Can Time Machine Keep Milestone Backups?

A client of mine said she wants Time Machine to backup less often, so that it can save OLDER backups (she'd rather have fewer backups going back further).


I told her Time Machine isn't DUPING backed up files, so she can ignore the frequency of (small) backups.


But I am curious --


(1) Can Time Machine be programmed so that it maximizes how far back it goes? More than it already does?


(2) If someone wants to be able to go back 5, 10, 15 years, is the best way to just buy a new backup drive every 5 years, and put the previous ones in storage?


Thanks!


Posted on Jan 5, 2022 8:30 PM

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Posted on Jan 5, 2022 8:38 PM

No. Time Machine automatically makes hourly backups for the past 24 hours, daily backups for the past month, and weekly backups for all previous months. The oldest backups are deleted when your backup disk is full. A user can backup to multiple drives and could retain older backups if they really felt that they needed to; although that seems wholly unnecessary.

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Jan 5, 2022 8:38 PM in response to Doc Crumble

No. Time Machine automatically makes hourly backups for the past 24 hours, daily backups for the past month, and weekly backups for all previous months. The oldest backups are deleted when your backup disk is full. A user can backup to multiple drives and could retain older backups if they really felt that they needed to; although that seems wholly unnecessary.

Jan 5, 2022 9:01 PM in response to Doc Crumble

muguy is absolutely right and be guided by that.


Advise your client that what she is requesting isn't a backup but an archive, and they are very different things.


Apple says here about Time Machine backups that the purpose is (and pardon the reproduction of the split infinitive): to automatically back up your personal data, including apps, music, photos, email, and documents. Having a backup allows you to recover files that you later delete or can't access. So it is to save for a limited time for later recovery after loss - or to move an existing system to another Mac.


Keeping a history of old data serves another purpose which is to preserve specific types of data for a longer period.


If she wants to keep an archive of emails, photos, music or so on then there are other ways of doing it and usually to an external drive - or more correctly several copies of it. One digital copy is rather perilous and as risky as having only the primary version.

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Can Time Machine Keep Milestone Backups?

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