Can I use snap shot without an external backup in place

When I purchased my MacBook Air from Best Buy a year ago, I was told that backup was automatically done with a daily, weekly, monthly... just as Snap Shot describes. He failed to tell me that I had to set it up myself! Now A YEAR LATER, suspecting Malware or worse, I discover that I DO NOT HAVE A BACKUP O ANYTHING on my system! In trying to set it up now, it appears that Snap Shot cannot be use unless I also have set up an alternate external backup.


Can anyone confirm this (or PLEASE, by all means DISPUTE it and tell me how to access my backed up documents!)?


Using OSX 10.9.5; Processor 1.4 GHz Intel Core i5; Memory 4 GB 1600 MHz DDR3.


Thank you!

MacBook Air, OS X Mavericks (10.9.5)

Posted on May 20, 2015 2:40 PM

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3 replies

May 20, 2015 2:54 PM in response to fromMS2Mac

You might want to read through this Apple support document.


About Time Machine local snapshots - Apple Support


The whole idea here is that you first set up an external drive to your Mac and get Time Machine backups running. Then, when the external drive is not connected to your Mac.....you might be traveling.....Time Machine makes local backup snapshots and stores them on your Mac. When you connect the external drive back to the Mac, snapshot information is transferred back to the external hard drive to "fill in the gaps".


Unfortunately, if you did not first set up an external hard drive and get Time Machine running and backing up, then no backups have occurred at all.

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Can I use snap shot without an external backup in place

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