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 recreated 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

• Restore specific items from a Time Machine backup
• Restore with Migration Assistant
• Manually restore with the Finder