How to setup and use Time Machine on MacOS

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One of the most under utilized features of the Mac is something called Time Machine. Time Machine was introduced in the early to mid 2000’s as a way for users to recover lost or damaged data at any time. It works in the background without any interactions from the user once the initial setup is complete.

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Once setup, the feature first takes a full snapshot of a user’s hard drive. Then, it will take additional snap shots of data each time a user uses a particular file. When a user wants to retrieve a file on a particular date and time, he or she would use the Time Machine app to “go back in time” to find a version of the file that they wish to retrieve.

In order for Time Machine to work properly, it needs an external hard drive connected via Firewire or USB. The disk should be equal too, or higher than the hard drive that’s on your computer (for example, if you have a 1TB SSDD drive, then the external Time Machine drive should be at least 1TB or higher in size).

The setup is easy and straight forward.

Here’s how:

Plug in the external drive to the computer.
You may have to use Disk Utility to prep the drive to have data on it.
Go to  > System Preferences > Time Machine.
Select the external disk as the Time Machine Drive.
Put a check mark in the Back up Automatically option.
This will ensure that Time Machine makes frequent backups of your data.
Once that’s done, it will count down to its first backup.
This can take several hours to complete. DO NOT unplug the Time Machine drive during this time.
That’s it.