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Hi,
Time Machine came with my Mac and seems to run fine in doing its backups. But what is it actually backing up. I have looked for Mail emails and cannot see any. Pages and Numbers documents seem to be saved but no sign of emails unless I am not looking in the right place. Can someone please tell me what does Time Machine backup ?
iMac Line (2012 and Later)
I have used CCC for many years and it is great for making a bootable clone just in case something happens to your internal drive. TM is still valuable as it keeps everything new and old in case you need a file, etc.. It just does not work well with mail for some odd reason. I always use both TM and CCC and MailBackupX for email. That covers it all.
I have used CCC for many years and it is great for making a bootable clone just in case something happens to your internal drive. TM is still valuable as it keeps everything new and old in case you need a file, etc.. It just does not work well with mail for some odd reason. I always use both TM and CCC and MailBackupX for email. That covers it all.
Time machine will not work with mail as before starting with Catalina. It does backup the mail folder structure which resides in your library/mail/V folders but not easy to find a specific email as before. You would need to use another app like MailBackupX for ease of use in finding any specific email.
Thank you for this reply. I wonder whether you or anyone else following this thread knows why Time Machine does not back up Apple Mail when emails are still a major part of many people's daily work. Is there a technical explanation why TM appears to back up Numbers spreadsheets and Pages documents but not Mail. The logic of this eludes me completely. I will now be looking to dump TM in favour of a product that will back up the files that I want to be sure are copied to an external drive. Thanks again for confirming what I suspected.
Thanks for this info. I wonder if the problem is that Mail is not actually an Apple product and there is some sort of licencing restriction that does not apply in the case of Numbers or Pages. In the current Mac Format magazine they say that the best product for backing up is Carbon Copy Cloner 6. I have started the free 30 day trial and it certainly looks comprehensive but I'm feeling it is a hammer to crack a walnut for my purposes. Does anyone use backup software that will run on Big Sur that is either free or paid for and which will allow the backed up files to be viewed after they have been transferred to the target drive. I ask this because my experience is that these programs tend to encrypt this data (or block access to it) and simply tell you that the backup was successful. The only way then is to run a restore which is nuts just to check that what has been backed up has worked as you intended.
Time Machine Backup is very useful and can be used to Revert to Previous Working macOS.
I really hope this is not the only answer I get as it does not address the key issue of Apple Mail.
Not sure why. I and others have reported this to Apple but they have not addressed the issue or stated why. I even asked MacLife magazine and they had no response.
What does Time Machine backup ?
