Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Another Mac connected by a Thunderbolt cable. You can start your Mac in target disk mode, as described
in Chapter 11, and then its hard drive appears as a drive on the other Mac. This enables you to use Disk Utility
on the other Mac to verify or repair your Mac's hard drive. This is the way to go if you can't access the Recov-
ery HD and you don't have a separate Recovery disk.
Backing up MacBook Air
The data you create on MacBook Air is as precious as gold, not only because it's yours, but mostly because it's
simply irreplaceable. Macs are reliable machines, but they do crash, and all hard drives eventually die. At some
point your data will be at risk. To avoid losing that data forever, you need to back up MacBook Air early and of-
ten.
Fortunately, MacBook Air comes with Time Machine, a backup application unlike anything you've seen before
in the Mac world:
The initial Time Machine backup includes your entire Mac.
Time Machine runs another backup every hour. This one includes only those files and folders that you've
changed or created since the most recent hourly backup.
Time Machine runs a daily backup. It includes only those files and folders that you've changed or created
since the most recent daily backup.
Time Machine runs a weekly backup. It includes only those files and folders that you've changed or cre-
ated since the most recent weekly backup.
You can remotely run Time Machine through Apple's Time Capsule.
All of this is completely automated — Time Machine is a set-it-and-forget-it deal, which is exactly what you
want in a backup application. However, Time Machine doesn't stop there — it also keeps old backups. Time
Machine stores:
The past 24 hourly backups.
All daily backups from the previous month.
All weekly backups until the backup location is full. It then begins deleting the oldest backups to make
room for more.
Keeping these old backups is what gives Time Machine its name. It enables you to go back in time and restore
not just a file but also a version of a file. For example, say on Monday you created a document and added some
text, and then spent Tuesday editing that text. If, on Friday, you realize that during Tuesday's edits you deleted
some original text that you'd give your eyeteeth to get back, there's no problem. Simply restore the version
from Monday.
Time Machine is so simple and so potentially useful that you really ought to make it part of your backup toolkit.
If there's a downside to Time Machine, it's that it backs up only to a second hard drive connected to MacBook
Air. You can't, say, back up to a network folder. If you want to back up to a network, you need to get Apple's
Time Capsule device (see www.apple.com/timecapsule ).
When you first connect an external USB or FireWire hard drive, Time Machine sits up and takes notice. It also
most likely displays the dialog shown in Figure 8.6. If you want to use the hard drive for your Time Machine
backups, click Use as Backup Disk. Otherwise, click Don't Use (or Decide Later) to move on without configur-
ing anything.
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