ime Machine
operating system. It creates incremental backups of your files to a specified
location, such as an external hard drive. These files can later be browsed and
Backing Up to Time Machine
1
There’s an option to encrypt backups. To activate it, click
the Select Disk button, then choose your Time Machine
disk in the Available Disks section. Check the Encrypt backups
option, then click Use Disk. You’re invited to add a password,
and a hint in case you forget it. Do so and no one can access
your backups without this password.2
You’re now presented with a window that shows the
status of your currently selected drive, the one that’s
to be used for your Time Machine backups. This window lets
you know how much space is available, as well as the date
of your oldest and latest backup and when the next backup
will take place.3
By default, Time Machine is configured to back up all
data on your Mac’s hard drive. If you click the Options
button, you can add locations on your Mac’s hard drive not to
be backed up. To exclude a new item, press the ‘+’ icon to
reveal the file browser. Browse to the file or folder you don’t
want included in your backups, and click the Exclude button.(^5)
To retrieve a file from Time Machine, Choose Enter Time
Machine in the Time Machine menu and then navigate to
the file you want. You can get hold of an older version of a
current file or one you’ve deleted. When you’ve found it,
highlight it and press Restore.
(^6)
It’s important that you keep your Time Machine backups
separate to your data files. Never, for example, partition a
hard drive and keep data on one partition and Time Machine
backups on the other. If you do, both your data and your
backups are lost if the hard drive fails.
4
To remove an item from the list of excluded backup
items, click the item once to highlight it, and then click
the ‘-’ icon. You can either Cancel or Save your changes to
return to the previous screen. The item you removed is
dropped from the list and will once more be backed up with
your Mac’s next Time Machine backup.
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