How to backup on Yosemite without external drive

[MBP_187]

Hi All,

Relatively new OS X user (Yosemite), so this question might seem silly, please bear with me. I want to back up my MBP and want to know if it is possible without an external USB/HD?

As a life long windows user, I used to store my files on a separate drive partition (eg. drive d or drive e) and have only windows loaded in drive c. In case windows crashed, or got virus etc, I would just re install windows in drive c and then have all my files.

I know that with MBP, I probably do not need to worry about virus, malware etc. , but in case there is any start up problem, I wanted to know if I could create a back up in a separate place on my HD.

I have read online about Time Capsule, but am not clear on how it works.

Thanks in advance.

 

[DeltaMac]

So, you keep a backup of your files, stored on another partition of your boot drive?
And, everything that is important to you, including all copies, are on one, lonely device?
And, tomorrow your boot drive stops working (perhaps including any partitions on that device)
That can happen... It DOES happen.
And, in that event - all you have now is lost, and might not even be recoverable, if you have an SSD. It's somewhat more common to have catastrophic failure (it is dead!) with SSDs, than with spinning hard drives.

So, this is where I am going: Get an external drive to use as a backup.
Time Machine will ask you when you plug in an external drive, asking if you want to use that drive as a time machine backup. Choose Yes, Time Machine takes over, and you have automatic backups of your files and apps. You don't have to do anything else to use Time Machine. Just plug the drive in. You can leave it attached, or plug in on a regular schedule - your choice.
If you plug in the drive once a week, Time Machine still does that automatically, backing up whatever has not been backed up since you last had the external attached.
You should, as a rule of thumb, have an external drive with 50% more space than your internal to assure that you have sufficient space for that backup.