If we needed to revert to a backup from several months ago, Time Machine wouldn’t work for us.Ĭloning is great for those who need control, especially for businesses that may need to clone drives with sensitive business data like tax info or client files. Out Time Machine, for example, backs up automatically every other day or so, and keeps the last dozen-ish images. The issue is you don’t control incremental backups, and can’t define which backups are kept. The goal is to get you back up and running quickly.

Time Machine keeps the latest versions of a backup on your Mac, which is meant to give you the most recent ‘image’ when you buy a new computer or need to do a factory reset on your Mac. Time Machine is Apple’s default method for creating incremental backups. The difference between cloning and using Time MachineĪs noted above, a clone is an ‘image’ of your hard drive, meaning it’s a compressed version of your entire hard drive you can revert to at any time.

When you need to recover files from a failing system, having a clone of your hard drive helps you recover files, eliminating the possibility the failing drive will die completely before files are recovered.Ĭloned backups differ from the now popular ‘incremental backup’ as a clone creates a snapshot of your Mac that is preserved for as long as you want, whereas incremental backups update themselves at regular intervals and replace older versions. Clones can also be useful during travel if you’re worried that your Mac might get lost, stolen, or damaged. Disk Drill brings deleted files back from the dead.Ī clone of your Mac is essentially a backup of all the data you can make bootable, so when you connect the disk to another Mac, you just reboot and carry on from where you left off.Ĭloning your Mac’s main drive is a great way to protect yourself against potential problems when doing things like installing a new or updated version of macOS - especially if you’re using a beta version of macOS.

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