Apple time machine, can someone explain it to me as if I was a 3 yr old please

[ggirl]

I sort of know it's a back up thingy
how do i set it up
it's asking for a wireless device or summat

am clueless

I am not a techy person and someone can probably explain better but Time Machine is the controller program for backing up your MAC (ie saving a copy of everything on your computer in case your computer crashes or is stolen). However, you need something else to back up to (basically a stand alone hard drive). Apple sell various hard drives which you either plug in via your USB or connect with wireless (I have Time Capsule which is wireless for example). Once you have one of these hard drives Time Machine will run the back up to it (if you look in system preferences you can click on Time Machine and start it manually if it doesn't start on its own. Hope that helps.

thank you
will look for one of thesee wireless hard drive

OK. Apple Time Machine is basically a program which will automatically back up your machine. All you need is a hard disk.

Basically you plug a disk in (USB or configure it wirelessly) and your mac will automatically copy everything to it. What is really 'clever' is it will also keep older versions of files. So say for example you write an essay. Two weeks later and several revisions you decide you need the one you saved a while back, that's no problem. Time Machine has it stored.

Technically you can use any external drive but.....if you can spare the cash, it's probably best combined with one of these: Time Capsule

What Time Capsule does is it is designed to work standalone and separately from your mac.

So for example I have one sat under my TV cabinet. It talks to my iMac over wifi and just automatically backs everything up. I don't have to even think about it. It just works.

It's peace of mind. Whether you need it or not depends on what value you put on your photos and documents.

thanks ..I understand now..shame they're so expensive
it's only photos i want to save

ggirl, if its only photos you want to save, any external HDD will do. I have a western digital one.
You also do not need time machine for this. You can just copy and save your pictures in bulk using explorer and saving a copy of the iphoto masters folder.

How much space do your photos take up?

If it's less than say 30GB what I'd do is buy a cheap SD card/USB pen drive for about £20-30 and just copy them onto that yourself. Repeat every so often.

For around 35 quid you could get an external 250 GB hard drive which would be fine for photos and music and much more. The online forms selling external drives are usually selling 500 GB, 1TB and larger now, but Dabs is a firm that has been around for a long time (now owned by BT I think) so should be fine...

Visit dabs.com - search for 756QQ200

Note that that model does not have a separate power supply - it needs two USB sockets to plug in (to provide enough power to drive the electronics and hard disk). This is a somewhat cheaper option than the Apple Time Capsule (but a fraction of the storage, part of the reason for the lower price).

As others have said, if you get an external drive, you should be able to use the 'Time Machine' software to do backups for you.

thank you everyone , that's really helpful , I don't have that many photos/music to back up so will get one of the cheaper options
this?