Does this new OS automatically backup my computer everyday? When I look at iStat, it shows a backup hard drive. I don't have it connected so I don't know what it is. It is really confusing me.
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Does OS X Lion automatically backup my MBP?
- Thread starter Hook'Em2006
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not sure what the backup drive is
got to the apple menu and select about this mac, then click more info
click on the little button that says storage
time machine (for portables, not sure if all of them do it) creates a backup here, similar to having an external time machine connected
not to good if you drive dies though, external backup much better
got to the apple menu and select about this mac, then click more info
click on the little button that says storage
time machine (for portables, not sure if all of them do it) creates a backup here, similar to having an external time machine connected
not to good if you drive dies though, external backup much better
Time Machine in Lion now does something called 'local snapshots' on portable machines. In the absence of a mounted Time Machine volume, it makes a temporary backup file on your hard drive which later gets copied back to your Time Machine drive when it is mounted next. I imagine the purpose of this is to keep the Time Machine backup timeline intact even when you are not constantly connected to a backup drive.
Do a search for 'local snapshots for more information.
Do a search for 'local snapshots for more information.
That's like "versions" in Windows...which is honestly sort of a hard concept for me to wrap my head around LOL (like how the heck is the OS keeping 20 revisions of this file while seemingly using no space!)
But anyway, that's not a backup. You'll want to buy an external hard drive to use Time Machine to do regular backups.
But anyway, that's not a backup. You'll want to buy an external hard drive to use Time Machine to do regular backups.
Local snapshots are only enabled with TM is on, and a couple of other criteria:
1. you have a notebook system
2. you have a traditional time machine destination selected
3. you have automatic backups enabled (the big switch in the Time Machine preference pane is on)
We don't know if the OP has TM running or not. Nor do we know what iStat is really reporting.
They are local snapshots. TM makes backups while your TM disk is not available. You can disable in terminal with sudo tmutil disablelocal , it takes a couple of minutes to delete.