Updated December 2020: Up-to-date for macOS Big Sur.
#Speed up time machine backup mac how to
If you have any additional questions about how to back up your Mac with Time Machine, let us know in the comments. How to speed up your Time Machine backups.How to use Time Machine with multiple Macs.How to view Time Machine backups from another Mac.How to restore individual files from a Time Machine backup.But there are some advanced steps that you should know about. So now you know how to back up your Mac with Time Machine. How to encrypt your Time Machine backups.How to delete older Time Machine backups.How to restore from a Time Machine backup.How to make sure Time Machine is backing up properly on your Mac.How to selectively back up with Time Machine.How to set up and start using Time Machine.Get Time Machine set up, then learn about how you can choose what's backed up, how to restore from Time Machine, how to encrypt backups and more. Your disk will be scanned for any errors, and the tool will even attempt to fix them if necessary.īetween these three options, you should have a good idea of whether your backups are working or not.It's a great first layer to any backup solution, and it's included right in the operating system.įirst, the basics of how to back up a Mac with Time Machine. Simply launch the application and click “First Aid” on your drive. If you’re unsure even after all of this, you can verify and repair your hard drive using Disk Utility. When it’s done, you’ll see a summary of the difference between your computer and your backup drive. The process will take a while to run-it’s not unusual for the process to take 15 minutes, or even a half hour. A - before a file means the given file was deleted.A + before a file means the given file is new.A ! before a file means the given file has changed.The first character tells you about the file. The process will take a while, and results will scroll by. Later on I started another TM backup, which only consisted of a small number of files to be backed up. The first run went well, encryption took a while but I thought OK, it has to encrypt the entire initial backup image of 300GB. I selected encryption, for obvious reasons. Type tmutil compare -s, then hit Enter, and your Mac will compare the contents of your Mac with the contents of your backup. So I gave Time Machine another try, with an external WD SSD drive. If the files you expect to be there are there, and it’s possible to preview them, your backup is most likely in working order.īut if you’d like more details and assurance that things are working, open the Terminal, which you can find in Applications > Utilities.
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You can press the Spacebar to preview them, or even restore them. Head back in time, and find some files you know you deleted. Connect your backup drive, then launch Time Machine, which is in the Applications folder. The simplest thing is to launch Time Machine and try to restore some files that you’ve deleted. If your Time Machine backup runs locally-for example, if you back up to an external hard drive over USB-you cannot use the menu bar method to verify your drives. If you never get any notification, you don’t have any problems to worry about. If there’s a problem, you will find out via a notification. You Mac is comparing your backup with the checksums it has on file. If you failed to backup Mac data with Time Machine due to lack of space, or receiving alert message while backing up with Time Machine.
#Speed up time machine backup mac free
If you want to watch the progress closely, feel free to open up the Time Machine panel in System Preferences again. Your Mac actually does this regularly, but there’s no harm in doing it manually from time to time, particularly if you think there might be a problem.
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(If your backup isn’t over the network, or was created by an older version of macOS, the option may be greyed out.) Your Mac will start verifying the backup. Then, hold down the Option key, and a “Verify Backups” option will appear.Ĭlick the “Verify Backups” option. Next, click the Time Machine icon in the menu bar.