"Time Machine is a backup utility, not an archival utility, it is not intended as offline storage.

Time
Machine captures the most recent state of your data on your disk. As snapshots age, they are
prioritized progressively lower compared to your more recent ones." [3]
For backups to a network drive, Time Machine allows the user to back up Apple Mac computers
through Apple's AirPort networking, and supports backing up to certain network attached
storage devices or servers, depending on the version of Time Machine. Earlier versions worked
with a wide variety of NAS servers, but later versions require the server to support a recent
version of Apple's Apple Filing Protocol (AFP), and Time Machine no longer works with servers
using the Server Message Block (SMB) protocol typical for Windows servers. Some of the legacy
support can be re-enabled by using hand-tuned configuration options, accessed through
the Terminal. Apple's Time Capsule acts as anetwork storage device specifically for Time
Machine backups, allowing both wired and wireless backups to the Time Capsule's internal hard
drive. Time Machine may alternatively be used with any external or internal volume.
Time Machine saves hourly backups for the past 24 hours, daily backups for the past month, and
weekly backups for everything older than a month until the volume runs out of space. At that
point, Time Machine deletes the oldest weekly backup.

User interface[edit]
Time Machine's user interface when retrieving a file uses Apple's Core Animation API. Upon its
launch, Time Machine "floats" the active Finder or application window from the user's desktop to
a backdrop depicting the user's blurred desktop wallpaper. Behind the current active window are
stacked windows, with each window representing a snapshot of how that folder or application
looked on the given date and time in the past. When toggling through the previous snapshots,
the stacked windows extend backwards, giving the impression of flying through a "time tunnel."
While paging through these "windows from the past," a previous version of the data (or presently
deleted data) may be retrieved.

Storage[edit]
Time Machine works with:

local storage (volumes directly connected to the local machine, and formatted with HFS+)

remote storage (network resources shared from other Macs, from Time Capsule or
compatible device)

The significant difference is that when using remote storage, Time Machine uses sparse bundles;
this acts as an isolation layer, which makes the storage neutral to the actual file system used by
the network server, and also allows to replicate the backup from one storage to another.
Sparse bundles are mounted by OS X like any devices, presenting their content as a HFS+
formatted volume, functionally similar to a local storage.

Operation[edit]
Time Machine creates a folder on the designated Time Machine volume (local or inside a
remote sparsebundle) into which it copies the directory tree of all locally attached disk drives,
except for files and directories that the user has specified to omit, including the Time Machine
volume itself. Every hour thereafter, it creates a new subordinate folder and copies only files that
have changed since the last backup and creates hard links to files that already exist on the
backup drive. A user can browse the directory hierarchy of these copies as if browsing the
primary disk.[4]
Some other backup utilities save deltas for file changes, much like version control systems. Such
an approach permits more frequent backups of minor changes, but can often complicate the
interaction with the backup volume. By contrast, it is possible to manually browse a Time
Machine backup volume without using the Time Machine interface; the use of hard links presents
each backup to the user as a complete disk copy.
Time Machine appears to create multiple hard links to unmodified directories. Multiple linking of
directories is different from conventional UNIX operating systems. As a result, tools
like rsync cannot be used to replicate a Time Machine volume; replication can only reliably be
done by imaging the entire filesystem.
Apple system events record when each directory is modified on the hard drive. This means that
instead of examining every file's modification date when it is activated, Time Machine only needs
to scan the directories that changed for files to copy (the remainder being hard-linked). This
differs from the approach taken by similar backup utilities rsyncand FlyBack, which examine
modification dates of all files during backup.