MacOS – Is this Time Machine behavior normal

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I plugged the Time Machine Hard Drive on the iMac and clicked "Back Up now" in the menu bar, after making sure that nothing was excluded from the process in the Preferences panel.

After I used recovery mode to erase, install the os and restore my data from Time Machine to a new computer.

Once this process completed, I noticed a few odd things:

  • A lot of the items in the "Downloads" folder were not present
  • When I reopened Safari, the application state of Safari was not restored

Obviously this is very frustrating.

Are my results normal to expect a mirrored Mac with everything perfect?

Best Answer

There are several ways to clone your drive. One way is to use the app Super Duper. The app is not free but has a free trial version that you can download from the link above.

You'll need to start with a clean drive and you can make a clone of your internal drive. It is a simple procedure and the complete instructions are given here. This link is dated 3/2020 so it is recent. The instructions will tell you how to make a bootable clone.

After making a bootable clone, the linked article has a section telling you how to restore your Mac from a clone if necessary. And there are other features given in the article as well.

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