
On the next popup window you’ll see your WD My Passport Mac drive listed. This box makes it easy to watch the progress of your back up to your My Passport. Press Command+Space, type Disk Utility, and press Enter to open it. Check this box to show the Time Machine icon at the top of your Mac’s desktop window. You’ll need to use the Disk Utility built into your Mac to work with partitions. You can also make the files partition an ExFAT partition, which means you can use it with Windows PCs and practically any other device you can connect an external drive to. This will ensure your Time Machine backups don’t grow too large, so you’ll always have room for your personal files. Use one for Time Machine backups and another for your personal files. The ideal way to do this is to create separate partitions on the external drive. RELATED: What's the Difference Between APFS, Mac OS Extended (HFS+), and ExFAT? A Better Option: Create Separate Partitions for Backups and Files Beginning with macOS Ventura, you can change the backup frequency: Open Time Machine settings, click Options, then choose a setting from the Back. The oldest backups are deleted when your backup disk is full. Time Machine will also work toward filling up the entire drive, not leaving extra room for your files. Time Machine makes hourly backups for the past 24 hours, daily backups for the past month, and weekly backups for all previous months. Choose the one that's right for you and within your budget.Bear in mind that Time Machine requires the drive be formatted with the Mac’s HFS+ file system, which means you won’t be able to easily access these files on Windows PCs or anything else that isn’t a Mac. There are various choices for restoring your Mac from an external backup in macOS Big Sur and macOS Ventura. It is very time-consuming and less efficient than restoring directly from an external hard drive you have sitting right on your desk. You can then select the files and folders you want to restore from your backup menu.īecause you either have to download files from the Internet or send them away for a physical copy, I only recommend using a cloud-based backup service to restore your Mac if you don't already have a local backup on hand. You can launch the remote app on your Mac or visit the company's website. Most programs will have a Restore files tool right in the user interface. All of them will require that you download a backup from their remote servers, though - unless the service offers to send you a physical hard drive that you can use as a backup (Backblaze provides this feature). TomWolsky in general it is best if you install the applications instead of restoring them from Time. If you use a cloud-based backup service, like Backblaze or CrashPlan, you can download missing data to restore your Mac.Įach cloud-based backup service is different. I have branched this off to a separate discussion.

How to back up your Mac to an online backup service (Image credit: Joseph Keller / iMore)
