Time Machine doesn't cost much apart from the one-time investment in an external hard drive or SSD. However, major system changes can take more time to back up to your external drive. So if you haven't done anything in the last hour, your Mac won't probably take much time to do a back up. Instead, it only backs up the files that have changed during the last hour. It's important to note that Time Machine doesn't back up every file every hour. Related: How to Use Time Machine to Back Up Your Mac This will allow you to restore your entire system from a Time Machine backup if the need ever arises, which is why many users recommend frequent Time Machine backups for your system.

Time Machine allows you to create a backup of your entire system, including both user and system files. You can also only restore deleted files from the last 30 days, which is a major downside if you might need to recover lost data from more than a month ago. You won't be able to restore your entire system from the cloud. This means that if you needed to restore a new Mac, you can only retrieve your files (such as your documents and photos) from iCloud Drive. No system files or system backups are performed. Related: How to Choose Who Can View and Edit Your Shared Files in iCloud DriveĪnother drawback is that iCloud Drive only syncs user files with the server. You can sync and store specific files on iCloud Drive (such as documents and photos), but you can't store system files or make complete system backups for your Mac. Your data remains secure on the specific server and can be downloaded back onto your device if the need arises.

These servers are backed up regularly, so even if one fails, your data can be restored from a backup.

Apple has tons of facilities around the world filled with such servers, providing them with more than enough bytes of data. When you sync your iPhone or Mac to iCloud, your device uploads all the selected data to a secure server owned by Apple. Most people are familiar with 'cloud' backups but don't know how they actually work. We first need to understand how iCloud Drive and Time Machine work to truly understand the difference between the two. Today we'll cover which service should you be using for your Mac backups, and how they both differ.

Backup mac to icloud