Time Machine: How do I start using it?
You’ll need a Mac running OS X 10.5 Leopard and an external hard drive or Time Capsule to use Time Machine. (You can also use an additional internal hard drive on a Mac Pro or a networked drive, but an external hard drive is simple and portable.) The capacity of your external hard drive determines how far back Time Machine will keep data backups for you. We generally recommend an external hard drive twice the size of your computer’s hard drive.
First you’ll want to follow the instructions under how to reformat and partition a new drive for backup. Then with the drive plugged into your computer, go to your System Preferences and select the Time Machine icon. There you can turn Time Machine on and select your external hard drive as the backup disk. The first Time Machine backup will usually take hours, so you may want to set it up to run overnight. You can continue to work on your computer while the backup runs.
Time Machine will continue making automatic backups for every hour of the last 24 hours, every day of the last month, and every week past that until your backup disk is full. Just plug in the drive whenever you want Time Machine to work. You can tell it is working by looking at the “counter-clockwise” icon in the menu bar.
Published March 24, 2009 12:00 PM
Last modified on June 16, 2009 3:41 PM
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