Sufficiency of 1TB drive for Time Machine backups with limited Mac storage usage

A 1 TB drive will be fine, how far back will depend on how frequently you add/delete/modify files. For example, I frequently edit 4K video files but after completion I store the original footage on an external drive and keep only an HD version on internal storage. But if a TM backup runs after importing and before deleting a 100 GB movie, that adds 100 GB to my TM backups.

RandomUser360_human wrote:

I’m considering using Time Machine backup using a 1TB drive connected to my Mac.

My Mac boys from another 1TB external drive, but I’ve only used about 225GB on that drive and probably won’t use more than 300GB on that drive anytime in the future.

Is a 1TB drive enough for backups as of now?

About how long into the past would these backups go? And if my Mac starts using more storage, how much storage can it use before I should get a 2TB drive?

[Re-Titled by Moderator]

Original Title: Time Machine drive size

yes.

The recommendation to future proof is 2x-3x the size of the internal.

I have a 1TB backed up to a 1 TB....

I can not predict how far back— when it fills up things get purged.

I find in more important to have more than one backup compared to the size of your backup in question here

The main advantage of TM is that it creates recursive backups—enabling you to restore a specific file or the entire drive— from a certain point in time.

If you value your user data

3-2-1 Backup Strategy: three copies of your data, two different methods, and one offsite.

More than one device, more than one backup methodology.

RandomUser360_human wrote:

I mainly care of being able to restore items that I accidentally deleted from my Mac and want backups to regain for at least a month.

In that case, you should be fine. Do consider the recommendation to have >1 backup. Life happens.

A 1 TB drive should be adequate. I have a 4 TB drive to backup 5 drives, the internal and 4 external totaling about 2 TB in size to be backed up. The backups go back to Dec. 13, 2024, over 9 months. Since only new or hanged files are backed up each backup is rather small a the rest is represented by hard links.

RandomUser360_human wrote:

Also, do TM backups contain data categorized in storage settings as System Data?

Yes, in part. ‘System Data’ is mostly your own data that macOS doesn’t lump into other categories (in fact, it used to be called ‘Other’). One example is MS Outlook email attachments. What is in there depends on what apps you use and how they store their data.

Local TM snapshots are also counted in System Data, but those are not backed up.