Lesson 17: Manage Time Machine

Question 1

What can you back up with Time Machine?

Answer 1

Time Machine backs up all your personal files, including apps, music, photos, email, and documents, to an external storage device.

Question 2

Which types of files are omitted from Time Machine backups?

Answer 2

Time Machine saves space by ignoring files that don’t need to be backed up — ones that can be re-created after a restoration.

Generally speaking, Time Machine ignores temporary files, Spotlight indexes, items in the Trash, and anything that can be considered a cache.

Software developers can also instruct Time Machine to ignore specific app data that doesn’t need to be backed up.

Question 3

Why is Time Machine inefficient at backing up large databases?

Answer 3

Time Machine is inefficient at backing up large databases because it must back up the entire database file every time any change — no matter how small — is made to the database.

Question 4

What happens when you select a blank disk named “Untitled” as a Time Machine backup?

Answer 4

If the external storage device doesn’t have any files on it yet Time Machine erases the disk and creates a new APFS (Case-sensitive) volume dedicated to Time Machine backups.

Time Machine names the new volume “Backups of [Computer Name],” where Computer Name is the name of your Mac.

Question 5

Which feature helps Time Machine restore data when your Time Machine backup disk is unavailable?

Answer 5

Time Machine creates local snapshots on your built-in startup disk to help when your backup disk is unavailable.

Question 6

Which three ways can you restore data from a Time Machine backup?

Answer 6

Methods for restoring from a Time Machine backup include the following:

1. Restore specific items from a Time Machine backup
2. Restore with Migration Assistant
3. Manually restore with the Finder