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Time Machine

How To Remove A Hard Drive From Time Machine

Posted on February 7, 2022February 7, 2022 by Tim Hannon in Backup, Time Machine

Do you use Time Machine to backup your Mac? Is Time Machine configured to backup to one or more hard drives? Has one of your backup hard drives died? If so, you want to remove that drive from Time Machine’s configurations. If you don’t remove it then Time Machine will repeatedly remind you that you … Read more

AirPort Time Capsule Replacement Options

Posted on January 10, 2021October 7, 2021 by Tim Hannon in Backup, Networks, Time Machine

Are you still using an Apple AirPort Time Capsule as either your router or as a destination on which you store your Time Machine backups? If so, you should consider replacing it since Apple discontinued the product in 2018 and provided the last significant upgrade to the Time Capsule in 2012.

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What Is Purgeable Space?

Posted on December 20, 2020March 16, 2022 by Tim Hannon in Backup, macOS (formerly OS X), Software, Terminology, Time Machine

Is your Mac’s hard drive getting full? Have you ever noticed that Apple designates some of your storage space as purgeable space? What is purgeable space? Apple introduced the concept of purgeable space in macOS 10.12 Sierra. If your Mac is using macOS Sierra or newer, you can easily see if it has so-called purgeable … Read more

How To Add A Second Hard Drive To Time Machine

Posted on April 19, 2020December 2, 2020 by Tim Hannon in Backup, Time Machine

Do you use Time Machine to backup your Mac? There’s an adage that goes if it’s worth backing up once, it’s worth backing up twice. Consequently, I backup my Mac to two different hard drives as well as backing up my data to the cloud using Backblaze. Storing backup data on two different hard drives … Read more

The Importance Of Monitoring One’s Backups

Posted on January 19, 2020January 12, 2022 by Tim Hannon in Backup, Online backup, Time Machine

This week’s Tech Tip is a cautionary tale. Last week, I offered some guidance on how to prepare for a Genius Bar appointment and the importance of knowing that you have a current Time Machine backup of your Mac, before taking your Mac to the Genius Bar. Recently, I had two clients take their Macs to … Read more

How To Stop Backing Up To A Hard Drive

Posted on September 15, 2019November 21, 2019 by Tim Hannon in Backup, Time Machine

Do you use Time Machine to backup your Mac? Are you annoyed by messages from Time Machine indicating that it can’t backup to a hard drive that you no longer have? Here are instructions on how to remove a specific hard drive from Time Machine’s configuration. Click on the Apple menu and select System Preferences … Read more

Are You Prepared If Your Mac Is Stolen?

Posted on December 31, 2017May 25, 2021 by Tim Hannon in Backup, CrashPlan, Encryption, Security/Privacy, Time Machine

Are you prepared to handle the theft of your Mac? Unfortunately, I had to test my own disaster recovery procedures when my laptop was stolen this past week. In situations like this, I believe there are two priorities. First, is the data on the Mac inaccessible? Second, can one get up and running on another Mac with … Read more

How To Make Sure Time Machine Backs Up Your External Drive

Posted on August 13, 2017December 1, 2017 by Tim Hannon in Backup, Time Machine

Do you want to make sure that Time Machine backs up an external hard drive, USB flash drive or an SD card that is connected to your Mac? If so, here are instructions to make sure this happens. Click on the Apple menu and select System Preferences Click on Time Machine Click on the Options … Read more

How To Restore A Time Machine Backup To A New Mac

Posted on July 16, 2017September 3, 2020 by Tim Hannon in Backup, macOS (formerly OS X), Software, Time Machine

When you buy a new Mac you likely want to transfer all of your data and applications from your current Mac to a new Mac. Here are instructions on how to accomplish this migration using a current Time Machine backup of your current Mac. I’m going to provide instructions for two different scenarios. If you’re … Read more

Configure Time Machine To Use a New Hard Drive

Posted on October 30, 2016October 10, 2022 by Tim Hannon in Backup, Time Machine

Do you need to reconfigure Time Machine to use a new external hard drive? If you read my Tech Tips regularly then you’ll recall that I strongly recommend that everybody setup automatic and redundant systems to backup his or her Mac. If you use Time Machine to backup your Mac to an external hard drive then … Read more

Deleting Incomplete Time Machine Backups

Posted on October 23, 2016January 31, 2018 by Tim Hannon in Backup, Time Machine

Does Time Machine continually display a status message of Preparing Backup and, thus, it fails to ever complete its current backup of your Mac? If so, you might need to delete the InProgress backup file. These InProgress backup files are created as part of Time Machine performing a backup. However, if the backup fails or gets … Read more

How To Restore A Time Machine Backup On To A New Hard Drive

Posted on November 29, 2015December 1, 2015 by Tim Hannon in Backup, Local Backup, Time Machine

At some point, everyone will experience a hard drive failure.  When this happens, a Time Machine backup can save your data.  Here are instructions on how to restore all applications and personal files from a Time Machine backup onto a new hard drive. Time Machine is a backup application made by Apple. It comes bundled with … Read more

How Often Should You Backup Your Mac?

Posted on September 27, 2015June 19, 2020 by Tim Hannon in BackBlaze, Backup, CrashPlan, Time Machine

Clients often ask me how often they should backup their Mac. They also ask me which files they should backup. My answer is short and sweet. Everybody should backup all files on their Mac’s hard drive every day. Why? Because you never knows when disaster will strike and you’ll need to rely on a recent backup to … Read more

Basic Time Machine Troubleshooting

Posted on June 22, 2014August 27, 2015 by Tim Hannon in Backup, Time Machine

If you use Time Machine to backup your Mac to an external hard drive, here are some basics that you can check if backups are no longer occurring.

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Backups Don’t Exist Unless You Test Them

Posted on March 2, 2014March 3, 2014 by Tim Hannon in Backup, Computer Basics, Time Machine

This week’s Tech Tip is a cautionary tale. Backups Don’t Exist Unless You Test Them. This adage may not make immediate sense to you, but let me explain. It is extremely important to test your backups by actually restoring one or more files. If you don’t know that you can successfully restore a file from … Read more

Manually Delete Time Machine Backups from a Hard Drive

Posted on May 5, 2013June 21, 2019 by Tim Hannon in Backup, Time Machine

Is your external backup hard drive full of Time Machine backup data? In last week’s Tech Tip, we talked about how Time Machine automatically deletes your oldest backups to make room for new backups. Time Machine typically does this, but I’ve seen it misbehave also. Alternatively, you might want to manually delete some of your old … Read more

What To Do If Your Time Machine Hard Drive Is Full

Posted on April 28, 2013October 21, 2022 by Tim Hannon in Backup, Time Machine

Has your Time Machine backup hard drive filled up? Are you seeing the “Time Machine deleted one or more backups to make room for new backups” notification? If so, don’t worry. This is perfectly normally and is probably just fine. Let me elaborate and explain.

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Data Recovery Options for Mac Users

Posted on April 24, 2011October 21, 2022 by Tim Hannon in Backup, Data Recovery, Local Backup, Online backup, Services, Time Machine

Do you need to recover files that were deleted from a Mac’s hard drive? Here’s a quick overview of three options.

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Preventive Maintenance for your Mac

Posted on April 3, 2011June 20, 2019 by Tim Hannon in Backup, Computer Basics, Local Backup, Maintenance, Software, Time Machine

Do you want to know how to perform some routine preventive maintenance on your Mac? Here’s my recommendation of helpful preventive maintenance tasks as well as instructions on how to perform these tasks. You do not need to have advanced knowledge to perform these tasks.

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How To Set Up and Monitor Time Machine

Posted on January 30, 2011January 29, 2021 by Tim Hannon in Backup, Time Machine

This Tech Tip covers provides you with instructions on how to set up and monitor Time Machine. It also explains some basic concepts behind Time Machine’s operation. Monitoring your backup system is incredibly important to do. A backup system that isn’t working is useless. Do not simply trust or believe that your backup system is … Read more

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