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Basics

In this book, when I use the term disk by itself, I generally mean your Mac’s primary internal storage device—whether that’s a mechanical hard drive, an SSD, or other solid-state storage. (Apple, after all, still uses the term “Macintosh HD” as the default name for your Mac’s startup volume, even when it’s not stored on a hard drive.) A drive is a physical device for storing data; a single drive can comprise one or more volumes, or logical storage devices. The volume that contains the copy of macOS currently used to start up, or boot, your Mac is your startup volume, sometimes called the boot volume or boot drive. I’ll specify hard drive when I need to talk specifically about the little boxes with spinning platters, and I’ll occasionally use hard disk when talking about the logical storage space on a hard drive.

I also talk about duplicating your startup volume onto another disk in such a way that you can boot from the duplicate. The more formal name for such a disk is a bootable duplicate, but they’re commonly called clones, and I sometimes use that term too. Any volume can be cloned, even a non-boot volume, but the context should make clear when I’m talking about the sort of clone you can boot from.

Settings vs. Preferences

In macOS 13 Ventura, Apple replaced System Preferences with System Settings, and in most apps what was formerly a Preferences window is now a Settings window. In this book, I sometimes use a shorthand like “go to Finder > Settings/Preferences” or “open System Settings/System Preferences” to reflect these two possibilities; when the details are significantly different, I spell them out separately for Ventura or later and for macOS 12 Monterey or earlier.

What’s New in Version 4.4.1

This very minor update adds a note about a Time Machine bug in Ventura; see Restore Files and Folders in the Finder.

What Was New in Version 4.4

This update to the book covered changes in macOS 13 Ventura, corrected errors, and removed information that’s no longer relevant. The most significant changes were:

• Updated references to System Preferences (and Preferences generally) to reflect the wording and other changes in Ventura

• Included mention, where relevant, of Thunderbolt 4 in addition to Thunderbolt 3

• Updated capacities and prices of various backup devices throughout the book

• Added more detail about the use of NAS devices for backups in Network Backups, Consider RAIDs and RAID-Like Tech, and Network Storage Devices

• Removed an incorrect statement that automatic hourly APFS snapshots on the startup volume are disabled whenever a local Time Machine drive is connected

• Greatly revised the chapter Configure and Use Time Machine to describe the new Time Machine interface and features in Ventura

• Removed all mentions of Drobo devices, which are no longer available (and which had significant reliability problems even when they were)

• Updated the online appendixes with the latest information about backup apps and services, and added information on which apps support APFS snapshots

What Was New in Version 4.3

Apple made some changes in macOS 12 Monterey that I hadn’t noticed when I wrote version 4.2 of this book, some of which likely didn’t manifest themselves until macOS 12.3 or 12.4. For version 4.3, I spent considerable time doing further research and experiments, which led me to revise my advice a bit. Most significantly:

• In Decide How to Format Your Partitions, I removed the suggestion to stick with the Mac OS Extended file system for Macs functioning as Time Machine servers in Big Sur or later.

• I revised Restore Your Startup Volume Using Time Machine and Restore Files Without Time Machine to offer more reliable advice for working with Time Machine over a local network.

• For some users running Monterey, there may be a shortcut to deleting unwanted Time Machine snapshots; I explain this in Delete Files from a Time Machine Backup.

• I rewrote the bulk of Use a Mac as a Time Machine Server, which now covers the use of this feature in Monterey up through at least version 12.4. I also note that this setup is fiddly and that despite my best efforts and yours, it might not work reliably.

• In Use a Single Backup Disk with Multiple Macs, I explicitly advise against moving a Time Machine drive between local and network connections, as APFS makes such switching infeasible.