If you have a really new MacBook or MacBook Pro (the kind with USB-C ports and nothing else), you need something with a USB-C connector, or else you need one of Apple’s USB-C to USB adapters. In almost all cases, this means a drive that connects via USB. You’ll need a disk that can connect to your Mac. Get a new disk and dedicate it to backups. Backups are important! Don’t take chances. Note: don’t go cheap here by reusing some old disk you have sitting around. Now the question boils down to “which disk do I get.” I can help you there too.
Get a hard drive that is about twice as big as the amount of space you’re using now. Those with more than one hard drive should add up the total space used. (There are other ways to find out how much storage you’re using– you can use the Disk Utility app, you can use the System Information app, you can Get Info on the hard disk– you can even email me and I’ll help you do it.).
Hard drive in my laptop– 1 TB capacity, almost completely full Look under the Apple menu for “About this Mac.” Click the “Storage” button. Time Machine is smart and will recognize the disk when it’s there, and the backups will start up again within an hour, without you doing anything else.įirst thing to do is figure out how big a disk you need to get. If you’re a laptop user and you can’t keep the disk connected when you’re moving the machine around just remember to re-connect the disk again as soon as you can.
So, once we set things up, you should keep the disk connected. Note: Time Machine can only make a backup when the disk is connected. In most cases, you’ll use an external hard drive for this. What you need now is a place for your backed up files to be stored.
Turns out you’re already halfway there, since the Time Machine software comes pre-installed. I’m going to assume you’re convinced: Time Machine’s the backup system for you.
Time Machine lets you go back to the time when tall of the images were where they belonged, and then bring them “ back to the future.”
So is setting up a new hard drive, in case you upgrade your Mac to a bigger, faster disk. Setting up a new Mac is a piece of cake if you have a Time Machine backup of the old Mac. Time Machine can be used to restore individual files, or an entire Mac. Time Machine will back up every file on every drive you connect to your Mac, automatically, unless you tell it not to. Time Machine backs up to a disk, not to “the cloud,” so Step One is “get a disk to back up to.” For best results, devote an entire disk to the backup task. The odds are very very good that your Mac has Time Machine already installed. Every new Mac has it, and most old ones do too, as it was introduced with System 10.5 (Leopard).