How to use Time Machine? Why doesn't it work use as backup

I just tried to use Time Machine wanted to make a backup and maybe in near future prob change my harddrive and back it up...Anyways would it work if I was going to get a new harddrive 500gb can I use a time machine backup to get my computer the way it is now. Also when I launch Time Machine and turn the switch on I can't click use for back. All I see is Set Up Time Capsule / Cancel and next to cancel is use for backup which is not functional....?? Why is that is that normal do I have to do something else...Any 3rd party application I can use which is better that Time Machine or close to it...

What you want is something like SuperDuper or Carbon Copy Cloner (I prefer the former).

Time Machine does automated backups, but the backups aren't directly bootable. You actually have to start the OS install process and then choose to restore from a Time Machine backup. Time Machine is really designed to be brain dead simple and also to backup revisions of documents. That's great if you want to "set it and forget it", but if you have a specific reason for the backup (like recovering your machine or moving to a different HDD), I'd recommend a more traditional backup utility like SuperDuper (my preference) or CCC.

Hmm..no problem thanks so much for all your help I will deff tAke a look at SuperDuper. So as soon as I buy a new hard drive I can recover all my info including applications without having to reinstall them with superduper. As I mentioned above with time machine for some reason when I open it why doesn't the use for backup feature work is that normal do you have to do anythig else all I see functional is set up time machinecand cancel??

I don't know that I completely understand your issue with Time Machine. TM is pretty simple. As long as the drive is formatted with a Mac OS X Extended (Journaled) partition, it should just be a matter of turning it on and selecting that drive to work with it. Once it's on, it will do a full initial backup and then constant incremental backups without your intervention.

Time Machine is a good program for automated backups but it has its limitations. This might give you a good overview of Time Machine's capabilities and limitations. ATPM 15.03 - How To: Time Travel: Introduction to Time Machine

Do you have an external hard drive?

You're not going to be able to use TM without one.
Without it, you have no place for TM to backup your data.

(Well, not in a way that protects you from hard drive failure.)

Hmm...Got it I see no I do not have an external hard drive I thought you can burn it directly to a disc??

AFAIK Time Machine does not support burning to optical media. That kind of arrangement would make the hourly backups impractical. Time Machine will backup second internal drive, a partitioned boot drive, or an external drive. The problem with using an internal drive (partitioned or second drive) is that if you have a significant hardware failure it may take out those hard drives as well.

Yeah, you'll need an external hard drive if you want to use Time Machine. SuperDuper can burn to optical media, but you'll need a TON of discs and restoration will take forever.

As cheap as external hard drives are, your best bet would be to bite the bullet and get one that is equal to or greater than the size of your internal drive. Since hard drives are the number one point of hardware failure in modern computers, you'd be well advised to do this sooner rather than later.