Tech Tips and How-To Guides

macOS has a built-in backup system called Time Machine that automatically backs up your entire computer to an external drive. Once you set it up, it runs in the background every hour without you having to think about it.

What you need

An external hard drive or SSD with at least twice the storage capacity of your Mac's internal drive. Plug it in via USB or Thunderbolt.

How to set up Time Machine

1. Connect your external drive to your Mac.
2. Open System Settings and click General, then Time Machine.
3. Click Add Backup Disk and select your external drive.
4. Time Machine will ask if you want to use the drive for backups. Click Use as Backup Disk.
5. The first backup will start automatically. It may take several hours if you have a lot of data.

How Time Machine works

Time Machine backs up your entire system every hour for the past 24 hours, daily backups for the past month, and weekly backups for everything older than that. You can restore individual files, folders, or your entire system from any of those snapshots.

Restoring files

To restore a file, open Time Machine from the menu bar or from System Settings. Navigate to the date when the file existed, find it, and click Restore. The file is copied back to its original location.

Cloud backup

iCloud Drive backs up files you store there automatically, but it is not a full system backup. For complete protection, use Time Machine for local backup and iCloud or Backblaze for an offsite cloud copy.