HT201250: Use Time Machine to back up or restore your Mac

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mikethiedeman

Q: I have a folder of 100 .jpg images on my desktop.  The entire folder and contents are copied by TimeMachine to my external HD.  A month from now I work in the folder on the desktop and end up deleting 50 of the .jpg files.  The altered folder (now wi

I have a folder of 100 .jpg images on my desktop.  The entire folder and contents are copied by TimeMachine to my external HD.  A month from now I work in the folder on the desktop and end up deleting 50 of the .jpg files.  The altered folder (now with 50 image files) is copied in backup to the external HD, where it will reside in case I need to copy those files back to my desktop at some point.

Question:  what happens to the copy of original folder with 100 image files in it?  Does it continue to reside in its original form on the ext. drive or is it replaced by the back copy of the folder as revised on the desktop?  Do both versions of the folder happily continue to reside (in different locations) on the backup drive?

Thank you!

iMac, OS X Yosemite (10.10.5)

Posted on Aug 28, 2016 8:54 PM

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Q: I have a folder of 100 .jpg images on my desktop.  The entire folder and contents are copied by TimeMachine to my external HD ... more

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  • by sberman,

    sberman sberman Aug 28, 2016 9:35 PM in response to mikethiedeman
    Level 8 (38,882 points)
    Aug 28, 2016 9:35 PM in response to mikethiedeman

    mikethiedeman wrote:

     

    Do both versions of the folder happily continue to reside (in different locations) on the backup drive?

    Yes they do.

     

    Here are more details:

    Screen Shot 2016-08-28 at 9.31.59 PM.png

    As the above shows (which is shown when you go to System Preferences > Time Machine), Time Machine saves daily backups for the past month, and weekly backups for previous months.  Therefore, at restore time, you can go back to when you created those 100 jpg files and restore them.

     

    See "Restore from a Time Machine backup" here:

    Use Time Machine to back up or restore your Mac - Apple Support

  • by Barney-15E,

    Barney-15E Barney-15E Aug 29, 2016 1:54 AM in response to mikethiedeman
    Level 8 (49,722 points)
    Mac OS X
    Aug 29, 2016 1:54 AM in response to mikethiedeman

    They will remain for some time, but not permanently. Time Machine maintains snapshots of your hard drive, but will consolidate backups periodically, and will delete backups that are no longer needed when space is needed. So, theoretically, the deleted files will remain until their space is needed for another backup. But, the internal workings of Time Machine are not well understood, so I wouldn't count on it maintaining deleted files for very long.

    The late Pondini seemed to understand Time Machine better than anybody and here is what he had to say about deleting files to save space: http://pondini.org/TM/20.html

     

    You should archive those files to a different hard drive instead of depending on Time Machine to recover them. And, back up that hard drive, also.