Press the ‘Enter’ key on your keyboard.Tmutil verifychecksums /path-to-your-backup Type the following command into the Terminal:.Launch your Mac’s Terminal, by opening a Finder window and navigating to ‘Applications > Utilities > Terminal.’.If you backup to an external drive, then make sure this drive is currently available.If you’re comfortable with issuing Terminal commands, then you can also verify the integrity of a backup using macOS’ built-in tmutil utility: Time Machine will then run its checksum test, and display a dialogue if it discovers any discrepancies between these two checksums. Select ‘Verify Backups’ from the dropdown menu that appears.Press and hold down the ‘Option’ key on your keyboard.Select the Time Machine icon in your Mac’s menu bar.
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Make sure the backup you want to verify is currently available, for example if it’s stored on an external drive then make sure this drive is connected to your Mac.Select the ‘Show Time Machine in menu bar’ checkbox.Select ‘System preferences > Time machine.’.Click the ‘Apple’ logo in the menu bar.If you haven’t added this icon to your menu bar, then do so now: The easiest way to verify the integrity of a backup, is to use the Time Machine icon in your Mac’s menu bar. Verify the integrity of any Time Machine backup While you’ll typically use this feature to verify the integrity of a backup before restoring it, this feature can also be handy if you encounter problems with restoring a particular Time Machine backup, as it gives you a way of testing whether this problem is being caused by the backup itself. This feature works with both encrypted and unencrypted backups, and for all backups created after macOS 10.11.
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#WHAT IS TIME MACHINE ON MAC HOW TO#
In this article, I’ll be showing you how to use this feature to verify the integrity of any backup made to a server, AirPort Time Capsule, or a drive that’s either connected directly to your Mac, or to an AirPort Extreme Base Station. This ‘verify backups’ feature compares the checksum generated when the backup was created, to the current checksum – if these digits are different, then this is a sign that the backup has become corrupted, or been modified in some way. Time Machine has a built-in feature that can help you identify whether a backup has changed since it was created. However, it is possible for Time Machine backups to become corrupted – this can happen naturally over time, but it can also happen maliciously, for example a hacker may use your Time Machine backups as a way of getting viruses onto your Mac.
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You should always create a Time Machine backup before making any changes at the operating system level, such as installing a beta version of macOS, and before applying any experimental or unsupported changes, such as using a third party app to alter your system font. Time Machine backups are a great safety net.