Mac® Security Bible

8.3. Using Time Machine

For individual users, Time Machine offers the easiest possible way to create a versioned backup of an entire hard disk. In some cases, it can be configured with a grand total of one click. It's fast and efficient (particularly under Snow Leopard), works with local drives or over a network, makes file restoration a piece of cake, and even provides a way of restoring an entire disk if your hard drive should fail entirely.

To be sure, Time Machine isn't for everyone. Because it lacks compression, deduplication, and block-level incremental updates, its backups occupy a considerable amount of disk space; this makes it less than ideal for backing up more than a few Macs over a network to a central location. In addition, it can't create bootable duplicates, encrypt your backups, or back up to certain kinds of network volumes. However, the majority of Mac users don't need any of those capabilities, and because the software comes with Leopard and Snow Leopard, it makes an obvious first choice for a great many people.

8.3.1. How Time Machine works

Fundamentally, Time Machine asks for just one piece of information: What volume do you want to use to back up your Mac? As a result, every time you connect a new hard drive to your Mac, an alert pops up on the screen (as shown in Figure 8.1) asking if you want to use this volume as a destination for Time Machine. If you click Use as Backup Disk — that's the single click I mentioned a moment ago — you do three things at ...