Getting information on your hard drive will show its overall capacity and the amount of space being used. In OS X Apple's Time Machine feature offers a convenient backup option, which once activated will automatically keep hourly backups of your entire system, including the operating system and user accounts so you can easily restore individual files or your whole OS X installation, if needed. If you do not already have a backup plan for your Mac, then perhaps in light of World Backup Day you might take a look at making one. There are many ways to back up your files, including using external hard disks, Internet-based storage, or CDs and DVDs, so the approaches you choose for backing up are up to you however, whichever route you choose, one important thing about backing up is that you do so regularly. As anyone who regularly uses computers ought to know, backing up is a vital step for the safety of your files, especially when troubleshooting problems with your system where you may update software, change configurations, or need to reinstall the OS. Data is restored to your Mac.Tomorrow is World Backup Day, which is an effort to spread the word about the importance of backing up your computer. Address any prompts that appear on the screen (grant Administrative access, etc.) The Graphical Timeline to the right of the Time Machine windowīrowse to, and select files/folders you wish to restore.You can navigate Time Machine through the following: Open Finder - Applications - Time Machine.At this point Time Machine prepares the drive and backs up selected data. At this point the folder size Calculations and Adjustments are made. Select files/folders and click on the Exclude button.

Click on the + button to change what is excluded by Time machine.

At this point the Backup Disk is selected and the next Time Machine Backup will start in 120 Seconds (2 Minutes).Įxcluding items from Time Machine backup plan ( Options):

Select a drive and click on the Use Disk button.

A window opens showing External Storage Drives connected to your Mac.

Setting up the external drive to be used with Time Machine: Use this link for instructions on formatting your drive

For macOS versions for 10.6 (Snow Leopard) to 10.15 (Catalina) use Mac OS Extended (Journaled) also referred to as HFS+ when setting up a new backup.

For Big Sur use Apple File System (APFS) when setting up a new backup.

MacOS requires that a drive be formatted with a specific file system to be used with Time Machine Setting up the external drive to be used with Time MachineĮxcluding items from Time Machine backup planįormatting a drive to be used with Time Machine:

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