Time Machine questions

Don't see a question, let alone more than one...

 

Time Machine is meant to back up your disk, and enable you to both restore an entire disk, or individual files/folders, from specific points in time. The first time it runs it will take a couple of hours for 45GB. If you -click on the clock icon, the drop-down will tell you what it's doing. It runs in background until you need to recover something, then it takes over the whole screen.

 

Question: Have you enabled Time Machine through its Preference, including telling it which disk you want to back up to? Once it's "on" it runs in background. Or are you clicking on "Entering Time Machine" which takes you an interface to retrieve backed up files?

 

Time Machine basically runs itself, you shouldn’t have to see it, unless you open it up.
I think it backs up every hour for the last 24, then every day for the last 7, and then every ??? I forget(I’m at work )
my advice is, use 2 different Discs for back up

 

Ahh - that may be the thing. Time Machine is meant to back up the data on your laptop to another disk.

 

You don’t have to use another disc, but it make sense in case the disc your using crashes
(use 2 also)

 

I think you can select which files/folders to back up, so depending on the size 30GB could be enough.
Once the USB drive is full time machine will erase the older backups, so I’d go for something bigger 100- or 200 on at least one of your back up drives

Lets hope we never need to use them

 

Note that the way the Time Machine Preference works is that the assumption is you want to backup everything. The interface allows you to mark those folders you don't want to back up.