
External drive connected to your Mac, such as a USB, Thunderbolt, or FireWire drive.Time Machine supports any of the following external storage devices. Which Storage Devices Can be used with Time Machine? For more on the difference between backups and archives, see our post, What’s the Diff: Backup vs Archive. That makes it great for backups, but not great for archives, which require long-term storage. The oldest backups get deleted when the drive fills up.



Time Machine stores hourly backups for 24 hours, daily backups for the past month, and weekly backups for all previous months for as much space as you have on your Time Machine backup drive. Get more details about Time Machine in our guide, How to Back Up Your Mac.
