On Mac everyone should use Time Machine because it helps you restore your data!

I made a big mistake the other day on my personal computer and mistakenly format my 1TB SSD (Solid State Drive) which has stored the operation system and some of my data. 

note: formatting a drive, basically means removing all the data.

It was late at night, I was busy and accidents are bound to happen when doing things in a hurry.

Since i was busy I didn't notice it at first, but when i tried to start my computer into macOS nothing happened! Once realized what had happened, I couldn't believe what I had done, and start thinking about what data I would have lost. Luckily I store most of my data over the network, but there were still some things I didn't backup yet.

Not all was lost since I run Time Machine, which does a backup of my system each 30 minutes.

Time Machine is Apple’s backup tool that is quite reliable and easy to use. It can create a replica of all the data, including Documents, Files, Settings, Installed Apps, and so on, to the destination location, which could be an External Drive, NAS (Network Access Storage) or an SAN (Storage Array Network) as which I have.

Windows does not offer such build in software, but a quick search, shows a list of alternatives for Windows -> 

https://www.howtoisolve.com/best-time-machine-alternatives-for-windows/

Once the operation system was installed, it was simply using the migration assistant application, by selecting the time-machine backup and following the process. After about 18 hours of copying files, the system restarted and I was welcomed with the login screen just as I left it the other day.

Eventually the only thing I lost was time, but once the process had started, it was a waiting game, while having fingers crossed that nothing would happen to the backup storage location.

With a single hard drive that would be very worrisome, but with the storage solution I have i wasn't worried about it.

Something to note is to having a backup solution running is at least one way to minimize down time, but it doesn't protect your data from being lost. 

Things happen, because of yourself or due to other causes that we don't have control over.

For protecting your data, a 3-2-1 backup rule is something to look into, but that is for another time…

Here is more information about Time Machine:

Apple's Migration Assistant application

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