El Capitan, Apple’s latest and great operating system, was released to the public yesterday. But before you begin scribbling in the Notes app, dividing your screen with Split View, and ooh and aww at the new San Francisco font, you’re going to want to backup your computer with Time Machine.
Last year when Apple’s previous operating system, Yosemite, was released, a few users had an issue with the installation. The operating system wouldn’t fully install and the computer would lock up trying to boot to the desktop. The bad news with this error? The only solution was to wipe the hard drive clean and reinstall Yosemite – meaning all data was lost. Photos from Europe, physics homework, Backstreet Boys discography – all gone. Let’s protect your Backstreet Boys collection.
Time Machine is a program already installed on your Mac and it will make a backup of everything on your computer. All you need to provide is an external hard drive (if you don’t already own an external hard drive, your local Computer Hardware can set you up). To start Time Machine backups on your computer, follow these instructions.
- Plug in your external hard drive to your computer
- Click on the Apple in the top left hand corner of your screen
- Click on ‘System Preferences’
- From the System Preferences page, click on ‘Time Machine’
- Flip the switch on the left side of the window to ‘On’
- Click ‘Select Disk’ and then select your external hard drive from the list
- You’re done! Your computer is now being backed up
Once Time Machine has successfully completed a full backup, you can now safely install OS X El Capitan. Of course, if you’d like assistance setting up Time Machine, please stop in your local Computer Hardware. We’d be happy to help.