How to use Time Machine to back up or restore your Mac – File Repair Tool Blog
Time Machine allows user to create back up of entire your files to an external hard drive. By backing up your Mac data to any external data storage device you can reduce the chance of data loss. Time Machine is the built-in backup creating option of OS X. Before using this feature make sure that one of these external storage solutions is available or not:
- External hard drive wit USB, FireWire, or Thunderbolt port on your Mac
- External hard disk with USB port of an AirPort Extreme (802.11ac) base station on your network
- Time Capsule or OS X Server on your network
You may also like: How to Create Recovery Partition in OS X
After connecting an external hard drive directly to your Mac a message will appear that ask “You want to use the drive to back up with Time Machine.” click on the “Use as Backup Disk.” You can also choose the encrypt option, this will be accessible only to users with the password.
What to do when Time Machine doesn’t ask you to select a backup disk?
Step 1: Go to the Time Machine menu present in the menu bar and open Time Machine preferences. OR
Select Apple menu > System Preferences->click Time Machine.
Step 2: Click on the choose Backup Disk.
Step 3: Choose an external hard drive or Time Capsule or other storage solution from the list, then click Use Disk.
Step 4: You can add extra backup disk for more security and handiness, after selecting a backup disk, optionally click on the “Add or Remove Backup Disk” to add more backup disks.
Back up using Time Machine
After the successful completion of Time Machine setup, it will makes hourly backups for the past 24 hours automatically, every day backups for the past month, and weekly backups for all previous months.
Note: The oldest backups are deleted automatically when your backup drive is packed.
- If you want to create backup now then you have to select “Back Up Now” from the Time Machine menu.
- If you want to stop the automatic backups then turn off Time Machine in Time Machine preferences.
- If you want to pause a backup process then select “Stop Backup” present at the Time Machine menu. To resume, select Back Up Now.
- In case you want to exclude some items from your backup then open Time Machine preferences from present at the Time machine menu and click Options-> click Add and choose the item to exclude.
Steps to Restore from a Time Machine backup
How to Restore Specific Files:
Step 1: Click on the “Enter Time Machine” option that present at the Time Machine menu , or click on the Time Machine in the Dock.
Step 2: Search the files to restore:
- Use the timeline present on the edge of the screen to see the files present in your Time Machine backup. Snapshot is also present at the timeline.
- To see when the content of the window is change at last time you can use the onscreen up and down arrows. If you want to find any file then you can also use the search field present in a window.
- To see the preview of any file, choose a file and press Space Bar.
Step 3: After it click on the Restore button to restore the selected file.
How to restore Mac data/files without any backup?
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This task can be achieved by the help of professionally designed Mac Data Recovery software. This application allows user to restore Mac data without need of any backup. A normal user can operate this tool without having any professional skill because it contains very easy to understand user interface. Its Advance algorithm makes data recovery possible without need of backup.
