What is Time Machine?

This sounds really weird but I was going through my new mac having a peek at all the applications and found Time Machine. I would like to know what it is and how it functions, and if you could tell me that would be wonderful.

Thank you for you help!


missgiraffe

Time Machine is used to create a back up copy of everything on your mac to another hard drive.

Time Machine uses the external hard drive you have hooked up to your computer to do regular back ups for your computer. It is really useful because if you accidentally delete a file all you have to do is go into Time Machine go back to a date that you know you the file, click restore and its back on your normal hard drive. Also if your computer crashes and you loose all of your data it is still on your external hard drive that Time Machine backed it up on.

Mac 101 ~ Learn about and set up Time MAchine . . . .

This is a great App that  have incorporated into the OS. However it doesnt make a bootable copy of the OS. After reading the KB article and you want to go another way there is a couple other options for you.
Alot around here use TM to BackUp the Mac as you can set it to BackUp all day if need be. I also have a bootable copy of my OS on the Ext and you can do that by downloading either CCC ~ CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper . . . Both good Apps and both make Bootable clone of your Mac HD . . .
Both are free but to get the extra features of SuperDuper its part paid App . . . . I love SD so bought it for all my Backups . . . . .

PS Hope you arent in Nth Queensland, Nth WA, SA or Vic ATM . . . . Worst weather there is
Loving sunny dry hot 'ole Canberra

Cheeers

TattooedMac said:

PS Hope you arent in Nth Queensland, Nth WA, SA or Vic ATM . . . . Worst weather there is
Loving sunny dry hot 'ole Canberra

Click to expand...

Pretty much most of QLD and a good chunk of NSW is flooded out. So yeah not good at all.

And to the OP, one thing that TattooedMac did not say.
Time Machine can be used if you can't access your main hard drive if it's borked. You just boot from your OS X install disc, erased the not working hard drive to fix it then you can access time machine from the disc (10.5+) and can use the latest Time Machine backup from the external to put back on the main hard drive. This takes a little time but it works and it's a very nice feature.

But as has been said above you can not make a bootable backup with time machine. Not many people really need it. But for those that to, CCC/super duper mentioned in the above post works well.

I rely on Time Machine a lot. I constantly have it backing up, just in case. It's very easy, here's a video on how to use it and restore items.

Apple - Find Out How - Mac Basics

Backing up is one of the most overlooked thing for most people. It's amazing to me how many people have never backed up their files and lost everything they had. TM is a cool program that has made it easy for me to recover individual documents as well as my entire hard drive.

With the crazy stupid cheap price of external hard drives these days, why not have both? I do? I have a TM drive *and* a bootable backup drive. Gives me great peace of mind to have two backups -- I also backup some select stuff online as well.