I am a bit confused on what I should select when backing up the Fusion drive on my iMac with Time Machine.
There is a Macintosh HD and Macintosh HD - Data within a Container on my Fusion Drive. Do I select the Container, or the individual Macintosh HD and HD - Data?
Thanks,
Bryan
iMac 27″, macOS 10.15
There is no need to select any drive when you launch Time Machine to do backup of your Mac.
Time Machine will backup your Mac's drive in its entirety, unless you specifically exclude drives, folders or files. And it will continue to periodically backup any files you add and any that change during your use of the computer. Whether you Mac has a fusion drive or not is really not relevant as long as the fusion drive is working properly.
How to use Time Machine:
• Plug in the external drive that you will be backing up to.
• Make sure it is formatted properly for Time Machine use.
• Go to System Preferences > Time Machine and select that external disk as the backup destination.
• Click the box to Back Up Automatically. Click the box to Show Time Machine in menu bar.
• Then close System Preferences and let TM do its job in the background.
Please see: Back up your Mac with Time Machine - Apple Support
There is no need to select any drive when you launch Time Machine to do backup of your Mac.
Time Machine will backup your Mac's drive in its entirety, unless you specifically exclude drives, folders or files. And it will continue to periodically backup any files you add and any that change during your use of the computer. Whether you Mac has a fusion drive or not is really not relevant as long as the fusion drive is working properly.
How to use Time Machine:
• Plug in the external drive that you will be backing up to.
• Make sure it is formatted properly for Time Machine use.
• Go to System Preferences > Time Machine and select that external disk as the backup destination.
• Click the box to Back Up Automatically. Click the box to Show Time Machine in menu bar.
• Then close System Preferences and let TM do its job in the background.
Please see: Back up your Mac with Time Machine - Apple Support
You will want to acquire and connect and configure an external storage device, usually a hard disk drive, as the target for a Time Machine backup. Time Machine will then schedule and maintain backups of all of your data.
Time Machine also keeps device-internal backups, when your Mac is not connected to your external Time Machine archive. (That’s less common with an iMac of course, but useful with a MacBook Pro or other portable Mac.)
You don’t need to know about the internal SSD or HDD storage, nor Fusion storage, nor about the APFS file system partitions used for this on most any recent macOS system, as Time Machine deals with all that. You back up the whole volume. You pick the destination, and then—and only if this is needed—pick specific files or devices to exclude from the backups.
I’d suggest acquiring an HDD of roughly three or four times the size of your internal and other connected external storage (Time Machine can back up all connected storage), so that you get some depth of backups; some ability to revert to older versions. If you’ve got the budget for it, or have multiple Macs needing backups, or have Macs you want to back up wirelessly, or a combination, you can acquire and use an external network-attached storage device (NAS) to back up wirelessly, and to back up multiple Macs to one pool of storage.
… Back up your Mac with Time Machine - Apple Support
… Backup disks you can use with Time Machine - Apple Support
Can I use Time Machine with my Fusion drive?
