A hard drive or partition connected directly to the computer, either internally or by a bus like USB or FireWire, and formatted as journaled HFS+.The only officially supported configurations are: Time Machine places strict requirements on the backup storage medium. Sparse bundles are mounted by macOS like any other device, presenting their content as a HFS+ formatted volume, functionally similar to a local storage. This acts as an isolation layer, which makes the storage neutral to the actual file system used by the network server, and also permits the replication of the backup from one storage medium to another. When using remote storage, Time Machine uses sparse bundles. Time Machine works with locally connected storage disks, which must be formatted in the HFS+ volume format-APFS-formatted won't work, as well as with remote storage media shared from other systems, including Time Capsule, via the network. When toggling through the previous snapshots, the stacked windows extend backwards, giving the impression of flying through a "time tunnel." While paging through these "windows from the past," a previous version of the data (or presently deleted data) may be retrieved. Behind the current active window are stacked windows, with each window representing a snapshot of how that folder or application looked on the given date and time in the past.
Upon its launch, Time Machine "floats" the active Finder or application window from the user's desktop to a backdrop depicting the user's blurred desktop wallpaper. Time Machine's user interface when retrieving a file uses Apple's Core Animation API. At that point, Time Machine deletes the oldest weekly backup. Time Machine saves hourly backups for the past 24 hours, daily backups for the past month, and weekly backups for everything older than a month until the volume runs out of space. Time Machine may also be used with any external or internal volume. Apple's Time Capsule acts as a network storage device specifically for Time Machine backups, allowing both wired and wireless backups to the Time Capsule's internal hard drive. Some of the legacy support can be re-enabled by using hand-tuned configuration options, accessed through the Terminal. Earlier versions worked with a wide variety of NAS servers, but later versions require the server to support a recent version of Apple’s Apple Filing Protocol (AFP), and Time Machine no longer works with servers using earlier versions of the Server Message Block (SMB) protocol typical for Windows servers.
As snapshots age, they are prioritized progressively lower compared to your more recent ones.” įor backups to a network drive, Time Machine allows the user to back up Mac computers over the network, and supports backing up to certain network attached storage devices or servers, depending on the version of Time Machine.
Time Machine captures the most recent state of your data on your disk.
“Time Machine is a backup utility, not an archival utility, it is not intended as offline storage. emails, photos, contacts, calendar events) without leaving the application. It works within Mail, iWork, iLife, and several other compatible programs, making it possible to restore individual objects (e.g.
It allows the user to restore the whole system or specific files from the Recovery HD or the macOS Install DVD. Time Machine creates incremental backups of files that can be restored at a later date.