How to Set up & Use Time Machine to Backup your Mac - Full Tutorial 2024

Hi Arthur, nice and informative video. I have a lot of photos (over 100K) that I process using Lightroom and Photoshop. I have them stored not on my Mac's 1TB SSD, but rather an external 8TB HD. Is Time Machine only backing up the OS files and other files that reside on the Mac's 1TB HD, or is it also backing-up my external HD? I suppose I can go into Time Machine Settings and explore. Is it possible to go into Time Machine Settings and have it back-up everything on the Mac and external HD, and store the back-up on the external HD? Then I suspect I would need to make a back-up of the external HD with another 8TB HD. Thank you in advance for your guidance.

great set up man! just have a question: if i store my data in one external drive and then i backup my mac in a bigger drive, it will include the other external drive?

Hello! Do you offer one on one help? My data on my sad card was completely wiped!!

Do backup include custom icons and backgrounds for folders?

fabulous help

Thanks a lot Arthur, I own a 4TB MacBook Pro M1 and back my files to an external 4TB SSD. I recently found that my external SSD was full and that backups could no longer be completed. You mentioned in one of your reply posts that there is a setting adjustment to allow Time Machine to automatically delete old backups to make room for new ones. I just can't find this setting menu. Thanks for any assistance.

Great video! Thanks!! I just set it up today.

how you backup 4 drives with time machine at the same time?

How do you backup an external hard drive to time machine and restore an external hard drive from time machine?

Do you have a video to demonstrate how to duplicate a Time Machine file from one external drive to another. I want to copy files to a newer and more reliable external drive.

my 1TB external HD is getting full. Should I do anything? Or just let the SW manage it?

Some time ago the photos in the mac Photos App were lost and the app is empty (due to transferral on old SSD which did not work), but the lost photos are on my iPhone and they're still in the cloud.
As my macair 2013 definitely needs a backup will TM fetch the lost photos from iCloud the photos and put them into the empty app? Need to get this fixed as I have a new untouched macair. What will happen to the old macair once I activate the new one? Messy and maybe silly situation I know.
Thanks a lot for any help 😊

Your voice is so soft

What is best HDD format?

Hello, I just got a New Seagate external drive for my MacBook as. Christmas gift. I'm wanting to store videos on it.
For the life of me I can't get the external drive to cooperate with the MacBook.
Could you please tell me what I need to do?

Was hoping you could come up with a better solution than plugging in an external drive. I tried using a NAS many years ago, which wasn't reliable, so I bought a Time Capsule. This worked wirelessly and perfectly for 10 years. When it died I found Apple had stopped making them. Tried the NAS again, and it ran for 3 months before crashing. It's been crashing ever since. So now the solution seems to be chaining my portable laptop to a wired hard drive. A distinctly backward step. Thanks for the information anyway, and if you are anyone has a wireless solution, I'd love to hear it

How does this work if laptop is stolen? you buy a new and how do you then restore?
Also can you make backups in the cloud, so even the backup disk gets stolen.

"The cloud doesn't exist. It's always someone's computer" If only more people understand this!

Thank you so much!

I have used the same inexpensive Toshiba 2 TB/ 7200 rpm unit for TimeMachine since 2015. It has saved my butt at least once, ,maybe twice?

So it erased my older backups and I never wanted it to. Those were memories (photos and videos) I can't get back. Is there a way to get deleted ones back?

THANK YOU.. this information video is very easy to understand and implement. I have subscribed to your content. (only correction I would ask for is clarity of video is kind of fuzzy, though your instructions are very informative. Thank you Mr. Brassart.

I can't find the backup of notes!!!!!!!!!

I'm only able to backup in safe Mode, otherwise it always pops up an error. Anyone knows how to solve this?

can i use a usb?

Thank you for this video. I am on M1 Mac 14" MacBook Pro/Sonoma 14.5 and using Time Machine to backup on a Backup Plus Slim 2 TB (APFS Case Sensitive). I want to restore my entire system to a previous backup/snapshot. In recovery mode, unlike the option it generally shows it instructs me to : Reinstall OS and Recover from Migration Assistant. Is there any way to solve this? Am I missing something?

My intention is create backups every week and be able to recover my system to a previous date in case something stops working.

Thank you!

'Old School' spinny External Drives are fine really.Mine have been totally reliable, though it's good to get the newest, modern connector to future proof them.
Thank you for an EXCELLENT video !

Help please. What happens if the external hard drive that stores your Time Machine backups fails or is lost? Will all of your previous backups be gone as well?

Excellent video. Haven't backed up my files for quite some time, and had totally forgotten this process, until today. Thanks for reminding me how important it is.

I've used a Time Capsule flawlessly for a number of years. I ave recently started getting notification stating "Backup Not Completed. There isn't enogh space on ..Airport Time Capsule". Any ideas?

In the past, I've used Dropbox in addition to Time Machine to fulfill the 3-2-1 rule: 3 copies to at least 2 media and at least 1 offsite. These days, I use iCloud+, because Dropbox was just as expensive and it took them too long to create a family plan.

Yes, the Cloud is just someone else's computer, but that's the point: it's a computer off site with its own redundancies. This video might make people second guess an essential backup strategy.

The speed of the external drive doesn't make any difference. Time Machine it SLOW no matter what. I watched this video to try to find out how to recover a Mac Mail MailBox.

I use it all the time on my MacBook Air

As of Catalina system files are not included in Time Machine

Great video! It’s a long shot, but if anyone can see this- can you use a single backup drive for multiple different macs? Thanks!

2.5 inch HDDs are not good for Time Machine. They are way less reliable than the 3.5 inch drives when being regularly written to, and they’re also more expensive. However, 3.5 inch drives are big and loud, also requires separate power supply.

Is there a way of doing this without erasing the hard drive? When I select my hard drive in time machine i get the following message "The disk must be erased before it can be used for Time Machine backups because it has an incompatible file system."

Thank you for this knowledge

Hey, Arthur thanks for the tutorial. It helped me a lot. Well done, you got a new subscriber! All the best.

Thank you for this informative video!!!

Se te olvidó explicar como usarlo

Amazing

Super helpful; thanks!

I'm confused. At what point did you explain how to do the back up? I'm trying to update my Logic Pro, but I'm afraid of losing stuff. Is this the right video for that?

should have just named it ABOUT TIME MACHINE, because you are doing alot of talking and less real life time time machine transfer. JUST SHOW A FULL ACTUAL EXAMPLE.

Can Time Machine also backup an external data drive attached to the Mac?