Apple Time Machine Review | Macmonde

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We all understand the importance of backing up a Mac, even though so much of our lives are stored in the cloud. If something happens to your Mac and you need to recover your data, you’ll be glad to have a backup. Regularly backing up a Mac is one of the easiest things you can do thanks to the included Time Machine software, but many still don’t do it. In our Time Machine review, we’ll explain how easy it is to back up a Mac with Time Machine and why you should do it.

We take a separate look at other Mac backup options, many of which offer more than Time Machine, but aren’t free like Time Machine. We also explain how to back up a Mac and how to use Time Machine and how to restore from a Time Machine backup elsewhere.

What does Time Machine do?

Since its introduction in 2007 with Mac OS X 10.5 (“Leopard”), Apple’s Time Machine backup utility has been one of the best tools for local (and sometimes NAS-based) backups. The software works on the idea of ​​creating a full initial backup of every file on your Mac, then performing incremental backups throughout the day as long as your Mac is connected to a designated external Time Machine backup drive, fills a niche and made local and automated backups easy enough to be a background task.

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Time Machine has gradually improved with each new version of macOS, and it’s both its simplicity and reliability that deserve your attention. Simply boot up your Mac, connect an external USB or Thunderbolt hard drive or SSD to your Mac, and your version of macOS will ask you if you want to use the external drive as a Time Machine backup drive, associating it with this Mac. while allowing the drive to be disconnected and used as an external drive for other computers.

This is the first backup that always takes the longest since every file on your Mac is included in the Time Machine backup, but it gets faster from there because only recently used files are copied to subsequent backups.

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One of the most interesting and useful parts of Time Machine has always been the Restore feature, which allows you to open Time Machine, scroll through past backups, locate the files you’re looking for, and restore them to the desired location. location of your choice. This comes in handy if you accidentally deleted some files, remember that you saw them a week ago and go back to get the most recent version. Alternatively, you may have made changes to a file and then realized you need to revert to an earlier version, Time Machine can help with that too. This, when combined with the macOS Migration Assistant utility, makes it easier to restore certain file types.

Migration Assistant makes it simple to port data and user profiles from an old Mac to a new one. It’s also easy to add multiple/redundant backup drives. Simply add a new external drive and Time Machine will ask you if you also want it to become a Time Machine backup drive for your Mac. For users who import a Time Machine backup to a new Mac, Time Machine inherits previous backups well and transfers them to the new Mac easily, which is always appreciated.

For those concerned about security, Time Machine offers interesting, even extensive, features. It’s easy to designate a password with which to encrypt your Time Machine backups, and while you’re out by a creek without a paddle, if you forget the password, it can prevent someone from snagging your drive Backup Time Machine and have easy access to its folders. Other little touches, such as macOS reminding you how many days have passed since your last Time Machine backup, prove useful and push you to always have your backup drive connected to your Mac, because it won’t do much good -thing. just sitting on a shelf somewhere.

What Time Machine doesn’t do

For all its strengths, Time Machine still has some weaknesses to consider. With the exception of Time Capsule routers of yesteryear and some NAS drives that support the Time Machine protocol, Time Machine is geared toward local backups. Local backups are still an ideal solution, but the automated online backup market has grown significantly in recent years, with services such as iCloud, OneDrive, Dropbox, Box and others seeing growth as a result. impressive. It’s always best to have both a secure local and offsite copy of your data, and Time Machine is geared more toward your office’s external hard drive, which can be lost, damaged, or stolen.

A lack of specifications in terms of choosing which files to include or exclude when backing up data means that you will end up storing all the files on your Mac. This isn’t a bad thing, but it can take up more space on your Time Machine backup drive, where some users might prefer a more elegant approach, tailored to the data they want to back up and nothing more. This, combined with the lack of specific backup scheduling functionality behind setting up to backup on a manual, hourly, weekly, or monthly basis, can be a bit irritating for users who want more control over the process. It’s not a terrible approach, but there’s something to be said for a predictable schedule (i.e., at night when you’re sleeping), and Apple has kept Time Machine’s options simple without offering this choice to its user base.

Should you use Time Machine?

Despite its weaknesses, Time Machine remains an exceptional solution for local backups on your Mac. Yes, you’ll need to keep an external hard drive connected to your Mac for it to work consistently, and that’s not as convenient as an automated cloud-based system that automatically puts your backup files online all the time. throughout the day, and yes, an external hard drive can be lost, damaged or fail with little or no warning, but the operating system still has an excellent level of protection. If you don’t have a Time Machine backup set up, it’s worth thinking about it, getting a good external hard drive, and taking a few minutes to prepare for the future.

You may think that the important files you work on every day are stored in the cloud, but be careful, there will inevitably be items that are only on your Mac, along with all your settings, software and everything else that is pre -cloud, which you don’t want. lose. Time Machine is a simple system to avoid the worst case scenario.