TIME MACHINE - SHOULD I USE IT?

Absolutely! Dedicate a HDD 2x-3x the size internal drive and set it up to backup whenever the machine is running. About every hour.

I used TM for a time but switched to Carbon Copy Cloner because of much greater flexibility. But TM is excellent for what it does.

Regardless of how little or how great the amount of data you keep, if it all goes away for some reason you'll regret it being gone. Plus TM backs up apps and settings. But not the OS

ku4hx wrote:

Essentially everything but the OS. I don't think the trash is backup up but I'm not really sure. It gets all the important stuff and leaves out the temporary data I think. What it doesn't get, you'll never miss as either it was temporary or will be recreated at startup.

You can keep any data you want at any location you choose on any schedule you choose. But that doesn't change the nature of what TM does.

I am an old Linux guy, so know what a backup would do. Only there we used to backup everything including the OS. Anyway, all this backup idea was quite good when we used the turning hard disks, which sometimes tend to lose data, but with modern SSDs, it rarely happens. Anyway, I never lost any data, either in Linux, Windows or in MacOS. In all three OSs, we can always reinstall the OS.

In our case, MacOS, few folders are always in sync with iCloud, so the data is saved there. If I am doing something at the moment, I do that in the Desktop, which gets synced immediately to iCloud. If some data is necessary to reach in the near future, they are kept in Documents, which too is synced to iCloud. Photos taken with an iPhone is also synced with iCloud. One doesn't really have to save anything physically in the device, phone or notebook. And, if some project/data has to stored for later reference, or as they are very important a copy of that will be saved in an external disk. This is done not to stress the MBP with hourly sync to a physical device (external disk). And, not to stress the USB-C ports.

Also, it is always better to do the copying of a project/data manually -- that way, you remember what you've done, and that you've ticked off what's necessary. MacOS is pretty good, being Unix, but it's always better to tick off what's to be done at the end of the day, or end of a project. :)

What does the Time Machine actually hold? What's in your username account, that is, just your data, or also the applications, their settings etc?

Apple says, "you can back up files on your Mac that weren’t part of the macOS installation," so, it is only for your own data and those applications you might've installed. Couldn't one keep those sensitive/important data copied in an external drive without stressing the MacBook, every hour or so?

Essentially everything but the OS. I don't think the trash is backup up but I'm not really sure. It gets all the important stuff and leaves out the temporary data I think. What it doesn't get, you'll never miss as either it was temporary or will be recreated at startup.

You can keep any data you want at any location you choose on any schedule you choose. But that doesn't change the nature of what TM does.

If you want a more versatile backup app, try CCC. I prefer it solely because it's more flexible Than TM but they do the same thing. It's just more versatile to me.

But when I was using TM, I never had a problem with migrating data with it. It was whole sufficient.

Don't waste your time overthinking this. Do your research, pick a backup app, learn to use it, setup up auto backups and move on.

Whatever ...