1. Time Machine does an incremental backup. First backup is everything and each successive backup is only the stuff that has changed since the previous backup.
2. Time Machine will not operate on the same disk as the Operating System. It MUST have an external drive or a different drive within the computer. For example; on an iMac, it must have an external drive. On a MacPro, it can use any of the internal drives EXCEPT the system drive.
3. The Recovery partition on the internal has enough of a System to boot the machine and to allow you to connect to the App Store to re-download and install OS X Lion. It also has the capability of Restoring from a Time Machine backup, which is housed on a different drive.
Hi there,
Recently I tried to make clean lion install ,I had the copy in flash USB . I started through Recovery HD then did format on Macintosh HD driver which is has another partition for Timemachine backup .
Unfortunately,I realized that flash USB dosn't work
so I restarted my computer with option key hold and found only one drive can I boot through named ( BACKUP ) which is the name for backup partition on internal driver .I go ahead and boot and its boot to recovery !!!! then I just tried to make restore from backup and my OS was restored successfully !!!
My question is :
1. how is the computer boot through backup partition while the recovery IMG was in other partition which was formated many time and the IMG also formated ?
2. What Kind of backup TimeMachine do ? is it only my files and data or including the LION OS ?
thnx, and sorry for my simple language ![]()

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