Hardware Reference
In-Depth Information
Back Up Your Mac, Too
Apple makes it really easy to back up your iOS device; if the iOS device is plugged in and
connected to the Internet via a Wi-Fi network, it will back up once a day automatically to
iCloud or — if your computer is running, connected to the same network as the iOS device, and
iTunes is running — to your computer, depending on whether you selected iCloud backup or
iTunes backup.
But what about your Mac? Apple makes backup easy on a Mac as well, if you connect an ex-
ternal hard drive to it via a cable or a network connection. OS X comes with a utility called
Time Machine that regularly backs up your Mac, even as you work, so you can restore a Mac's
files from it — including your iTunes backups — or move the Mac's contents to a new Mac.
Once you've turned on Time Machine, you can just let it do its thing.
And setup is easy:
1. Choose Apple > System Preferences and click Time Machine to open the Time Machine system preference.
2. Click Select Disk and then choose the backup disk to use from the settings sheet that appears.
3. If you don't want to back up all the disks connected to your Mac or you want to exclude specific folders, click the
Options button, then click the Add button (the + icon) to select what you don't want backed up. Repeat this action
for each item to exclude, then click Save.
4. Set the Time Machine switch to On.
5. Close the Time Machine system preference. Your Mac will now keep itself backed up without your intervention
(the first time may take a few hours).
You can restore individual files by launching the Time Machine app from your Mac's Ap-
plications folder, then choosing which file from which date to restore. Or you can restore an en-
tire Mac from a Time Machine backup, using the Disk Utility application or when running Disk
Recovery mode. For more details, I recommend you pick up a book on OS X, such as Wiley's
OS
If you use Windows, you'll need backup software; it's not part of Windows.
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