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Macintosh Time Machine backup

Setting up a Time Machine backup on your Mac can save your data in the event of a catastrophic hardware failure.   A Time Machine backup, once established, runs in the background and is a good way to ensure your data has a fairly recent backup.  If hardware failure occurs on your Mac,  a Time Machine backup can also serve as a quick restore option to a different Mac or hard drive to get you back up and running in the shortest time possible.  A Time Machine backup can be configured for either local or network shares.  This document is meant as a simple how-to for a local backup.  For more in-depth information regarding Time Machine, please see Apple's knowledge base article on Time Machine.   http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1427

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A local backup is one that is connected directly to your computer via an external storage device.   The external drive you intend to use for your Time Machine backup should be at least as large as your computer's hard drive and bigger if possible.   A Time Machine drive can be connected via USB or Firewire and should be formatted Mac OS Extended (Journaled).  If you are unsure if your drive is formatted correctly, call the Technology Services desk at 471-1199 and a technician can help.

Technology Services recommends that you designate an external drive exclusively as a Time Machine backup and routinely have it plugged into your computer.    Time Machine cannot run if the local drive is not connected.  Using your Time Machine drive for other purposes other than backups runs the risk of it becoming too full or not being available for backup when you most need it.
 

The First Backup:  Give it time.

The first time Time Machine runs, it takes awhile to get a baseline backup. During that time, the computer may seem sluggish.  Although Time Machine can be interrupted and picks up where it last left off, a best practice is to start this process when the computer will have plenty of time to complete the task.  Depending on the amount of data you have on your hard drive, this could take awhile.  A good time to start the initial backup is at the end of the work day or overnight.  

Setting up a Time Machine backup

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Besides hedging against a catastrophic computer failure, Time Machine allows recovery of files that were unintentionally deleted by a user.   For instructions on how to restore deleted files, please refer to the Apple article linked to above. http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1427 Mac 101: Time Machine.