I migrated over from the Mac side last year and I previously used Ubuntu 14 & 16 in years past, so I’m not new to Linux but am new to Timeshift. I’ve watched some great videos on YouTube about how to install and set up Timeshift, but am still confused about two points. I'm aware of the risks of installing Timeshift on the same drive as the Linux system, so I'm not going to do that. I’m using a desktop with one internal drive and currently have Timeshift and Backups on separate partitions on an external USB drive. Question 1) Is it possible/feasible/prudent to have Timeshift installed and running on an external USB hard drive AND be able to restore from that? ... or ... Question 2) Would the only really smart way be to install Timeshift and Backups on separate partitions on a second, dedicated internal hard drive inside the box?
Question 1, I've always just installed Timeshift as normally (via apt package) and pointed the snapshots onto another drive (in my case, presently, a second drive within the computer). I used to have it pointed to an external HDD, and that worked perfectly well, too. The only reason I would rather see a second internal drive rather than an external USB is that USBs are not very reliable, and can die at almost any instant, even if you look at them wrong. But functionality wise, it should be fine.
Question 2, you could have them both going to the same partition wherever you wanted, I don't see a reason that you should want a separate partition for each data source (outside of absolutely knowing which is which at a quick glance and maybe time to restore each one separately?) But you can do that already by just picking which application to restore first, and just have separate folders in the root of a separate partition together.
That's a really long winded way of saying; you can point these backups to whichever destination you want, and you should be fine, but I personally don't trust USB drives for this sort of stuff. I would go at least an external HDD/SSD, for reliability.
Hi friend.
First off, if your hard drive is large enough, or rather if you have a separate /home partition (I always manually set partitions during install - 'Something Else' in Zorin installer) and point Timeshift to save snapshots to /home. /home is excluded by default as Timeshift is really there should something go wrong with the system partition (/).
When setting up I usually reduce the snapshot frequency to 3 a day but how often you want to set this up is up to you.
I would not use a memory stick/thumb drive but I would recommend an external drive if you have limited HDD/SSD capacity, but you need to remember to either format the whole drive as Ext4 FS beforehand or you will never retrieve your snapshot - something I found out the hard way when saving a snapshot of a baulked Debuan 3.0 whose /var got stuffed that I could not boot it any more. Most External HDD's are formatted to NTFS.
something else to keep in mind is when you have to restore to a system that will not boot, you can do a live install of your operating system, and from there download time shift before using it to restore one of your save points.
I do my saves to an external USB drive.
That reminded me. It is useful to keep a copy of Linux Mint (anything from 19 onwards as Timeshift is included in that). Meant to include in my last post! 
Hi Neal
I have been using timeshift for several months and have experimented with using it's functionality.
I have been running Zorin 18 on an old PC for near on 12 months now, in that time I have had timeshift running on my operating drive and directing snapshots onto a storage-HDD, I have a cloned copy of my operating drive.
I have updated this cloned drive via timeshift.
I have today purchased a new MSI pc, unboxed it and installed Zorin 18 as a dual boot along side of preinstalled Win 11, then Zorin 18 with the timeshift snapshot and I am up and running, including 2 users and all user configs appear to be working.
How?
So obviously, as I stated, timeshift is installed on my Zorin 18 operating drive and I have entered the timeshift settings to create snapshots to my storage-HDD.
After I had installed Zorin from my live USB and checked that it was operational I then shutdown and booted from live USB again, (this time I had my storage HDD connected also) I connected to the network and installed timeshift via terminal (a google search will help if you are not familiar with terminal)
Start timeshift and use it's settings to point to the storage-HDD, find the restore point you are looking for and let timeshift do it's thing, confirm the prompts that it offers and once the process is complete you can shutdown and reboot.
P.S
I have configured timeshift to also copy user data, however there is very little of that on my operating drive as it is all directed to my storage-HDD
This is a link to my question in regards to timeshift Timeshift on a clone
I hope this helps.
Just to be clear!
For an update or complete restore I have used a live Zorin 18 USB environment, however I have restored to an earlier snapshot under my Zorin 18 operating environment.
You should also make it clear that if you are storing snapshots to an external HDD it needs to be formatted with the same FS as Zorin, Ext4.
Hi Profile - swarfendor437 - Zorin Forum
If that was directed at me, yes I am guilty of assuming 
that the file format would natural be EXT4
Cheers
Update to my timeshift restore on my new pc, I have realised that I wasn't being present with a choice between my dual boot operating systems, boot repair from the live zorin 18 USB fixed this issue.