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system restore in macs?
- Thread starter macbooknewbie00
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well system restore in windows is like..say.. you changed some major settings or you downloaded a bunch of files on one day.. and say..a week later.. you dont like the way the settings and all the programs are.. so you go to system restore.. and you can go back to the day before you changed settings and downloaded everything so that your system will be just like before..(nothing changed) and you can only do this by setting up restore points..hope that clarifies it somewhat..
You'd use something like Super Duper to clone you HD to an external HD. Then to revert to this copy it back to the original.
Windows' System Restore just restores system settings and program installs, not data files. Is Time Machine able to do that? Or, maybe it's not necessary because the Mac OS isn't as susceptible to system damage from problem programs.
I understand that. But with Windows system restore is a fairly quick process to get you back to a previous "system state." With Time Machine, should the system start to act screwy, which files do you restore? Or do you have to a complete system restore which will be time consuming and somewhat risky (should the external drive crap out in the middle of the restore)? In addition, Windows system restore (which I used often when I used XP
) does not require a second drive. Does the Mac OS have a similar feature?Time Machine backs up every hour, if the system should start to act funny you could just restore to a couple hours before or when ever you would like. The first time "Time Machine" backs up it does take some time, but after that it only backs up files that have been changed. Thus it is a relatively fast process. However, you do need another disk to to use time machine.
One of us is missing something here. If the machine starts to act up, and you bring up Time Machine, you are presented with the opportunity to restore the files of your choosing, but you have to choose them, correct? Even if you choose, let's say, the previous day, the Time Machine app won't restore the entire computer to that day, you have to tell it the files or directories you want restored. The only way to restore the entire system is to boot from your OS X DVD and choose "restore from backup." Or am I the one missing something?
If you restore from a Time Machine backup, there is a step in the process where you get a screen that looks like this one. You just pick the date you want to restore from.
Not like in Windows. It's called "macOS Recovery". https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201314
But in reality, you should have a Time Machine backup. So you can go back to any date you want.