Time Machine: How to check that it's working?

hey guys, i just ran Time Machine for the first time and it looks like everything worked ok. it completed the backup and will run another backup in 20 minutes. i was just wondering how i can check that my files are actually being backed up in case i had to restore the files. how would i go about restoring the files by the way? i can't see an option to do this.         
thanks a lot

ThunderCon wrote:
ok i had a look at that, but couldn't find an answer to this:
i just noticed that my time machine drive is 4gb smaller than my mac internal HDD. is there any reason for this?
Yes, as softwater and others have said, Time Machine does skip some things, such as system work files, most caches and logs, etc.  The size of all that varies widely from time to time, but is usually several GBs.
See the tan box in Time Machine - Frequently Asked Question #11 for the gory details.
But the size of the data on your TM drive will grow as more backups are performed, copying only the items that are new or changed, eventually filling all the available space.  Then it will begin deleting the oldest backup(s) when it needs room for new ones.
but doesn't Time Machine create a bootable copy of the hard drive anyway?
No, TM backups aren't directly bootable.  If your internal HD dies, you can restore your backups to a replaced internal HD, or another external HD.  The restored system is bootable.
if the hard drive died, wouldn't Time Machine be able to restore everything?
Yes.  The things it doesn't back up are re-created as needed anyway.  See FAQ #14 for details on doing a full restore.

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