Mac OS X 10.5's new Time Machine application makes it possible to protect your computer's contents from loss due to accidental deletion or disk damage.

It does this by keeping an up-to-date copy of everything on your Mac. But unlike other backup software, Time Machine also remembers your system configuration on any given day, making it possible to go back in time (so to speak) to recover any of your files. 

Time Machine is preconfigured to keep the following backups: 

• Hourly backups for the past 24 hours
• Daily backups for the past month
• Weekly backups until your backup disk is full

Excerpted from Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard: Visual QuickStart Guide by Maria Langer