.
An encrypted backup is accessible only to users with the password. Learn more about keeping your backup disk secure.
If Time Machine doesn't ask to use your drive, follow these steps to add it manually:
- Open Time Machine preferences from the Time Machine menu in the menu bar. Or choose Apple () menu > System Preferences, then click Time Machine.
- Click Select Backup Disk (or Select Disk, or Add or Remove Backup Disk):
- Select your external drive from the list of available disks. Then select ”Encrypt backups” (recommended) and click Use Disk:
Time Machine
If the disk you selected isn't formatted as required by Time Machine, you're prompted to erase the disk first. Click Erase to proceed. This erases all information on the backup disk.
Enjoy the convenience of automatic backups
After you select a backup disk, Time Machine immediately begins making periodic backups—automatically and without further action by you. The first backup may take a long time, depending on how many files you have, but you can continue using your Mac while a backup is underway. Time Machine backs up only the files that changed since the previous backup, so future backups will be faster.
To start a backup manually, choose Back Up Now from the Time Machine menu in the menu bar. Use the same menu to check the status of a backup or skip a backup in progress.
Learn more
Time Machine For Mac Os X64
- If you back up to multiple disks, you can switch disks before entering Time Machine. Press and hold the Option key, then choose Browse Other Backup Disks from the Time Machine menu.
- To exclude items from your backup, open Time Machine preferences, click Options, then click the Add (+) button to add an item to be excluded. To stop excluding an item, such as an external hard drive, select the item and click the Remove (–) button.
- If using Time Machine to back up to a network disk, you can verify those backups to make sure they're in good condition. Press and hold Option, then choose Verify Backups from the Time Machine menu.
- In OS X Lion v10.7.3 or later, you can start up from your Time Machine disk, if necessary. Press and hold Option as your Mac starts up. When you see the Startup Manager screen, choose “EFI Boot” as the startup disk.
The purpose of this script is to assist the examiner to visualize the paths of relevant target files within a Mac OS X Time Machine volume.
Before running the script the examiner must first blue-check the files in the volume that are of interest. It is advisable to tag those files first so as to avoid losing the selection by inadvertently switching views.
When the script runs it will write the selected files into a nominated logical evidence file (LEF) using the same paths as would be observed were the Time Machine volume to be viewed under Mac OS X. The examiner has the option of filtering the output, so, for instance, it's possible to select all of the pictures within the Time Machine volume but only write those pictures to the LEF is they contain the string 'Users' somewhere in their path.
Only one Time Machine volume can be processed at a time. If the examiner selects files from more than one volume the script will raise an error. Every file of interest must be selected even if it is a hard-linked duplicate: the script won't find duplicates automatically - it would take too long.
It's important to bear in mind that re-creating the structure of a Time Machine backup can be time consuming and take a substantial amount of disk-space. Not only that, but because many files will exist in more than one backup, the resultant LEF will usually contain far more files than were actually selected by the examiner. This notwithstanding, the use of hash-values within the internal LEF structure will ensure that only one copy of a duplicate file is actually stored.