Wow! Thank you! We didn't know how to restore files after backing them up to Time Machine. Thank you!!! So helpful. We've saved this video for later in case we need to see it again
Gary, you are the absolute best and my first stop on all questions Mac. I have bought over 40 and I go back to the 2E with Apple. I still own a perfectly functioning 2GS with an Applied Engineering 8 Mhz. accelerator card, and a Mac 7600 with a G3 accelerator card.
I am commenting on your video mainly because it is so well done and easy to go through the questions. You probably have a video on how to do that and I would love to find out how. My problem was that I had an older Mac Pro and a 4TB SSD that I used as a Time Machine. That drive was accidentally disconnected for quite a while and when I purchased a New Mac Pro, I needed to use it, but it just wouldn't back up my files, so I used a different 4TB drive and created a new Time Machine. Here was the problem. I tried everything to reformat the drive using the advice of RU-vidrs and couldn't get it done on the old machine and thought to install it along with my larger SSD on the new Mac Pro where I would reformat everything and then install everything new. Still, the drive was bulletproof as it was labeled Master Boot. So, I just restarted my Mac Pro with everything installed now and have left the Time Machine drive installed where you are given a choice of "eject," "initialize," or "erase." After so many failures I just chose "eject" and then opened up Disk Utility and tried to erase it and reformat it any way other than "Master Boot." It worked and it took seconds. You have to understand that I had done everything including things said in passing like attaching it to a Windows machine and even then that machine would not do anything. There you go. The question and answer that I was looking for but could not find. Now I can actually use a good and fast 4TB SSD that I was about to toss.
I’m having an issue... On an ext HD, Time Machine has run out of space and thus stopped backups entirely. I get a pop up that say something like “Time Machine doesn’t have enough space to back up etc..” Why is this happening? I want Time Machine to ditch older files that aren’t needed and then continue to backup my recent files. This issue has been a huge blunder and time waster. I’m spending weeks researching how to fix this issue and wether or not I should ditch TM for different backup software? Beyond frustrating! FYI there are other files on the drive that TM is on. And why can’t I just delete old TM files? I have ZERO use for backups from 2 months ago, let alone 2 years ago, makes no sense.
This was one of your best informational videos, i love time machine and time capsule and apple, iPhones, Apple TV and MBPros, when i got off Hewlett Packard in 2012 it was the best thing i ever did and i never looked back.
Hi Gary - thanks for another terrific video. Can you tell me whether I should back up Parallels using Time Machine, or will it quickly fill up my external hard drive? Thanks for your help
I’m thinking of using boot camp to use windows on my iMac. I would want to use a drive to turn back the clock, if I decide I no longer want windows on my computer. How would I use time machine for that, would I restart to the full previous stored version? How? You showed us how to go back to an older file, but what about system wide, or what I’m looking for?
Lots of factors there. You should just be able to delete the Boot Camp partition and go back to having macOS have the whole drive. But you'll need to think on your feet when the time comes. I haven't had to do that in probably 10+ years, and a lot has changed. Otherwise, you can always just wipe the drive, reinstall macOS from recovery mode, and then restore your user account and apps from Time Machine (it asks when you set up macOS).
I used to use Time machine but quit doing it as the old drive was suspect after many years. I think I will get a drive and set it up again. Thanks for prompting me on this,
Thanks Gary, very informative, I do have a specific question. I recently downloaded the latest version of Sonoma 14.6.1 on my iMac and found an issue with one of my programs, I've contacted Apple but they were unable to solve. Just curious, I do have a Time Machine backup prior to downloading this new version of Sonoma, Can I go back to that date and time and restore the old Sonoma version which was working just fine. Appreciate your comments. Regards Tony
Not easily, no. Did you contact the maker of that app about the problem? That would be the thing to do. You can't stop updates and leave your Mac frozen in time and with security updates and compatibility issues just to keep one app going.
Hey Gary! Thanks for this video. Just purchased a new MacBook Pro M1 and want to restore from my older MacBook (2015), both are running BigSur. You showed in this video how to restore individual files, but do you have a video that shows how to restore ALL user data to a MacBook that currently has an iOS installed? If so, please point me to it when you have a chance. Thanks so much. Jeff.
Thanks for the video! If I do a full back up of my laptop and for some reason I go back to restore from time machine …does it also restore that backups iOS that it was created at that time or just restore files on current iOS? If I go to restore point that was older iOS will it restore how,it looked back then files and iOS version?
Are you backing up your iPhone to your Mac? If so, that backup file is on your Mac and it would be restored at the same time along with every other file. But iOS backups don't back up the operating system, just your data. But what's your goal here? You don't need to restore your whole Mac just to restore your iPhone.
@@macmost thanks a lot . I am finally buying a NAS for the same based on your recommendation in lesson 13 I think . Also for my 2 TB Mackbook pro , I think 6TB would be enough for time machine or should I increase the capacity?
Can't I just make two partitions in the drive so it does Time Machines backups and is used for storage? Also, can I use one drive for Time Machine backups with two MacBooks, an older one and a new one?
Hey Gary. Always useful information. thanks. I'm wondering if Time Machine can be used to back up non-OSX work drives to an external i.e. my photo/video drive to an external back up. Can I have Time Machine back up multiple sources to multiple targets? So, a basic OSX backup as usual but also a photo drive to its own back up drive, a video edit drive to it's own back up drive etc... Thanks fro your help
You need to use an empty drive. First, you can't back up data from the same drive -- that doesn't make sense for local reasons. Second, you want to let Time Machine control the entire drive. Just get a drive that is dedicated to your backup and nothing else.
You strongly suggest dedicating a drive for Time Machine. Can I partition a large drive and dedicate part of it to Time Machine? Do you see any downside to this strategy?
Hi Gary! Thanks for this amazing video! Just wondering f you have a video (or if it's even possible) about backing up (time machine) multiple macs with just one drive. Would love to know! Thanks so much!
You can do that with no extra steps needed. Just use the same drive. But if these are stationary Macs, then get them each their own drive so they can be connected all the time. Even if they are laptops, if you are connecting them manually, just get each its own drive. But using one (big) drive is handy when it is connected as a network drive and you are using it backup laptop Macs .
Gary, thanks for this material. I have subscribed and support you on Patreon. I am a newbie in every sense of the word. Here's my dilemma: I use two time machine backups as you mentioned... one at home and one at work. The one at work can be ejected easily by going to Finder, locating the drive and ejecting. The drive at home will occasionally work in the same way, but usually no matter how often you push on the eject symbol, you are told something is using the drive. If you Force Quit, there is a warning the drive isn't being ejected properly. Thoughts?
I just bought a new Mac mini. When I started it up and logged in as an Apple user, I noticed that the calendar and contacts from my old MacBook Pro had already populated those apps. My question is if I use the Migration Asst program from my MacBook Pro to transfer data from a Time Machine backup to my new Mac mini, will there be a bunch of duplicate entries in my calendar and contacts. Thanks
Gary - Love your channel! I'm still trying to figure out how to best backup my MacBook Pro using Time Machine. I'm running both Catalina for legacy programs and Monterey for current apps. It seams that I need to run separate backups for each OS. Is there a better way to do this? Also, any tips on restoring a drive with dual operating systems would be appreciated. Thanks!
You mentioned that you can use a single drive for multiple computers at 3:48. Do you need to partition the drive or do anything to it to allow it to separate the computers? I haven't been able to get a straight answer online or via Apple Tech Support - but when I plug in my drive to the router I'm only able to select a single one of my partitions to use for Time Machine. Can I remove the partitions all together an backup multiple computers over the network to the same disk without any additional partitioning?
I currently use Time Machine to backup my MacBook. I also do a weekly disk copy with SuperDuper to a separate drive. If I was to use iCloud fully, so all my data and photos were "in the cloud", would Time Machine still have everything backed up as it does now from the hard disk? With iCloud is all the data physically still on my Mac AND in iCloud or is it only brought back to the Mac when I want to update a file?
Not sure what you mean by "use iCloud fully." There are two options: Not Optimized and Optimized. The first means that every file is stored on your local drive as well as iCloud. The second means that some files are stored only in iCloud, others in both places. In the first instance where everything is also local, then Time Machine can back up everything. In the second case, only the files that are local would be backed up. So it depends on your "Optimize Mac Storage" setting in System Preferences.
What if you are a person that uses a laptop just to listen to music, and send emails, just basic things like that. Do you really need it? Because I’m trying to help my grandma out cuz she is running out of storage, the “system storage” is taking up a lot of space. And I found that backup time machine is probably mostly part of the system storage. So, do you think I could delete some of the stuff that’s backed up? She just needs the laptop for listening for songs on chrome, and send emails, or letters.
Is there a problem though? It would use extra storage for backup "snapshots" but only if there is room. If she only uses it for these things, and there is no problem, don't worry about "system storage" and let macOS manage that.
@@macmost The problem is ... "she has reached the storage limit". Specs: 121 GB, Macbook ari 2020. In the Desktop: there is only 1 file, which is less than a Mega byte. Applications: about 14 GB. there was other stuff too, but the one that stood out the most was the system storage. It took almost half her storage. about 50 GB. I tried looking in the library, but I don't see any big files, and I'm afraid to delete any files in the library, cuz first of all, there aren't any big files to delete (some of them or 0 bytes, some 2kb, 5kb...). And i'm kinda afraid that i might delete some important file. So after doing some research, about how to manage, delete files from system storage, on most of the videos/articles I read, they mentioned time machine "snap shots", and deleting those might help.
@@Ginfio Don't worry about "categories" like system storage. Look in her Home folder. Which folder there is biggest? Look in Documents, same. Look in Applications. Do an inventory on a folder-by-folder basis to find out what is taking up space.
@@macmost hmm, ok. I looked everywhere. but I WILL look again. Do you think deleting older snapshots would be a bad idea, or do you think that could be something we could do? too.
Great job! And I know this is 3 years old, but I'm reaching out in case you still check messages on this video! In time machine, the "little" lines (before "today" or "right now" are not available to click on unless I click and hold down "Today," but once I let "today" go, I am unable to click on the little lines I see that are for yesterday. Any help on this would be greatly appreciated!
Let's say I do a full time machine backup, then upgrade my OS to a new release (e.g. OS X 10 to OS X 14) and certain programs or plugins no longer work, can I restore everything back to the way it was? I.e., revert from OS X 14 back to OS X 10, and all files just as they were before, as if the OS upgrade never took place?
short, crisp and really useful. Excellent video. BUt have one question. What if your macbook runs out of power or battery or for some reason, you need to stop the backup and put off your laptop. Can one resume the back up again the next day? Please advise
It will just stop the backup and continue them the next time. But this rarely happens because if you have your MacBook connected to your external Time Machine drive, then why not have it connected to power at the same time?
Gary, thank you for sharing your knowledge. I have a MacBook Air that is shutting down by itself periodically. I had not been using time machine. However now that I know the computer has a problem, I purchased a new external hard drive to attempt to record a time machine copy. I found that even in “safe mode” the computer would shut down after about five minutes. I learned that if the computer was kept very cold I could extend the on time in safe mode for a few hours. So by keeping the computer very cold, I was able to make it run for about 4 hours, which was about 20 minutes from getting a full time machine backup. I repeated the following day. I expected time machine to start the previous incomplete backup all over. But it appears that time machine remembered what was left to back up and completed the previously failed back up. So do you believe the above is true, that I do in fact have a comolete backup?
Time Machine is for backing up Macs, not iPhones. The best way to back up your iPhone is just to have the iCloud Backup turned on. Otherwise, you have to manually do it to your Mac with a sync.
Can I back up my new M1 MacBook Air to my old 3 TB time capsule? I’d like to reformat the time capsule but I’m not sure which format to choose. Will it function with the new M1 Mac’s?
Thanks for the video. I know TM is supposed to erase oldest versions when drive fills up, but mine is now saying it cannot complete backup because of lack of disk space. Why will it not just erase old versions? 500gig MacBook - 1tb dedicated external time machine drive.
There is a limit. It removes older versions of each file, but keeps one copy at least (otherwise it wouldn't be a very good backup). So as you delete files and replace them with others there is one copy of the deleted file still around. That's how you fill up a Time Machine drive. How fast that happens depends on the type of things you do on your Mac. 1TB is definitely much too small of a drive for Time Machine in your case.
do you know of any way to compare time machine backups? So like a list of differences between them where we can see which files have been added, deleted or modified between 2 or more backups on our external disk so we can quickly check the differences between all our backups and change back any files that were mistakenly changed before it's too late and the oldest backup gets replaced as time passes as we may not have even noticed a change (deletion, addition or modification) on certain files that we may not want to remain as such? That would be a VERY VERY useful tool!!
Great video! Can I ask is it risky to just allow Time Machine to delete older backups? Will I lose files? Should I just delete my backup hard drive and start a new complete backup or just keep on doing what I'm doing. Any help much appreciated!
Hey Stephen, so Time Machine is an interesting type of backup system that is unlike most other backup systems. When it makes the incremental backups, backing up only files that have changed or have been added, it then adds what's called a hard link to previous backups so that no matter which date you select to look at, you will see all available files not just the ones that were backed up on that date. By doing this, it saves space by not duplicating something that is already there, it just links to it. If the file changes later on, then the new backup will have the changed file and will not link to the old file. However, the old file is still there if you go to the older date. So what happens if you run out of disk space, the Time Machine will start to overwrite the old data with the new backup information. Will your old data be erased will depend on how long has it been removed from the system? If it was only a couple of weeks ago, then your data will probably be safe but if it months or years ago then yes that data will probably be gone. There are two types of backups. Archival and non-archival. Archival backups are backups of files that you want to make sure never get deleted. Things like photos or may special documents that you just don't ever want to be deleted. Those should be backed up separately from time machine either on a CD, Flash drive, or another hard drive or partition. I have separate partition on my time machine drive where I have some things stored that I don't want deleted right now. I usually drag and drop them over that partition. Time machine is more of a non-archival backup that is used for disaster recovery should something happen while you are using the system. It will keep old backups for as long as possible but it will assume that if the data is old enough that is not being backed up because it has been removed from the system then it probably isn't important anymore and will eventually delete it when it needs space. So I hope this helps to understand the types of backups and what happens when it runs out of space.
Not sure if you watch from comments from older videos of yours, but I'm hoping you do. I recently bought a new I-mac, but because of it's very small SSD hard-drive, I know it would not hold all the info from my 2T hard drive from the older Mac. So, I just went through the airdropping all the folders & files. Now that I have the new Mac setup, I got rid of the old one. But then I remembered some other files I forgot to copy over, but hey, I still have my Time Machine backup on an external drive. But I have been horribly disappointed to find Time Machine only really works for the Mac it was created on. If I enter time machine now, I see all my save dates, and all the folders, but their all empty. Is there a way for me to access the saved files on my Time Machine that was created on a different Mac?
They are all empty? You should see your folder structure in those. And they you should be able to dig around and get your files. Not sure why you aren't seeing anything. Are you looking in the one with the most recent date, or the one named "Latest?"
Question: Time Machine backup way back from 2014 Snow Leopard onto a 1TB WD drive... I didn't understand "backups" at all then and rather than formatting it via Disk Utility, the drive self formatted when I used Time Machine. My goal was to backup .jpg and .mov or .mp4 on my system to the hard drive so I could view and copy files with any other computer (Windows, Mac)... any way to retrieve the files now to see and copy them as usable to another computer or external drive?
I backed up Catalina across the network to an external drive that’s plugged into an AirPort Extreme (5th Gen). I booted into Internet Recovery and selected Restore From Time Machine Backup. When I click “connect” I am prompted for a password for “System Administrator” The ONLY pwd anywhere is my pwd to login and the password to access AirPort Extreme. Any thoughts?
I am new to MAC so thanks for all the great videos. A tech guy suggested I disconnect external drive so it can't be attacked and connect only for backups. How would you address the ransomware attack issue?
How do you back up the apps or software on your mac or does TM automatically backup everything you use on your device? E.G. your entire adobe creative suite.
It does, but that doesn't matter. If your Mac were to die or get stolen, you could just re-download the Adobe apps using Creative Cloud. No need to restore from a backup at all.
Garry, I have my PC backed up to OneDrive with lot of space for free from MS. Can the Time Machine backup my MacBook to a folder on OneDrive? Will OneDrive automatically backup MacBook same as to a External Drive.
My macbook has a 250gig drive and after backing up my iphone it already used up almost 200gig. If I have successfully backed up in time machine, can i delete this iphone backup to free up space and get it back in time machine in the future if needed? Thanks in advance.
How to view, restore a photo from Time Machine? (not whole library, it's huge ) Macbook drive mainly has pics and own videos, got 2 TB ssd for TM, ran OK, can open TM, see Pictures folder with Photos lib in it (just like macbook finder.) Click Photos library in mb Finder Pictures folder, see pics OK Click Photos in TM finder Pictures folder, it does not open Photos app (just a big dead file :) Thanks for great, concise video. And any explanation: If MB ssd full, delete some videos or pics I know are on TM, how do I find, see and restore just those?
As always Gary, Thank you for the great video! I just received back my Late 2016 Macbook Pro w/ touchbar from Apple and want to completely restore it from my Time machine backup. Do you have a video on completely restoring from Time Machine? Thanks again and Happy New Year!!
Gary, the drive on my 3t Time Machine stopped working about a month ago, and ordered a 4T 3.5 Sata replacement. how would I copy the data from the old one onto the new one. (I haven't replaced yet). Love your videos..
Hi Gary, your videos are great! Question: I've never had much luck with Time Machine. When I look at it in System Preferences it says "Preparing backup...", but the 'progress bar', as it were, is a blue line that bounces back and forth, so I have no idea if it's actually making progress on preparing the backup. Nor are there any numbers displayed, nothing like, 'XX files scanned, XX files remaining'. How can I tell if it is actually preparing backup and not spinning its wheels? Thanks!
Hey Flap Jack. I understand where you are coming from. When it is preparing the drive, there is nothing to indicate how long it will take or if it is actually doing something. How long it takes to do this depends on how much data you have on your system and how often you do the backups. If you leave the drive plugged in, after the initial Preparations are done when you first plug the drive in, the rest of the backups should go pretty quickly and the Preparing backup should not be on for long. However, if you are like me where I can't keep the drive plugged in all the time, then when I do plug the drive in it can take a couple of hours for the preparing drive message to go away and actually start the backup procedure. The only way I know it's doing something is by looking at the hard drive light and see that is flashing so something is happening on the drive. It would be nice to have something showing that something is happening and how long it will take to run the process but it may not be possible because it doesn't know itself how long the process is going to take.
Excellent video, but I have a question. It looks like the Time Machine stopped doing backups to the external drive 2 years ago on the Mac I am inspecting. It sounds like the external drive is broken (makes noise). However, Time Machine seems to be continuing to do back ups somehow. Does it default to the internal Mac drive for TM backups when the external gets corrupted? I’m confused.
I strongly recommend a dedicated drive for this. Get a large HDD (cheap per TB). If you use the drive for other purposes, then those files on the drive won't really be backed up (one drive = one point of failure).
I use Time Capsule device to back up my MacBook Air. I am getting a new iMac in a week and will use this MacBook Air backup (from Time Capsule) & restore it to my new iMac. So I will now have 2 Macs with same data & configuration, etc. 1. MacBook Air (with backup configured to Time Capsule) 2. iMac (without a backup configured yet) My main question - Can I also configure iMac backup to the same Time Capsule device (in addition to existing backup from MacBook Air)? Kindly guide me. Please note, both my MacBook Air and iMac will use same Apple ID. Thanks in advance.
If you plan on using both computers, then maybe you don't want to use MA. That's for going from an old computer to a new one. If you want to use both then maybe use iCloud and iCloud Drive to have the same items on both and keep them both working together. Hard to advise without knowing how you plan to use these.
@@macmost thanks so much for quick response. Let me try to explain how I plan to use both macs. iMac will be extensively used as I am mostly working from home. If I need to travel and work from an other city for few days, then I will carry MacBook Air.
@@sharatharun Yes, so you'll be using both Macs. Set up the MacBook Air as you like, but don't migrate to it as you don't want duplicates of all of your files and have to always figure out which is the current one. I'd use iCloud Drive so you can see all of your files on both Macs if I were you (this is in fact how I do it with two Macs).
@@macmost Thank you. I will do this. Sounds logical. But on separate note, can a single Time Capsule support multiple Mac backups? Let’s say 3 members of a family wanna backup their respective Macs to ‘same’ Time Capsule ?
@@sharatharun Time Capsule? Apple hasn't made those in a few years. But yes, they could support multiple Macs. The last version of Time Capsule would have had a pretty small drive though, so as long as the 3 family members weren't using their Macs for much it would be OK.
Hey Gary, something not mentioned, something I made a huge mistake of when updating to Monterey from Catalina, I reformatted the Time Machine drive to have it work for Monterey, not realizing the obvious, it would delete everything. I do have the majority of stuff on my machine already but, there are some ( photo folder ) that I don't. Right now I tried Easeus 's restore program with no luck ( it found a bunch of unfamiliar file formats ) the company said if they are unfamiliar then it looks like what you are looking for is unrecoverable. I'm trying Wondersoft Iskysoft's program, heard its able to do better and keep the "tree" of the files, so maybe this would be better? My question is, do you know of any ways to be able to restore a deleted snapshot/time machine backup?
I recently got my iMac back from the Apple Genius bar. My iMac was running very very slow and I couldn’t diagnose why, despite trying all your tips. They said my computer was slow because of Ventura being too much for it and they reverted it back to Mojave. They told me then I could restore it from Timemachine, as they had erased all my profiles etc. When I did the timemachine my computer now runs a bit faster but it is still using Ventura! Did I do something wrong or did Apple not replace the OS after all? Was there another way I should have been using TimeMachine?
No idea what you experienced there. It would be very odd for Apple to revert your macOS to an older version like that. Are you sure that is what they said they did? Maybe you misunderstood. If your Mac supports Ventura, then running Ventura should be fine.
can I use the very same external HD to back up 2 Mac OSX systems...? in my case my MacBook runs Mavericks (1/3) and High Sierra (2/3) ... if yes how should I proceed...? maybe I have to apply 2 partitions and Time Machine back up Mavericks to one and High Sierra to another... right...?
If you are talking about a networked drive, then yes, people do that all the time. But if you have to physically move the drive from one Mac to another, then just get another drive for each to make it easier. Of course if you are using iCloud Drive and storing everything in there, you may only really need to backup one Mac since they would all have the same files on them, right?
@@macmost well, by now I'm using the same external HD (1T) divided in 2 partitions (500) to Time machine back up both systems ("Mavericks" & "High Sierra") I mean one system one partition ... thanks for your reply...! actually "work in progress", 6 hrs remaining...! for High Sierra...!
Tony Padgett I tried to encrypt my data on time machine and it’s been stuck in the encryption process for hours with no progress. Any ideas how to pause it? Or stop it?
Hi Gary... I'm truly fan of your videos and content presentation.. Can I back up my SD card permanently inserted on Mac with Time Machine and same drive?? If yes, how..
My 16 TB Time Machine drive is getting full. I have begun using a cloud service for my photo library because I'm piling up too many drives on my desk (professional photography). Will Time Machine eventually delete files that I have taken off the source drive or is there a safe way to remove them manually?
No, it shouldn't. It should keep one copy of everything. You may want to consider reformatting the drive and starting again. Or, since you are a professional, put that drive away and start a new one.
Thanks for the wonderful and informative vid. A quick question , could Time Machine be used to restore a computer’s previous state . Let’s say, I have installed MS Office 365 into my Mac and I would like to use TimeMachine to go back to the state before MS Office was installed . The whole thing is like uninstall MS Office. Could Time Machine fulfil this function? Thanks in advance for your wonderful tips. 😊
Yes, using the Restore option in recovery mode. But you definitely don't want to do that to just uninstall Microsoft Office. That is way too much work with way too much risk for such a simple thing. Just uninstall it normally. Assuming you installed from the Microsoft download (not the Mac App Store) the instructions are here: support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/uninstall-office-for-mac-eefa1199-5b58-43af-8a3d-b73dc1a8cae3
Hi Gary! I have multiple USB Time Machine Backups. Right now I plug one in every week or so and let it do a backup then remove it. I would like to leave one in all the time and just swap them every so often, but then I have to eject the USB to unplug my Mac from the dock (which I always forget to do). Any tips for handling this other than going with the network option?
@@macmost I really like time machine, and prefer it over the others. I also like always having something offline. I think my solution will be to do both network and USB (temporarily connecting just to back up every so often). Just wish there was some option to tell TM to 'back up at 2pm then disconnect the drive' or something like that.
FYI, Apple doesn't support multiple Time Machine backups on the same drive. It will work. I did it for years with no problem. But, when I went to copy one of my backups to a different drive, a 200 GB Time Machine folder would copy indefinitely until a 1 TB destination drive would run out of room. I don't know if that had anything to do with using the drive to backup more than one Mac, but when trying to solve the problem I learned they don't support it. I was hoping to find out more about the difference between an encrypted vs. unencrypted backup and what drawbacks there are to an encrypted drive. I'm trying to decide if the security is worth whatever hassles an encrypted backup entails. It's nice to be able to just go into the TM backup and grab a file without entering TM, like if I'm on another Mac. I don't suppose you can do that with an encrypted backup. If anyone does decide to use encrypted backups, make sure you go into Disk Utility and format the TM drive as encrypted before you do your first TM backup. Otherwise, TM will take days (literally) to encrypt the backup compared to a few seconds to format it encrypted.
I assume you mean multiple backups from different computers on the same drive. Many people do this and have been doing this for a long time. If you have a Time Capsule and multiple Macs, it is pretty standard.But I think if you tried to copy a Time Machine backup from one drive to another, that is probably not supported. I have always just started a new fresh backup and never try to "move" existing backups.
I'm having a tough time finding out if I can backup different data on a single computer to separate external drives. Can this be done. Here's the scenario. I have regular household data on my desktop and I have my photo imagery files on the same desktop. I would like to use Time Machine to backup the household data on one external drive and have the photo image files backed up on the other external drive. I need to understand how to select the specific data (say the photo imagery data) and have Time Machine save it to the specific external hard drive I want?
That's how Time Machine works by default. Just set up the third drive to be your Time Machine backup. It should backup everything on your internal and external. Make sure in Time Machine settings you don't have your external listed in the Privacy settings (which would cause Time Machine to skip it). This is exactly my setup, in fact.
Saturday, November 25, 2023, 7:31 p.m. Hi Gary, I am trying to view and listen to this Time Machine RU-vid and I cannot get the sound to work. If I switch to another of your videos, no problem there is sound, I did this a few times and all worked OK. Any suggestions? Don J J Carroll
Gary - how does Time Machine handle files and folders that are within a Cloud service that is supported on the Mac, such as Dropbox and OneDrive? For example, what happens If you do a Time Machine restore to set up a new computer and your old computer includes cloud storage files and folders that are available “on demand” which appear in the Finder on the old computer with an icon next to them indicating that the file needs to be downloaded? Are then any guidelines and/or additional steps that should be taken when migrating cloud storage files and folders to a new computer? Any help is appreciated.
Time Machine can only back up files that are present on the local drive. But it probably backs up most if not all because of how that works. I did a video on this: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-6WvwfapIYxE.html
@@macmost Thank you for the response, Gary. The second video was helpful. I think the problem is most apparent when you migrate to a new computer and your old computer is set up to use both local files/folders stored on the hard drives but has also offloaded other files/folders to the Cloud. As you indicated, you can still “see” those offloaded items (marked by the Cloud and down arrow) in Finder and easily pull them down when needed. I realize you must have enough hard drive on your new computer to match your old computer. But what happens when you do a restore of Time Machine on the new computer? How does the restore handle the on-demand files? Do the offloaded items still appear in Finder on the new computer? Or are these folders must missing on the new computer and you have to set them up again using the Cloud service? How do you safely get back to where you were on your old computer? It gets worse when you have multiple cloud services involved in the setup. I use OneDrive primarily because it provides 1TB of free storage plus I have other files on Dropbox. It gets very complicated. I ended up in this situation when I got a new M1 Mac Mini which had more limited hard disk space than my old iMac. If I did it again, I would just pay for extra hard disk storage!!
So I have a Synology NAS being used as a TimeMachine Backup, the NAS says that it’s used 1.51 Th of my 2 TB quota. When I attempt a backup on my MAC, it initiated and then stops, saying there is only 376GB available and that it needs to back up 800 something GB to the time machine. I also have an atrocious amount of “other” files on my MacBook Pro in the amount of 218GB, Idk where the hell all these came from but I need them gone and I had thought I would have to back up, prior to deleting a bunch of files
Hi Gary-I have a question regarding Time Machine and emptied trash stored on the hard drive. Firstly, regarding the trash process, I understand when you “move to trash”, then “empty trash”, the trash gets “strewn” onto the hard drive where it will sit till it is overwritten with other trash. My question is: when you use Time Machine, does it copy ALL the files on your computer, including that “empty trash” strewn on the free space on the hard drive? Or does Time Machine only copy the non-trashed files, apps and folders? I’m hoping Time Machine does not copy those emptied trash files. My goal is to reformat my computer so as to zero out all my sensitive emptied trash (I will set disk utility to erase and rewrite my hard drive several times). After that, I want to reinstall my latest Time Machine copy. I want to do this so all my sensitive data I’ve emptied over the years (bank info and personal IDs etc) can never be “disk drilled” or otherwise retrieved off my hard drive. Thank you so much if you answer.
It copies files, not blocks of data. So any remnants of files left on a drive wouldn't be part of Time Machine. Note unless you are using an older Mac and don't have File Vault turned on, this isn't a problem. Newer Macs have encrypted drives even without File Vault. For older Macs, just turn on File Vault and they have encrypted drives too. Then the problem you are trying to solve doesn't exist anymore since any "strewn" bits of data would be encrypted bits of data and garbage.
@@macmost Thank you so much for clarifying that for me! I do have an older Mac, and I haven’t been using File Vault-so I’ll go ahead with my Time Machine reinstall plan. After that, I’m thinking I’ll start using File Vault until I get a new Mac. Thanks again.
@@macmost One more thing came to mind in relation to our above discussion, hoping it’s ok to ask-When backing up, sometimes Time Machine says it’s full and asks if it should get rid of earlier backups, and I always click OK. When this happens, does Time Machine dump the earlier backups onto my hard drive (with my other emptied trash), or does it simply allot a section of earlier backups to be overwritten, in which case nothing gets "dumped" onto my hard drive? Thanks again if you see this.
@@cpet3589 When this happens, older files are removed. So you don't have a complete backup any longer. For instance, a file you created 6 months ago, then deleted 3 months ago, may no longer be in the backup. Nothing gets moved to your internal drive. If you are getting this, it means it is time to get a new LARGER Time Machine backup drive.
@@macmost That's great to know that the old files on my Time Machine (which is on an external hard drive) don't get moved to the trash on my computer hard drive. Thanks so much again for answering!
I strongly recommend against that. For one thing, it would mean the stuff on the other partition wouldn't be backed up (same drive, one point of failure). Just get another drive. They are cheap.
Time Machine will back up everything on your drive unless you have specifically excluded it. You should really consider using iCloud too, as it is so amazing to have all of your photos available on other devices, like your iPhone. Probably one of the best features of the Apple ecosystem.
@@macmost the reason that I do not want to use iCloud is when it stores things in the cloud and I turn off iCloud it's difficult to download my pics. I am not sure how to select just 1k pics at a time. And I don't want to have to click on them one by one and then have several files that I then have to combine. And no matter how many I select it always seems to fail to down from iCloud. I just find not easy to work with when you want to make backups of files or not use it t all. This is my first Mac. I have had other apple products for years. iCloud has always ucked for me. If you have a tutorial to help, let me know. Thanks
Hi. Are you able to use Time Machine to back up everything on my IMac on a Time Capsule, & all so just back up photos From an external drive to a other external drive
Hello, I already have an External drive (Seagate 1 TB). It has around 500GB data already. Can I use Time Machine to backup the data on my Mac (around 300GB) ? I am asking because I don't want to loose my 500 GB data already present on external drive. Thank you in advance ! :)
@@macmost Fair enough. 😀 I use mine regularly and they are frequently in use. Would like to ensure they’re backed up. Will their being included in my Time Machine backups be a problem? FWIW, I’m hoping to configure TM to back up to my NAS.
@@ChrisWaters I don't know how well it would work. Time Machine, I assume, would see your Windows drive as one huge file and have to back up the entire thing every time you do anything with it. I would think a better way would be to use a Windows-based backup inside of your virtual machine for Windows and only backup Mac files with Time Machine.
Sorry if this is a beginner question, I am replace my current external HD drive that I use for backups for a larger Capacity one, can I still plug in the old one and get a file from it after its not being used as the timemachine backup drive? Thank you.
Yes. You can actually have multiple Time Machine backups. So when you start the new one, it is like you have two going. You can always bring in the original and grab a file from that (hopefully you don't need to, unless there is an emergency). I have done this, just keeping the old one around for a month or so.
