In general, this approach works well, since you probably don’t need all the older versions of changed files as long as Time Machine always retains the most recent version in the backup.Įventually, however, even this technique runs into the wall of hard drives having only so much capacity. It warns you when this starts happening and tells you what your oldest remaining backup is. So the first thing that Time Machine does when your backup drive fills up is start deleting those older versions, beginning with the oldest ones. If you modify the same file multiple times per day, every day, you’ll have numerous versions of it in your backup set so that you can go back to any particular version. After that, Time Machine keeps hourly backups for the past 24 hours, daily backups for the past month, and weekly backups for all previous months. On its first backup, Time Machine copies everything on your startup drive to the backup drive. What happens then?īefore we explain, some background. Time Machine is smart about backing up only files that have changed, but after months or years of usage, the drive will run out of space.

If you have slow or inconsistent Internet, you should go to some place that has a strong connection and follow the instructions for creating a USB install disk you can use at home.It’s inevitable-your Time Machine backup drive is going to fill up.

Though you can walk away for large portions of the process, you can expect all the downloading and file copying to take at least 60 minutes and, in our case, closer to two hours on a fast Internet connection. Show the full folder path in File Explorer on Windows 10įinally, make sure you have 1 to 2 hours free to run the install.

If you don't have a system restore disk already, it's a good idea to make a full system backup using disk imaging software such as Macrium Reflect, which makes a bit-by-bit copy of your hard drive. Before you begin the process, make sure you have all of your data files backed up, preferably to a cloud service such as Microsoft's own One Drive (opens in new tab), where you can download them again if your computer crashes.

Windows 10 should install without a hitch, but driver problems are a possibility and, during any system update, there's always a chance something will go wrong.

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