- Time machine for mac backup how to#
- Time machine for mac backup upgrade#
- Time machine for mac backup full#
In fact, when you connect an external hard drive or SSD to your Mac, you may see a prompt asking if you want to use the drive with Time Machine.
Time machine for mac backup how to#
You don't have to do a thing after the initial setup process, which takes just a few minutes.īelow I'll walk you through using Time Machine, cover how to check what iCloud is keeping a backup of and for those who want some extra assurance, how to back up your Music library.Īs long as it knows where to store the files, Time Machine can be set to periodically backup your computer, though you can also manually trigger a backup.
Time machine for mac backup full#
For example, they don't remember the local coffee shop's complicated Wi-Fi password or every setting you've changed that's finally made booting your Mac feel as familiar as sinking into a comfy couch.Īpple makes backing up relatively painless by including its Time Machine app in the Mac operating system, which you can schedule to run a full backup of your Mac. But cloud drives can't back up everything on your computer. With so many cloud storage services available that can automatically sync your files, such as Dropbox or Google Drive, it's easy to just set it and forget it.
Time machine for mac backup upgrade#
A backup also makes it easy to move your apps and data to a new Mac if you upgrade to a new machine, like the newly announced Mac Studio desktop or the rumored M2 MacBook Pro. But if your MacBook or iMac crashes at an inopportune time - as computers always seem to do - you'll be infinitely grateful you took a few minutes to save all your important files. These three are among the best on the market.Don't get caught without a backup if your Mac crashes.īacking up your Mac is one of those routine tasks that can wind up buried beneath the more urgent priorities on your to-do list. There are countless hard drives available that support Apple's Time Machine app for backup purposes. Repeat these steps on other Macs on your network. Once the hard drive is shared successfully, you can set up Time Machine backup on your Mac. If you are required to log in, you may see a button labeled Connect As.In this case, select the shared hard drive. Scroll down the sidebar until you see Shared.On another computer on your network, open a window in the Finder.To the right of Everyone, change the permissions from Read-Only to Read & Write. Click on the Everyone user under Users.In this case, share the external hard drive. Click on the + button under Shared Folders to share specific folders.Open System Preferences on the computer that's physically connected to the hard drive.In doing so, computers connected to the same network can use the same drive with Time Machine.
Use networkingĪ second solution is to share your backup drive using Personal File Sharing on macOS. Still, as long as you set up Time Machine on each Mac, you're good to go. The drawback to this approach is that you manually have to connect and disconnect the hard drive to each computer. In each case, Time Machine works behind the scenes to get the job done. Perhaps the simplest way is to attach the drive to one Mac, let Time Machine run a backup, and then disconnect the drive and repeat the steps on another Mac. To back up different Macs using Time Machine, you can: Do it manually Be sure to check out our list of the best external hard drives for Mac. If you ever need to restore data from the hard drive on any of your Macs, Time Machine understands which files match the specific computer. When you use an external hard drive to back up different Macs, Time Machine automatically creates separate folders, one for each computer.