How to do a Time Machine Backup

Most modern Apple devices have their solid-state storage soldered directly to the logic board. If the device fails, recovering your data can be very expensive or possibly even impossible. Apple makes backing up your data very easy with their built-in Time Machine. To perform a Time Machine backup on a Mac, follow these steps:

1. Connect an external hard drive to your Mac. This can be a USB, Thunderbolt, or FireWire drive with enough capacity to store your backup data.
2. Make sure the external drive is formatted to work with macOS. If it’s not, Time Machine will prompt you to reformat the drive when you try to use it. Keep in mind if you format the device any data on it will be erased.
3. Once the external drive is connected and ready, go to the Apple menu and select “System Preferences.”
4. Click on “Time Machine.”
5. Turn on Time Machine by clicking the switch in the upper-right corner of the window.
6. Click “Select Backup Disk,” and choose the external hard drive you connected earlier.
7. If you want to exclude certain files or folders from the backup, click the “Options” button and add those items to the exclusion list.
8. Time Machine will start backing up your files automatically, and will continue to do so in the background at regular intervals. You can check the progress of your backups by clicking on the Time Machine icon in the menu bar.

That’s it! Your Mac will now be backed up regularly to the external hard drive, giving you the ability to restore your files and settings if something goes wrong with your computer.