How to use your MacBook’s built-in backup tool instead of paying for cloud storage

Modern cloud storage, as we know it, has been around commercially since 2006, when Amazon launched its Simple Storage Service (S3). Over the next few years, personal cloud storage grew in popularity thanks to services like Dropbox and Google Drive. At the time, the idea of ​​being able to access a few of your most important files on any computer seemed remarkably practical. These days, cloud storage has become a necessity, often requiring a subscription if you want to store more than a few gigabytes.

It’s common knowledge that Apple’s iCloud only offers 5GB of free storage. Apart from backing up your photos and videos, you are supposed to, in one way or another, take device backups from your iPhone, iPad, and Mac. While the 50GB monthly subscription may seem inexpensive at $0.99, that amount of cloud storage isn’t really enough if you also want to transfer large amounts of files stored on your computer.

If you’re looking for a backup option and don’t necessarily need your computer’s files to be accessible from the cloud, you don’t need to look beyond what macOS has to offer.

Time Machine is a utility that has been available on Macs for years. It allows you to create a local backup of your apps, photos, videos and other documents and transfer them to an external hard drive or SSD for safe keeping. It’s normal for the first run to take a while, but subsequent snapshots will be much faster and can be scheduled to run hourly, daily, or weekly.

Time Machine doesn’t actually need an external drive to work: it can back up your files to your Mac’s internal drive if you partition it. However, using an external drive is the most secure option. Although portable SSDs offer significantly faster file transfers, an older drive that you’ve decided to make do with is fine for this job. In fact, they may be better suited for long-term archival storage, as SSDs can lose data if left unpowered for a long period of time.

For Time Machine backups, Apple recommends using an external drive with at least twice the capacity of your Mac’s internal drive. You’ll also need to format it using the APFS file system, which prevents you from using the drive natively with Windows. Even on Mac, the drive will need to be partitioned if you want to store other files besides your computer’s backups, although this is not recommended.

The first step is to plug a drive into your Mac. Launch System Settings and access General > Time machine. Click on Add a backup diskselect your external drive and click Configure disk. You can choose to encrypt the drive with a password, which you will need to keep handy if you choose to restore a snapshot in the future. Click on Do.

If your external drive needs to be formatted as APFS, a prompt will appear to do so with one click. Once this is complete, your drive will be configured to accommodate Time Machine transfers.

Shortly after adding a disk formatted for Time Machine, your first backup will begin automatically. Depending on how many files you have stored on your Mac, this process can take anywhere from a few minutes to over an hour.

When the external drive is unplugged, the snapshots are stored locally on your Mac. By default, backups occur every hour, but you can access System Settings > General > Time Machine > Options and change the backup frequency to daily or weekly. Here you can also add folders or volumes that you want to exclude from the process.

When you need to restore a file, you can access your Time Machine drive by opening Researcher and looking at the Locations part on the left. Click on Enter Time Machinechoose a backup, find your file and click Restore.

What’s even more impressive about Time Machine is that it stores different versions of the same file as it changes over time. This means you can browse past copies and find the version you’re looking for. When configured to backup hourly, Time Machine allows you to access hourly restore points from the last 24 hours. Daily backups will cover the last month and weekly snapshots will offer points from previous months.

For example, if you’re working on a document and making changes every two hours, you can go back and restore an earlier version within a day. If a few days have passed, you can still restore the file, but you will need to locate it in a daily or weekly restore point instead. This is a pretty well thought out system that gives you plenty of recovery options.

However, your external drive will eventually fill up. When this happens, Time Machine will start deleting the oldest weekly backups to make room for new ones.

In addition to letting you restore specific files through Finder, Time Machine lets you restore your entire Mac from a backup. This is especially useful when an internal drive fails or you’re migrating to a new computer and want to take all your files, applications, and settings with you.