Mac Time Machine Manual Backup
Product Marketing Manager, Matthew Bennion, walks you through how to get your Apple computer backed up. Whether you're using a My Passport, My Book or e. The first Time Machine backup is always the longest because it has to backup the entire Mac and all data. After that first backup is complete, the future backups are delta backups, meaning only the.changes. between the prior backup and the new backup are backed up, which makes those frequent backups quite fast generally speaking. 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. Select your backup disk from the list of available disks. To start a manual Time Machine backup, press the Time Machine icon on the menu bar and start the backup. If you don't find the Time Machine icon, you can enable it in System Preferences Time Machine. It creates automatic, hourly backups of your Mac, so you don't have to worry about the frequency of backups.
Use Time Machine, the built-in backup feature of your Mac, to automatically back up your personal data, including apps, music, photos, email, and documents. Having a backup allows you to recover files that were deleted, or that were lost because the hard disk (or SSD) in your Mac needed to be erased or replaced. Learn how to restore your Mac from a backup.
Create a Time Machine backup
To create backups with Time Machine, all you need is an external storage device. After you connect the storage 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.
- External drive connected to your Mac, such as a USB or Thunderbolt drive
- Network-attached storage (NAS) device that supports Time Machine over SMB
- Mac shared as a Time Machine backup destination
- AirPort Time Capsule, or external drive connected to an AirPort Time capsule or AirPort Extreme Base Station (802.11ac)
Mac Time Machine Manual Backup User
Select your storage device as the backup disk
Mac Time Machine Manual Backup Time Machine
- 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.
- Select your backup disk from the list of available disks. To make your backup accessible only to users who have the backup password, you can select “Encrypt backups”. Then click Use Disk:
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, 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
- Learn about other ways to back up and restore files
- If you back up to multiple disks, you can 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.
Mac Os X Time Machine Manual Backup
I don't have what I would refer to as 'vital' content that needs to be backed up on an hourly basis. In fact, I only have about 57 GB on my hard drive. I primarily want to use the Time Machine feature as a general backup for the content that I have on my Macbook.
So, what I've been doing is to keep Time Machine OFF and randomly back up to my Time Capsule every few days or so. My thinking is that this will minimize the used space in the Time Capsule unit.
I'm curious if you all think this is a viable tactic for someone in my position? Also, I'm wondering If I were to keep Time Machine ON and I, after a while, fill up the space on my 500 GB Time Capsule, will the oldest backups automatically be deleted to make room for the more recent ones?
Thanks.
Macbook, Mac OS X (10.5.2)
Mac Time Machine Manual Backup Tool
Posted on Mar 5, 2008 7:42 PM